The Classics We're Reading in 2019

Guess I'll get this thread started for the new year.

I'm starting this year, as I've done every year for quite some time, with a Joseph Conrad novel. I've been reading them all in this way in chronological order by their publishing date. Most of them for me have been re-reads, but, being very far along in this practice, I'm now up to The Arrow of Gold, one of Conrad's last novels, and the only one I've yet to read. So hurray for me; a new Conrad!

The Arrow of Gold is not considered one of Conrad's "classic" novels. I think for the most part it's very rarely read nowadays. But, anyway, Conrad is certainly a classic author, so I'm mentioning it here.

Happy reading in 2019, one and all!

>1 rocketjk: I've never heard of that one, although I've read many of Conrad's novels. How does it compare to his other novels?

I find myself wonder now just what is considered a classic? Is there a specific age required (and thus, new ones on the list) or is it more something of a book with the right sort of charm? Do we bring in the literary canon? Has it changed much in the 10 years since I last looked at it?

I can't really say what classics I plan to read this year as I'm not all that sure what qualifies.

>2 madpoet: I can say how it compares, yet, as I'm only on about page 15. However, it is not considered one of this greatest work. More a "past his prime, but still very good" sort of work.

>3 WeeTurtle: The question of what is or isn't a classic has been discussed quite frequently, of course, even in this group. At any rate, no need to say what you plan to read. Just let us know anytime you decide to tackle anything that you consider a classic. Always good to get different perspectives.

>3 WeeTurtle: I think we debated that before, in this group, without a clear consensus.

I would define a classic as a book which has withstood the test of time. It is still read and/or studied decades or centuries after it was published. Also, it should be a book which has influenced society in some way, or at least other literature. Finally, it should be a novel, poem, play, etc. which is great literature in its own right.

>5 madpoet: Heh. I have some points I could say about that criteria, but then, that's another debate!

I've recently taken to checking out the so called "Modern Classics" from time to time. In that pile, I've encountered LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, and Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. I can't speak for Darkness, but as to De Profundis, if you've ever encountered an Oscar Wilde quote, it probably came from there. It was sort of odd that way when reading it, like watching Casablanca for the first time yet the whole thing feeling like a repeat. Mountains of Madness is also pretty damn cool provided one can wrap their head around an elder thing. (Fingers cross del Toro get's his production wish.)

I've got my to-read for this year wrapped up on my shelf, but hidden in the pile I know are Pride & Prejudice (entirely for comparison to the 6 hour A&E miniseries), Brothers Karamazov (not sure if that counts but I've only read one complicated Russian novel. Time for another) but right now I'm into Sword of Destiny because video games. ;)

Just checking back in to say that I've complete The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad. Conrad is a huge literary hero of mine, but, sad to say, this book is probably the least satisfying of his novels for me. Or, to put it another way, it is the only unsatisfying novel of his for me. Anyway, Conrad lovers will enjoy hearing his voice again, but I found the story lackluster all in all. Definitely not a place to start if one is just discovering Conrad.

>7 rocketjk: I made the mistake of picking up The Arrow of Gold soon after The secret agent and felt miserably disappointed. It almost put me off him as an author.

>8 MissWatson: The late books are not up to the level of his early or his peak periods, especially the five or six peak period books. Although I've read and enjoyed The Rover, which comes even after The Arrow of Gold. I'm glad you said almost put you off him, though. The Secret Agent is a gem, one of my favorites.

I'm now reading A.J. Arberry's translation of Scheherezade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. My copy is a beautiful Mentor Books paperback, in fact a first edition, published in 1955.

>9 rocketjk: Thanks, I'll keep this in mind.

I don't know if E. F. Benson's wry British "Mapp and Lucia" novels from the 1920s can be rightly considered classics, though I know that they have garnered a cult following over the years. At any rate, I just read and very much enjoyed the second book in the series, Miss Mapp.

Just reread Shaw's Pygmalion. Such a compelling tale and so much of the humor still rings true today.

>12 sparemethecensor: Took me a bit before I realized that Pygmalion and My Fair Lady were the same story. I don't believe that I read Pygmalion fully, but the introduction I still remember: an exchange between two people (at a newstand I think?) that was so droning and onerous to read that it illustrated well the argument about the deterioration of language and discussion.

