Ten More Classics I Haven't Read

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week is a freebie! I decided to share books considered "classics" (at least by some people — I understand the category is debatable) that I have yet to read. The last time I covered this topic was almost seven years ago, and I've since read all ten of those books. Here are ten more!

1. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

2. Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

3. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

4. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

5. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

6. Inferno by Dante Alighieri

7. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

8. Passing by Nella Larsen

9. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

10. The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Which of these should I prioritize reading? Which "classics" have you never read?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Shalom and the Community of Creation, The Pod and the Bog, and Apples Never Fall
Five years ago I was reading: The New Jim Crow and Stranger in a Strange Land
Ten years ago I was reading: The Pox Party

Ten 21st Century Books I Think Will Become Classics

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This was an interesting topic! I approached it by looking at all the books I've read that were published since 2000 that I think people may still be reading and studying 100 years from now. Here are ten that I picked out.

1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

2. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

3. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

4. How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

5. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

6. Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

7. Still Alice by Lisa Genova

8. There There by Tommy Orange

9. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

10. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

What do you think of my picks? Which 21st century publications do you think will become classics?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Tess of the Road and How the Irish Became White
Five years ago I was reading: The Three Musketeers, Einstein Never Used Flashcards, and Milk and Honey
Ten years ago I was reading: Neverwhere

Top Ten Oldest Books on my TBR List

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's theme is backlist books that we want to read. Since I rarely read new releases (this year being unusual with a dozen 2018 releases read), my TBR list is pretty much all backlist by the definition of "books that aren't new releases." So I decided to focus on the ten oldest books on my TBR, based on the original publication dates. Here they are, from newest to oldest.

1. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924)

2. The Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset (1920)

3. The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain (1916)

4. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (1915)

5. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)

6. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (1913)

7. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (1897)

8. The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Padmasambhava (700)

9. The Upanishads by Unknown (500 BC)

10. The Rig Veda by Unknown (1200 BC)

What are the oldest books on your TBR?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: The Secret History and Birdsong
Five years ago I was reading: Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Roots
Ten years ago I was reading: The Complete Sherlock Holmes Vol. 1

What's on My To-Read List (and How Did It Get There)?

It's been a long time since I did a non-linkup post! Originally I envisioned doing more of these kinds of posts, but apparently I need the structure. Ah well.

The last time I shared some data on my personal reading was back in 2014, when I shared information on how my preferred book formats have changed over time and how I fit reading into an average week (a topic I definitely need to revisit now that I'm a parent!). This time around, I decided to take a look at my to-read list, which you may remember that I capped at the beginning of 2016 after creating a new "might want to read" list, which feels a lot less obligatory. What's left on the original list and why is it there?

I grouped the books into rough categories of why I put them on my list in the first place. (Some could definitely be in more than one category, but I picked the primary reason I put them on my list.) Here are the books I'm planning to read, and why I plan to read them.

Classics I Should Read: 55
I wrote a whole post previously on why I read classic books, and there are many that I'd still like to read. Some of these made it onto my goals for the year, like The Sun Also Rises, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Bleak House. Some are less obvious, like Silent Spring and We Need to Talk About Kevin. They're books that I see over and over again on lists of "100 books to read before you die" and "books to be well read." When I feel like there's a gap in my base of classic books, it goes on my list.

Diversifying My Reading: 42
A bunch of books ended up on my list during my 2014 project to diversify my reading, and I didn't get around to all of them. I'm still interested in reading books like In Search of April Raintree, The Mis-Education of the Negro, and Girl in Translation.

Books that Sound Interesting: 35
I'm a sucker for good nonfiction, so a lot of books are on my list because I think I'll learn something interesting from them. Books like The Discoverers, How the Irish Became White, Team of Rivals, and The New Jim Crow all fall into this category.

Books I Keep Seeing Recommended: 33
These are books that I see repeatedly not because they're classics but because they're popular. Books in this category include YA books that show up on a lot of Top Ten Tuesday posts, like The Raven Boys and Throne of Glass; books that Modern Mrs. Darcy and her readers recommend a lot, like Bel Canto and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day; and contemporary books that I've just seen show up in articles and book reviews a lot, like Cutting for Stone and The Light Between Oceans.

Highly Rated Books: 20
One of my 2016 reading resolutions was to read some books I'd never heard of that were highly rated by a lot of people on Goodreads. I didn't end up getting through very many in 2016, so I still have books like The Way of Kings, The Winds of War, and Imperium on my to-read list.

