Now that I'm almost done with Vanity Fair, what should I read next?
It's a tricky question because my orals lists aren't set in stone yet, so I don't want to read something that will eventually fall off the list (although once I read it I guess it will stay on the list.) And although I will probably have to re-read a lot of the books on the list, I think it's smartest to start with the books I've never read before.
The candidates are:
5) Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1849-50)*
6) Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852-3)*
7) Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853)*
9) Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (1859)*
17) Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (1875)*
21) Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)*
23) Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895)*
25) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)*
28) Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918)*
33) Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)*
There are also some long poems that might be fun to tackle, including The Angel in the House and Tennyson's The Princess. But I feel pretty novel-y right now. I'm thinking I might as well keep going chronologically, and try out some Dickens: Copperfield or Bleak House. What do you think? What do you want to read long, boring blog posts about?
I need to decide super-soon! So let me know.
I read Bleak House so it would be fun to see what you think about it!! The Woman in White is SO FUN it will take you 2 hours to read it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice! I was thinking I would read Bleak House, which I've already read like a quarter of (but my edition was too fragile and I couldn't take it on the subway so it lost out to some other more portable book I was reading at the time) but then I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't follow VF with a book whose plot I already know. Miniseries! They are the best and the worst. Maybe I should do Woman in White as a palate-cleanser, b/c the plot was only SLIGHTLY SPOILED for me when I was reading Lady Audley, and then follow it up with Bleak House. Or David Copperfield, because all I know is that he is Daniel Radcliffe for a while and Mrs Micawber would never desert Mrs Micawber. And Barkis is willing.
ReplyDeleteI think the woman in white as well because of its so-fun qualities. Also because of -SPOILERS-
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