I did read Major Barbara which was quite entertaining actually, and brings up some fair few points about social morals.

>11 rocketjk: I reread the entire Mapp and Lucia series last year - such fun!

>12 sparemethecensor: & >13 WeeTurtle: I have been slowly reading through Shaw's plays over the past few years. While I have found that many of them didn't hold up well to the test of time, his best (such as Pygmalion and Major Barbara) still shine. Another good one is The Devil's Disciple…

I started the year by rereading a couple of favorite classics via audiobook: The Scarlet Pimpernel and Dombey and Son.

I am currently reading Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End series. I have finished the first 2 books and am almost done with the third.

>13 WeeTurtle: I thought the message of Major Barbara was a bit odd. Wasn't Shaw a pacifist? And yet the model town in the play depends on a munitions factory.

I'm reading Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev So far, so good.

>16 madpoet: I think he was being critical of the work she was doing, and how she was refusing to take support from munitions dealers and brewers. His point was that the Sally Ann was basically bribing the poor for support or to believe in the word of god by giving them food and work, and that they are only sharing the message because they are being fed. Meanwhile, his employees are well fed and have work and stability and therefore can accept the good teaching of god and the church because they don't need to be bribed into it.

I think it's more a moral thing. Barbara won't accept her father's money because he's a munitions dealer, and resolves to give back a recent large donation once she learned the person who donated is a Whiskey brewer, on the basis of moral grounds. Meanwhile, the people at the Sally Ann don't show themselves as very stellar people, and the question is brought up that, how moral can these people really be if they're only praising god because they are hungry?

It's been a while, but that's most of what I remember. I think there's also a theme of who really has the right to make moral judgments? The Salvation Army needs money, so why refuse it because it's coming from someone you don't like? Barbara's mother is always complain about how the father conducts his business and arguing that he should only sell his weapons to "good" people, those presumably being people of favourable political and national leanings, etc. Is the diligent worker at the factory somehow less moral than the lazy worker at the Sally Ann because of who he works for? I expect the use of a munitions factory was less to do with war and fighting and more to do with it's convenience as a point of moral debate.

>18 WeeTurtle: Or maybe Shaw was making the point that everyone in society is complicit with the military-industrial complex...

>19 madpoet:

Yes, in the usual witty, paradox-loving and deeply sarcastic Shavian way.

>18 WeeTurtle:

If the editions of the plays you've read didn't contain Shaw's introductions, you really should look them up. Or at least read up on him in some other sources. War and warmongering, for example, were never a topic of "convenience" (whatever that even means) to him but a major hostile focus of his activism.

>16 madpoet:

See also Arms and the Man. And I also mean go and see a performance if ever there is an opportunity.

>20 LolaWalser: It was only the one play, and the only course I read him in. I wouldn't have taken the course on my own but it was a required survey course. I don't think we talked much about him, it was only 1st or 2nd year.

For those interested, there is a group read of Maria Edgeworth's Belinda just beginning here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/303254

Edgeworth was admired by Jane Austen, and Belinda is mentioned in Austen's Northanger Abbey. The group is being led by Liz (lyzard), and all are welcome!

>23 kac522: Thanks for the invitation! I peeked at the threat and I know I've got the OUP edition somewhere. I just need to dig it out...

In the meantime, I finished Son Excellence Eugène Rougon by Zola. These Rougon-Macquart people really are not very simpático. As a social study it is fascinating.

I just finished both Evelyn Waugh's Scoop and Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Views the Body - both of them were excellent and really fun to read.

I finished All for Nothing by German author Walter Kempowski. This was the final novel by Kempowski. It tells in muted terms of the horrific last days of World War 2 in East Prussia, as hundreds of thousands of terrified Germans take to the road, fleeing the advancing Russians whose artillery they can already hear. Not as well known in America, I guess, it seems that Kemposwki is considered a classic writer in his native country. He himself, as a teenager, lived through the events this books tells of, only to be imprisoned by the Russians as a spy, serving eight years. Originally published in 2006, a new English publication came out in 2018 as part of the New York Review of Books' Classics series.

I've been reading The Big Four: A Hercule Poirot Mystery and Little men

I finished Fathers and Sons. It's kind of melancholy, and really made me want to call my parents.

Continuing my Russian novel reading with Dead Souls.

Hmm... almost every Russian novel I've read starts the same way: with someone arriving in a small provincial Russian town.