Books that Sound Enjoyable to Read: 16
These are books that I put on my list not to learn things or brush up on classics or expand my reading horizons, but simply because they sounded like I'd enjoy reading them. These include mysteries like Gaudy Night and A Kiss Before Dying, children's books like Howl's Moving Castle and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, and humor books like Girt and Notes from a Small Island.

Books that Sound Helpful to Read: 12
These books could be broadly considered "self-help," but they range from books about parenting (It's OK Not to Share and Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child) and relationships (Getting the Love You Want) to books about faith (Amazing Grace and For the Life of the World) and psychology (Feeling Good and 10% Happier).

Books from the BBC's Big Read List: 12
Every so often a list goes around claiming that "the BBC thinks you've only read 6 of these books!" This list is loosely based on an actual list that the BBC compiled based on their 2003 Big Read survey in the UK. I added a number of these books to my to-read list after I uncovered the original list, as a kind of combination of diversifying my reading, reading classics, and reading well-loved books I wasn't familiar with. These include The Magus, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, and Katherine.

Personal Recommendations: 5
One of my 2015 reading goals was to read through the books that had been personally recommended to me over the years, and I got through most of them, but there are a handful left, including The Blue Castle, Maurice, and Bitter in the Mouth. (A lot of books people recommend to me are already on my to-read list for other reasons, or there would be a lot more in this category!)

Holy Texts: 3
Another 2015 reading goal was to read holy texts from other religions. I read The Qur'an, The Book of Mormon, Tao Te Ching, and The Bhagavad-Gita, but I'm still interested to read The Rig Veda, The Upanishads, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

So there you go! It's interesting to see how much of my to-read list is based on specific reading goals I've had the past few years. Maybe next time I set a goal I should be more circumscribed in how many books I try to tackle for that goal!

I now have 515 books on my "might want to read" list, but it's only these 235 from my original to-read list that I'm determined to finish, which I'm guessing will take me about five years. This year I'm mostly focusing on the Classics category, as I hate coming across references in other books that assume I've read a classic book and/or spoil something in it. I also want to tackle more of the Books I Keep Seeing Recommended so I'll have more to discuss with other readers. (It's so frustrating when multiple people ask, "Have you read X?" and I have to keep saying, "No, it's on my list!") Outside of that, the rest are for my own interest, enjoyment, or learning, so I can read them in tandem with other books that I'm interested in from my ever-growing "might want to read" list.

I'd be interested to hear where your to-read list comes from. Have I inspired you to sort your own books into categories? If so, please share your own findings in comments!

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Top Ten Books I Liked More Than I Expected

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is books that you liked more or less than expected. I could write another full post of books I didn't like as much as I expected, but I decided this time to be positive and share books that I liked. They were easy to pick out because I tend to start my Goodreads reviews of these kinds of books with "I enjoyed this more than I expected..."

1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I've mentioned this already a few times, but I expected this book to have dense prose and be all symbolic and philosophical, and it wasn't at all. It was very readable and ended up being my favorite read from January.

2. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
I had heard a lot of criticism of this book before reading it, so I was surprised to find that most of the criticism was unfounded. Yes, the book is targeted at a specific demographic, but Sandberg makes that very clear upfront, and for her specific audience I thought the book contained a lot of excellent advice, addressing systemic barriers while giving women practical things they could do to advance their career.

3. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
I read very little sci-fi and fantasy, and I'm an unrepentant world-building snob, so I was very surprised at how much I liked this book. My book club wasn't a huge fan, but I found the characters relatable and their dilemmas felt real.

4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
I'm always hesitant going into 19th century classics because they can be so dry and tedious, but this one was quite enjoyable. I wouldn't say it's a favorite — it would still be more rewarding to study and analyze than simply to read — but I found it entertaining enough to keep my attention.

5. MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche
This book kind of got panned by many reviewers as being too gimmicky, but I liked reading her reflections on the awkwardness of making friends as an adult. Maybe it just spoke to me at a particular time in my life. This book is the reason I initially decided to seek out a local book club (why had that never occurred to me before?) and since I'm now part of three, I guess I have Bertsche to thank.

6. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
I expected to hate this book based on what I knew about it, but I ended up finding it quite entertaining. It still has pretty terrible viewpoints on women and people of color, but at least for myself, Kerouac's ("Sal Paradise's") experiences were so utterly absurd that I couldn't help but find them funny.

7. Stolen by Lucy Christopher
Young adult books have been super hit or miss for me in recent years. (The majority of the "books I expected to like and didn't" fall under this genre.) I really thought this was going to turn into a YA cliché where the questionable male character ends up being an unquestioned love interest, but it didn't develop that way at all.

8. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Don't get me wrong — long sections of this novel were a slog, as you might expect from a 1300-page 19th century Russian novel. But I liked how the novel went back and forth between the war front and the home front, where the events start out separate and over time come to be more and more blended as characters at home became more affected by and involved in the war efforts. If you're not looking for the accomplishment of reading the whole unabridged version, I actually recommend the story in an abridged format.

9. Watchmen by Alan Moore
When I picked this up I had only read my first graphic novels the year before, and I hadn't read anything that explicitly dealt with comic book-type superheroes and villains. I appreciated the book's various themes, and it gave me a lot to think about. (Plus I could recognize how this year's Doctor Who Christmas special borrowed from the book's plot!)

10. The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal
I've read a lot of books in this vein that talk about how you shouldn't rely on willpower and should instead craft your environment to help you make the right choices, so I was skeptical going into this book, but McGonigal acknowledged this upfront and specified that her research was about the areas where you do still need willpower. You can set out your workout clothes the night before, get a running buddy, and incentivize yourself to complete your workout, but you still have to actually get up and out the door. I found the book helpful, practical, and applicable.

Which books surprised you for the better?

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Review of 2015 Reading Goals

Happy New Year! The start of a new year is always a good time to set some goals, and I'll be sharing my 2016 bookish goals very soon. But first, it's important to look back at last year's goals and see how things went!

Below are the goals I set for 2015, and how I did with them.

1. Read some fun books I've put off
I read all of the fun books I'd planned on reading (Hyperbole and a Half, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Anna and the French Kiss, and Yes Please), as well as some other fun reads, like The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, The Rosie Project, and The Mysterious Benedict Society. Not all of them were as enjoyable as I'd hoped, but none of them were awful, and it was a nice change of pace from the heavier stuff I tend to read.

2. Read at least 100 books again
I wasn't sure when I made my goals in late 2014 whether I'd become a parent in 2015, and how that would affect my reading. As it turned out, we got the adoption call just a few days into the new year, and I exceeded my count from 2014, reading 129 books total in 2015. This was partly due to listening to many classic children's book on audio while feeding my son; now that he's more independent, we'll see whether I can keep up the same pace in 2016!

3. Rate and review every book I read
I accomplished this, except for intentionally choosing not to rate religious texts (#7). I also wrote a brief review/explanation for books I abandoned, though I didn't rate them either.

4. Read books recommended by people I know
I got through a ton of recommended books! Anna and the French Kiss, Boxers and Saints, Me Before You, Gilead, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, The Crossover, The Princess Bride, The Girl with All the Gifts, Brain on Fire, The Other Wes Moore, Invisible Cities, and The Unthinkable were all reads based on recommendations! And that's not counting recommendations from people like John Green and Anne Bogel, who both recommended several of the books I read this year.

5. Finally finish the "classics" list I've been working on since high school
Complete! It took me 15 years, but I read all 88 classic books featured on my middle school English teacher's classroom border. The last four I finished this year were The Canterbury Tales, Little House on the Prairie, The Miracle Worker, and Flowers for Algernon.

6. Read more classic children's literature I've overlooked
Thanks to the plethora of audiobook options available on OverDrive from our library, my son and I listened to a ton of classic children's books I'd never read before, including The Cricket in Times Square, Ballet Shoes, All-of-a-Kind Family, A Little Princess, Heidi, Because of Winn-Dixie, Mary Poppins, George's Marvelous Medicine, The Tale of Despereaux, Betsy-Tacy, Caddie Woodlawn, and Stuart Little, as well as some newer books, like How to Train Your Dragon, Fortunately, the Milk, and A Snicker of Magic.

7. Read some other religious texts
This is one goal where I failed pretty badly. I only got through the very short Tao Te Ching in 2015. I started The Qur'an and am halfway through now. Still on my to-read list are the Book of Mormon, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita.

8. Read some graphic novels
I no longer have to say that I've never read a graphic novel! This year I read Boxers, Saints, Persepolis, Maus, and Blankets. Watchmen is still on my to-read list.

9. Reread at least one book a month
I am so averse to rereading that I couldn't quite get myself to do this, but I did use baby-feeding time to listen to some audiobooks of children's books I read in school a long time ago and remembered very little of. These were Summer of My German Soldier, Pippi Longstocking, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, Sarah, Plain and Tall, Mr. Popper's Penguins, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and Number the Stars. I also reread The Glass Castle for book club. With nine books total, I didn't quite make my goal of one per month, but that was more rereading than I'd done in a long while!

