I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.
This week's topic is to pick a genre of which you've read a lot but have managed to miss some staples. For me, I make an effort to read a lot of books that are generally referred to as "classics" — those that are commonly referenced not only by other books but by popular media in general. I've mentioned that I have a list of classic literature I've been working on for some time, which includes everything from Pride and Prejudice to Moby-Dick to Animal Farm. But there are some books not on this list that I really should have read by now but which are still sitting on my to-read list.
1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
At Christmastime my cousin's girlfriend was reading this book and I was like, "How is it? I've never read it." She said, "It's my favorite book — I read it every year," probably thinking, "You've never read it??" All I know about it is that it's supposed to be depressing, but I guess it must be really good as well. I'll have to pick it up when I'm in the right mood.
2. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I haven't read any Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov is on my list as well) but I feel like he's pretty solidly considered a classic writer, so I will need to remedy that before too long.
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
I read excerpts of this in school, but I have yet to tackle the full 900+ page book. I feel like most cultural references stick to the basic facts I already know (he charges at windmills and has a squire named Sancho), but I should really read the whole story at some point.
4. Dracula by Bram Stoker
I noted previously that this is a book I've avoided because I don't like horror, but if Frankenstein is any indication, classic science fiction / horror books are more literary and boring than they are scary.
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
I'm pretty sure my husband read this book for school, so it's even more unbelievable that I haven't read it yet, since he reads maybe two books a year to my hundred. It seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it book, so we'll see where I end up.
6. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Another 900+ page classic I haven't picked up yet. I remember liking Silas Marner OK, and this one seems to have more fans, so I imagine it's a good read.
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
This is another one with enough cultural allusions that I have a rough idea what it's about, but I'd like to read it for myself. For some reason, it makes me think of A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man (maybe because Picture/Portrait and both authors are Irish?), which I hated, so that has made me less eager to pick this one up even though I'm sure they're completely unrelated.
8. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
I've heard the premise of this one (a woman choosing between her two children's lives) and I think it has something to do with World War II, so I'm guessing this is another one I need to be in the right mood to read.
9. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
I've read quite a lot of Hemingway even though I didn't like A Farewell to Arms or A Moveable Feast very much; The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls I liked better. This is one of Hemingway's best-known works, so I'm surprised I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
10. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
This book is referenced all the time, and I enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo (it's on my list of books to reread), so you'd think I would have read this other classic Dumas by now, but I haven't.
Which classics are on your to-read list?
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