>29 madpoet: I think Fathers and Sons is my favorite Turgenev.

Interested in Anthony Trollope? A Group Read of one of Trollope's earliest novels, The Kellys and the O'Kellys is starting here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/304402#

Just finished Violette. I did not enjoy it as much as Jane Eyre.

>32 nx74defiant: Do you mean Villette? :-)

Yes, I agree: none of Charlotte Bronte's other novels measure up to Jane. Have you read The Professor? Oh, I guess you have: you've read Villette, which is almost exactly the same story!

It took me years to finish Thucydides Lots of false starts. Now, I'm committed to finishing The Republic

I feel like I should reread Notre Dame de Paris, in light of recent events.

>35 madpoet:, someone in a challenge group I'm in happened to have it in her list, she's definitely lining it up next. ;)

Trying to read Tom Jones ... or type the name, or even just think the name ... without humming "It's Not Unusual". It's hard.

Also on the side, reading Haggard's She. If this book really sold 83 million copies, my question is, where did they all go?

I keep forgetting to post in this group...

I had a bit of an “Eng Lit courses I never took” project in the first few months of this year, with Beowulf (mainly Seamus Heaney but a bit of the original as well), Sir Gawain (original first, then Simon Armitage) and Canterbury Tales (original). All interesting and more fun than I expected, although I didn’t bond very well with Beowulf.

Also in Q1 I had a go at Petrarch in Mark Musa’s parallel text version.

Getting away from the Middle Ages, I’ve also recently read
- Arthur Hugh Clough’s Amours de voyage, which weirdly turns out to be an epistolary novel in verse, about the Roman revolution of 1849.
- E.T.A. Hoffmann’s gothic novel Die Elixiere des Teufels
- Balzac’s Le colonel Chabert
- and, just yesterday, No.8 in my Zolathon, Une page d’amour

>37 Cecrow: I thought I had one of those 83 million copies of She (Charles Aznavour must be a change from Tom Jones for you...), but I must have given it away. Not really a book you need to have on your shelves, except to make sense of Horace Rumpole’s running joke about his wife.

Today, I'm starting The Child of Pleasure by Gabriele D'Annunzio.

According to the book's back cover of my 2006 Mondial edition, The Child of Pleasure (written in 1888 and published in 1889) and its protagonist, Andrea Sperelli introduced the Italian culture of the late 1800s to Aestheticism and a taste for decadence." That's quiet a pedigree!

eta: I've just been reading more about D'Annunzio. Very interesting historical figure in Italian history.

I finished The Child of Pleasure. Published in 1889, The Child of Pleasure is the first novel of Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, who gained fame in Italy and throughout Europe and the U.S. as a novelist, and went on to political fame (or infamy, perhaps) in post-WW I Europe as the founder of a nationalistic movement that inspired Mussolini. At any rate, in the late 19th century, D'Annunzio's topic was the power of beauty and sensuality. His protagonist here, Count Andrea Sperelli, is a young Roman nobleman who lives in and for luxury and for the seduction of beautiful women. The Child of Pleasure is the narrative of Sperelli's adventures in this arena, particularly as it pertains to two extremely beautiful and cultured women. Throughout the tale, D'Annunzio's eye lingers lovingly on the beauties of the natural countryside, Roman architecture, and the items of antiquity that Sperelli and his friends dote upon. Tellingly, these items are all at least 100 years old. There's little of contemporary (to the characters) vintage held up for admiration.

These descriptions of nature and art were interesting to read, but there was little of Count Sperelli's projects or problems that held any fascination for me. This is one of those books I read more out of an intellectual curiosity about the book's place in the history of literature than from a desire to know, or expectation to enjoy, the story. D'Annunzio himself throughout the tale speaks of Sperelli's gradual and eventually complete abdication of moral purpose or conscience, so at least we're not meant to admire the character, even if we are somehow to empathize with his delight in the purely physical/sensual world. Few modern readers will do so, I think.

Oops - Villette not Violette.

Not sure there is much point in reading The Professor

I've read Tarzan and the Golden Lion, People time forgot and Out of Time's Abyss.

Out of Time's Abyss was not familiar to me since it was the only one of the three Caspak trilogy books not made into a movie.