10. Continue diversifying my reads
This was a pretty vague goal, but I did manage not to read only books by white Americans in 2015. (After avoiding them in 2014, I was afraid that's all I would read in 2015.) It certainly helped that one of my book clubs did a "year of reading around the world," with a book from a different country every month, so that's why I read The Garlic Ballads, The Book of Chameleons, Nervous Conditions, The Good Muslim, Death in the Andes, and On heroes, lizards and passion. Some books from other countries I read on my own were Persepolis (and Persepolis 2), Madame Bovary, A Small Place, The Death of Ivan Ilych, Annie John, and Invisible Cities. I also read a number of books by and about black Americans, including Sula, Between the World and Me, The Other Wes Moore, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Twelve Years a Slave, Brown Girl Dreaming, and The Crossover. Certainly, though, the majority of the books I read were by white Americans, and I'm hoping to swing the pendulum back in 2016.

All in all, I think I did pretty well! My goals did what they were intended to do, which was challenge me and push me a little outside my comfort zone. I look forward to sharing my 2016 goals!

Did you accomplish your book-related goals this past year?

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Six Reasons I Read Classics (Even When They're Boring)

On Tuesday I shared some of the classic books I should have read by now. This started me thinking about the reasons I make it a priority to read so-called classic literature, particularly when 1) many of these books are quite boring by today's standards and 2) the canon of traditional classics is heavily slanted toward white males. Why not spend my time only on books that are enjoyable to read?

Here are some of the reasons I came up with for why I read classic books:

1) I understand more references in other media. Books that have traditionally been read by many people over many decades are used as reference points in other stories. TV shows, movies, songs, and other books allude to these well-known stories in order to explain something, develop symbolism, or build their own plots as riffs on traditional stories. I feel like I had a deeper appreciation for The Art of Fielding because of having read Moby-Dick, and while The Lizzie Bennet Diaries can certain stand on its own, it was fun to see the clever ways the creators worked in aspects of the original Pride and Prejudice.

2) I get to be in on jokes/humor that reference classics. This is similar to No. 1, but deserves its own point, because so much humor is dependent on catching references to one thing or another. I remember watching the Jane Eyre skit on Saturday Night Live with Mike and finding it WAY funnier than he did because I had read Jane Eyre. In order to fully appreciate a good parody, you have to be familiar with the source material.

3) I can discuss them with others. We've established that I love discussing books with other people. Outside of book club and school, though, where we're all assigned to read the same book, there are two main categories of books that two random individuals are likely to have both read: contemporary bestsellers and classics. And while contemporary bestsellers may come up in a conversation about books, people are more likely to relate classics to a wide variety of situations. This means not only can I catch and appreciate these references (see No. 1 again), but I can also expand on and enrich the discussion because of having read the books myself.

4) I gain historical perspective without having to read histories. I do like reading histories when they're well done, and certainly novels aren't always going to provide an accurate or all-encompassing view of a place and time period, but there's something to be said for getting inside an individual's head as they experience the day-to-day reality of that time and place. Having a mental story about a specific person and what happens to them can help make that period of history more vivid; for example, the story of Oliver Twist is more interesting and memorable than a list of facts about the Industrial Revolution.

5) I get to have a richer reading experience. I love a good plot-driven book, but I also like a book that offers new insights and meanings each time you read it, and many books are classics for just this reason. More than a decade after finishing high school, I still visit SparkNotes to see what I might have missed while reading a classic book. Sometimes this helps me understand or like a book more, and sometimes it doesn't, but it has helped me learn to better recognize themes and symbolism in my reading in general. This means I can have a greater appreciation for a contemporary work like Speak that makes beautiful use of these literary tools.

6) Some stories are simply fantastic. Books are classics for a reason. Sometimes that reason is that they were the first book ever to use a particular writing style or they have a truly unique premise or they're rich with symbolism that scholars can spend decades analyzing, but this doesn't mean the book is actually enjoyable to read. Many, however, are classics because they're truly engaging and memorable. There are plenty of books I've picked up simply because they're "classics" and ended up greatly enjoying them. Yesterday I finished Flowers for Algernon, which I was reading primarily because it's one of the few books left on my list of classics to read, but I ended up loving it. If you're willing to read a book that has more long, detailed descriptions and less snappy dialogue than most contemporary reads, you may find yourself rewarded by a really excellent story.

I'm sure there are many more good reasons to read classic books. Do you make an effort to read classics, and if so, why?

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Top Ten Classic Books I Can't Believe I Haven't Read

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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