Today’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is “Books I Want to Read Again.”
Inspired by my mother’s reading both War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust at the same time last month, here’s my list of classics I would like to reread, someday. (Maybe if I’m retired the next time there’s another major shutdown of outside activities.) I used Penguin’s list of 100 Must-Read Classic Books; Book Riot’s list of 100 Must-Read Classics by Women; and a list of The 40 Best Books to Read during Lockdown from The Independent to jog my memory.
My list is heavy on long novels with compelling stories that you can live in for a while. That’s the kind of reading I liked best when I was young, and still do. (This list doesn’t include any classics that I plan to read eventually but haven’t already read when I was younger or haven’t already reread as an older adult.)
I wish I could go back in time and include more diversity in my reading when I was younger. A good topic for a different list…”Top Ten Classics I Should Be Rereading But Am Only Reading Now for the First Time.”
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
2. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
4. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
5. Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
6. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
7. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
8. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
9. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
10. Watership Down by Richard Adams
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Today’s Top Ten Tuesday Link-Up hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
I sure liked One Hundred Years of Solitude.
My post.
I love sinking into absorbing long novels as well, but only if they’re done well. Too often classics are so bogged down in unnecessary detail that I get really bored with them. I did just re-read a modern classic – A SEPARATE PEACE by John Knowles. It’s short but absorbing, which suited me just fine! Good luck with your re-reading. Also, your mom’s crazy – reading those two books at the same time must have been quite the ordeal. I can’t imagine.
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
Interesting titles. I just had to return Quartet in Autumn without getting to it I couldn’t renew it! In S.E. Ohio Barbara Pym isn’t that big of a force so I wonder what list it was on? I LOVED the Once and Future King and I’m not big on that type book. Good job–now I’m off to go over the lists you linked to.
I’m impressed you would reread a classic. I have a hard enough go with them the first time around. I’m much more into contemporaries. It’s very impressive!
I like how you worded that- books you can “live in for a while.” I’ve always liked stories like that also. I haven’t read any of these sadly…
What a great list! And a reminder that, for as many classics as I think I’ve read, there’s always a group of them hanging just around the corner.
phew! i’ve read the last three. i was beginning to think i would have read none of your top ten – but all is well:-)