I just finished Shakespeare's Sonnets. I decided to read 5/day, so I could take the time to appreciate them. It took about a month to read all of them. Frankly, aside from the few that I was already familiar with (the better poems), they were disappointing. I suppose no one, not even the great William Shakespeare (or whoever wrote in his name) could write 154 masterpieces.

I finished Mr Standfast, the entertaining third entry in John Buchan's classic "Richard Hannay" espionage series, written during and just after World War One. Buchan wrote the first two books while the war was still ongoing, so, obviously, he didn't know how things were going to turn out. Mr Standfast was written after the war's conclusion. But the war is still going fiercely in the novel, and Hannay is pulled from his command in the trenches to go after a master German spy who has set up a network through which vital British war information is being passed through to Germany. Hannay goes on a difficult chase, indeed, across Scotland, France and Switzerland. The "daring do" of this story has much more to do with endurance than with violence. There is a lot of fine natural description, as well. So the book is fun, although a modern reader must work around Buchan's persistent antisemitism and racism.

I finished The Masters, the fifth book in C.P. Snow's "Strangers and Brothers" series, which I think can be considered a classic, or at least classic-ish. I'd enjoyed the first four books of the series, though I was not expecting to find this one particularly compelling. The book is about the politics and personalities involved in the election of a new Master for an unnamed college within Cambridge University in the 1930s. Doesn't seem like an electrifying premise in this day and age. However, in Snow's hands, the individuals involved come alive, and I found the book to be much more enjoyable than I expected it to be. Although you might miss a reference or two, I think you could read this novel as a standalone. My more in-depth comments are here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/309495.

I recently read Thomas Love Peacock's Crotchet Castle. I enjoy Peacock's satire but this one isn't as good as Nightmare Abbey.

>46 leslie.98: Yes, Nightmare Abbey was pretty good.

I'm reading Adam Bede now. It's part of my project to read "four by four": four classics each by George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and D.H Lawrence. The only thing these four authors have in common is that I've only read one of their novels (well, 2 for Hardy) and I feel I should read more.

>47 madpoet: I read Adam Bede years ago and enjoyed it very much.

I tried numerous times to read Moby Dick without being able to get beyond a couple of chapters. So I recently gave it away. but I found another of Melville's books The Confidence Man in a Norton Critical Edition so, footnotes. I'm enjoying it more & may pick up the whale tale in a similar way.

>49 thurible: There's a fabulous edition of Moby Dick with 1930 illustrations by Rockwell Kent. I had tried to read it a couple of times, but for some reason the illustrations in each chapter of this edition helped me to finally finish the book.

Lost this one again, time for another catch-up post. Since the beginning of May:
- Theodor Fontane’s Irrungen Wirrungen - much more fun than Effi Briest, a charming little dialogue-based Berlin novel
- Quentin Durward - Scott goes to France (but he takes a few Scotchmen with him)
- Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde - Bettina von Arnim, fantasy poet-stalker
- Modeste Mignon - unusually sunny Balzac set in Le Havre
- Nana and Pot-bouille - the Zolathon continues with two very strong novels
- Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes - Balzac at his best

>47 madpoet: The only thing these four authors have in common...

There’s a statement that’s asking to be challenged! :-)
You might almost be right - it would be fun to come up with something unlikely - that they all worked in the surgical appliance industry, or lived in Cornwall at one time, for instance - but I don't think any of those are true. Apart from the trivial things like all writing in English and claiming to be men, and having at least slightly controversial personal lives (controversial only because biographers have to fill their pages up somehow, in James's case), it’s difficult to think of anything positive. Widely different social backgrounds and writing styles, there’s no year when they were all alive. Maybe there’s a negative connection in that they all wrote books with a non-metropolitan slant?

>51 thorold: Having recently encountered Bettina von Arnim in Goethe: Life as a Work of Art, I loved the description of her as a "fantasy poet-stalker"—that's just about how she appears in that book. But she really does seem to have known everybody who was anybody in the Germany of the time. Is there a decent biography of her in English, I wonder?

>53 haydninvienna: I’m on the lookout for a biography: she’s clearly someone who enjoyed reinventing herself, and a lot of what you see on the web either takes her at her word or doesn’t believe a thing she said, so a recent, properly researched study would be useful...

There seem to be three or four German biographies published in the last 50 years or so, which I’m planning to look into when I get time(!) but it doesn’t look as though any have been translated. There’s a summary of her life in English with a short bibliography here: http://von-arnim.net/files/portr_bettina_engl.pdf

Might be worth having a look through some “women of the romantic era” or “women composers” books, perhaps.

In the last few months I’ve come across her in several works of fiction: Robert Löhr’s very funny Das Erlkönig-manöver, Balzac’s Modeste Mignon, and Grass’s Grimms Wörter. She did certainly get around!

>52 thorold: 'All claimed to be men' :-) Well, of course 'George Eliot' was actually Mary Ann Evans... but I think the other three were actually men... if I'm mistaken, and Thomas Hardy was in fact a pen name of Virginia Woolf, that would be so awesome...

>55 madpoet: I was thinking more along the lines of DHL as Katherine Mansfield in a false beard ... :-)

I just finished Is Heathcliff a Murderer: Puzzles in 19th Century Fiction by John Sutherland. These are a collection of short entertaining essays on various classics, pointing out possible errors, inconsistencies or other vague plot points in many classics.

Besides the title essay, others include:
--"How does Victor make his monsters?" (Frankenstein)
--"Rochester's celestial telegram" (Jane Eyre)
--"What is Jo Sweeping?" (Bleak House)
--"What does Edward Hyde Look Like?" (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)

and many more.

My favorite was "Is Will Ladislaw Legitimate?" (Middlemarch), in which Sutherland provides two genealogy charts of all the residents of Middlemarch and how just about everyone in the book is related to Mr. Bulstrode, either by blood or marriage. I certainly could have used these charts when reading the book, so gives me incentive for (another) re-read.

Lots of fun. I skipped the essays for books I haven't read yet, but am keeping my copy if I ever get to them. Sutherland has several other titles that explore even more works, including Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?, Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?, and Where Was Rebecca Shot?.

I just finished The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. I found it disappointing (though I could see why Jane Austen satirized it in Northanger Abbey!). The Castle of Otranto was much better even though it too is extremely melodramatic.

>57 kac522:, I'm reading Bleak House right now and haven't noticed anything wrong with Jo's sweeping so far. Thick mud accumulates in these 1850s London streets, and he employs himself by creating paths through it for pedestrians.

>59 Cecrow: And all that horse poop needed to be swept away before 'quality' tried to cross the street!

>59 Cecrow:, >60 leslie.98: I don't think he was pointing out anything wrong; he explains just exactly _what_ Jo is sweeping, for those who may be unclear about 19th century sanitation. Dickens calls it "mud" in the very first paragraph of the novel, but Sutherland makes it clear exactly what this "mud" in the streets was made of (loose soil, soot, ashes, litter, but--as >60 leslie.98: rightly identifies--mostly manure: horse, dog, cattle and even some human waste after a heavy rainfall and the open sewers overflowed), and why sweepers (like Jo) were needed. He also details the sad and dangerous life of these child-sweepers, how they had to organize into "gangs" to protect themselves, etc.

He goes on to explain the "dust" heaps (from Our Mutual Friend) and how the components of these heaps were somewhat different from "mud" and how they came to be called "dust." Fascinating reminders of the realities of Victorian life.

I just finished Adam Bede. I'm considering Middlemarch, but I might try a shorter work in the interval.

>61 kac522: Strange to imagine a world where garbage collection was done for profit, as it was in the Victorian Era. But it wouldn't seem so strange to people in the developing world, where it is still that way.

>62 madpoet: Your reading of Adam Bede brings back memories. I read that book while traveling alone in Costa Rica about 25 years ago. I remember being surprised by how much I enjoyed that book.

I am reading The Brother of Daphne which though a classic due to its age (first published in 1914) is really stories featuring airy persiflage of the type that Bertie Wooster always attempts but never quite achieves (since he needs Jeeves to tell him the appropriate quote or reference).

I just finished The Golden Ass, a very, very, very early bawdy, picaresque novel indeed.

I have finished a 1937 adventure/suspense story of the type that John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps) and Anthony Hope (The Prisoner Of Zenda) made famous - She Painted Her Face by Dornford Yates. I thought it was great but it will not appeal to those who like character-driven books; this one is all melodramatic plot!

Now I am starting Kafka's The Castle.

>66 leslie.98: I love John Buchan! I started reading The Castle a few months ago, but didn't get into it. It's a bit dreary.

Speaking of dreary, I just finished another Thomas Hardy novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. It was lighter than his other novels that I've read, and had some real humour in it, which I was not expecting from Hardy.

I am struggling a bit with The Castle - absurdist fiction is always a challenge! If you love Buchan, I strongly recommend that you try Yates if you haven't. I haven't started his Richard Chandros series yet but my mom loved it and she was also the one who told me to read Buchan.

>67 madpoet:, never cared for Hardy, but for a reading challenge I have Jude the Obscure on my TBR shelf. Definitely not expecting a barrel of laughs from that one.

>69 Cecrow: “Read because we are too menny”?

>68 leslie.98: I'll try that. One of the lesser-known works by Buchan that I really enjoyed was John Macnab, about a bored middle class man who decides to warn 3 landowners in Scotland that he is going to poach on their land, calling himself 'John Macnab' and challenging them to catch him.

>71 madpoet: Ah, one of my mom's favorites!

I just finished couple of light-weight classics - the 1920 Berry & Co. by Dornford Yates, a collection of humorous short stories (somewhat similar to those by Saki but not as funny) & the 1929 The Murder on the Enriqueta by Molly Thynne, an above average Golden Age mystery.

Finished the lightweight-but-somewhat-bewildering Vathek, by Beckford.

Slowly wending my way through Waverley in an OUP edition with two sets of notes (Scott's and the editor's). The glossary is consulted very often. I don't think I've ever read a book with three bookmarks for finding the references. But it is very entertaining. I had expected it to be much drier.

>75 MissWatson:, I've been circling around it. So it's entertaining and not dry ... but you need three references and three bookmarks?

>75 MissWatson: Waverley is on my TBR as well. I had heard that in Georgian England it was considered a book suitable to read aloud to children so I had assumed it would be fairly easy to understand - but it doesn't sound like it from your comment (or is it just that the language is old-fashioned?).

>75 MissWatson: I also have been looking at Waverley on my shelf for too long...glad to here it's entertaining. Gives me incentive.

I've started reading Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot; November 2019 is the 200th anniversary of Eliot's birth (b. 22 Nov 1819), so wanted to get in at least one work by her that I haven't read. It is a group of 3 novellas, and the first one is good so far.

>75 MissWatson:, >76 Cecrow:, >77 leslie.98: I just looked at my Penguin edition, and it has lots of additional material, including 1) Scott's notes 2) the editor's notes AND 3) a glossary of Scottish vernacular words/phrases.

I haven't read Waverley, but I have read Ivanhoe and Rob Roy by the same author, and found them easy to read, light entertainment. I did notice that Waverley is a bit thicker, but I'm surprised to hear it is that difficult.

>79 kac522: I'm reading Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. I didn't know it was her 200th anniversary. She holds up well for an old dame!

>81 madpoet: She holds up well for an old dame! Indeed...

>76 Cecrow: >77 leslie.98: >78 kac522: >80 kac522: >81 madpoet: Thanks for all the comments!

The language isn't difficult at all, but both the Laird of Bradwardine and the MacIvors have lived in France and are wont to speak in French, and Bradwardine is a classical scholar citing Latin poets at the drop of a hat, so the notes contain lots of translations. As for reading the book aloud to children: I suppose in upper class families in the Georgian period these languages would have been taught and thus understandable to the children? An incentive to make them do their homework?

Scott's notes give lots of details about where he heard bits of a story or about minor affairs of Scottish history. And the OUP editor also explains the politics of the times, the real-life people who are thought to have inspired the characters, etc. I have just reached the mansion of Fergus MacIvor, and the glossary of Scots words is proving invaluable.

ETA: No doubt you can just read this without flipping to the back, but I like to know such things, so I religiously look them up.

>83 MissWatson: Oh yes, I hate it when an author adds a paragraph of Latin (or sometimes Greek!) untranslated and expects all of the readers to understand it.

>84 madpoet: There was a time when authors were writing for an audience they knew to have studied these languages for years at school, but that is long gone. And it is elitist and off-putting.

ETC

>83 MissWatson: - >85 MissWatson:

In all fairness, when Scott wrote Waverley it was something of an experiment, he didn't know for sure what the audience for that kind of novel would be, but obviously only educated (i.e. middle- and upper-class) people had the money to buy novels and the leisure and artificial light to read them. And every middle-class British child was taught French and at least some Latin. (Greek is a different matter, that was normally only taught to boys.) Scott's later novels, when he was more experienced and writing mostly to pay off his debts, focus much more on the adventure story and less on pedantic wordplay.

It's also worth remembering that when public education, cheaper books, gaslight and lending libraries started to cut in towards the end of the century, Scott became enormously popular with the new working-class readers (too late for him to benefit from it personally, though). I think people just enjoyed the adventures and the political and religious orthodoxy, skipped the "hard bits", and felt flattered at being part of something that seemed to belong to high culture. The idea that there was anything elitist and patronising about it doesn't really seem to have developed until around the 1940s.

>86 thorold: That's a good point about being able to afford books, it had crossed my mind.

I have started The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. It's quite different from his Erewhon!

>88 leslie.98:, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

>89 Cecrow: Not sure yet. Erewhon was a fairly short sci fi/fantasy about a Utopian sociey. The Way of All Flesh is longer and more of a traditional Victorian novel. Both are easy to read.

Just reporting that I have finished Waverley and enjoyed it very much, including the helpful notes.

Finished another Zola, La joie de vivre (no.12 in the series). Minor, but has some interesting stuff about medicine (he decisively breaks all the possible taboos about dealing with Ob/gyn matters in a 19th century novel...), rural poverty, coastal defence, etc.
Re-read of Germinal comes next - I'm looking forward to that.

I have finished The Way of All Flesh which, once I got used to the extremely ironic tone of the narrator, I enjoyed quite a bit. Now I am starting Daniel Deronda -- I am not a big fan of George Eliot but this is the last of her major works I haven't read...

I have finished Daniel Deronda and am once again confirmed in my opinion that I am not a fan of George Eliot. Gwendolyn drove me batty with her self-absorption and, while I am sure that the feeling that the Meyricks (and Daniel himself at first) evince about Mirah (that if Mirah would just convert everything would be better & that most Jews are horrid vulgar money-grubbers) is an accurate reflection of the times, it felt incredibly patronizing to me.

>94 leslie.98: Eliot had a complicated history with Judaism. This 2009 article from The Guardian details the good, the bad and the confusing:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/feb/10/zionism-deronda-george-e...

>95 kac522: That's an interesting essay. Thanks!

>96 rocketjk: You're welcome. And for even more, there is an excellent book on the topic: The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot by Gertrude Himmelfarb (2016). It explores Eliot's life and connection to Judaism, and the last third of the book is an analysis of Daniel Deronda from that perspective.

I finished George Eliot's Scenes from Clerical Life, 1857, which are 3 short novellas, her first attempt at writing fiction. These pieces were portraits of village life in the early 19th century. Interesting, but not compelling. Eliot's 200th birthday was in November 2019, and I hope within the next 12 months to finish reading the last 2 of her works that I haven't read: Romola and Felix Holt, the Radical.

I’ve re-read The End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad. It's not, perhaps, a classic itself, but it’s often included with Heart of Darkness in volumes of Conrad’s shorter works. I first read it as a teen in the 1960s and don’t remember taking much interest in it then. This time I did, and that makes sense: Captain Henry “Daredevil” Whalley’s difficulties, motivations, and actions are those of an aging man. He is faced with losses he never expected just as his ability to surmount them is diminishing.

I just finished The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. The ending was the best part, and the childhood scenes, I thought. I've read four novels by her now, but I think Silas Marner is still my favourite.

I finished my re-read of Germinal, the next in my Zolathon, and of course Zola’s best-known book. Every bit as impressive and as scary as I remembered it!

Since it’s nearly Christmas, I also read one of Thackeray’s Christmas Books, The Kickleburys on the Rhine, from 1850. Not quite as well-known as the previous one, the glorious mock-sequel to Ivanhoe Rebecca and Rowena, but still a very entertaining “English abroad” story. And of course with pictures by the author that are nearly as funny as the text.

I didn't realize that Thackeray wrote Christmas stories but of course he did! I'll have to get some for next year.

Last book I've read in 2019: Religio Medici by Thomas Browne. An interesting meditation on religion and metaphysics, ethics, etc. by a mid-17th Century doctor and philosopher.

I have set up the 2020 thread:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/314702