New Year's Resolution - Reading the Classics
It's hard for me to believe we're almost a third of the way through the year. Despite the endless cold that almost makes one day indistinguishable from the next, the calendar has continued to turn and here we are already into the second quarter at work for 2018.
Taking stock of how well I've stuck to my resolutions, I would say I'm doing a pretty good job! The recipes have been a ton of fun; I've been much more mindful in my tone of voice and speaking with kindness to my children and husband; and my first endurance event of the year is just a couple of weeks away when I'll run the Illinois marathon!
Most recently, I hit the 20% mark of my goal to read ten classic novels that somehow escaped my high school curriculum. While I had intended to read The Great Gatsby as my first endeavor, it was weirdly hard to get my hands on a copy at the library. Instead, I turned to a book on my shelf, choosing A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens as the first step to become a "real" English major.
With each of these books, it was immediately obvious why they are classics. I found each of them to be a bit slow going at first, but when the story finally turned the corner, they captured me and swept me along. I think Dickens' prose is a bit hard to read, with the Victorian sensibility and phrasing, but one I got far enough along that it became even a little bit familiar, it flowed more easily for me from there.
And the characters! So richly drawn across protagonists and antagonists, with what I found to be a surprising and delightful turn at the end with Darnay, who I think is clearly the hero of the story.
Gatsby, on the other hand, had a thoroughly 19th-century-modern voice and Fitzgerald's lyrical style sucked me into the Jazz Age. I couldn't quite figure things out in the opening chapters, but as the story unfolded I fell in line with so many of the commentaries I read in not particularly liking most of the characters. That's sometimes what makes a story great though, right? If I always want to like the characters, I suppose I should go back to reading nothing but romance novels. Ha.
I'm so glad I picked each of these books up. Gatsby is timeless in the flaws of its characters, as Two Cities is in its hope for innate goodness in humankind. So which classic should be next? My Goodreads list has plenty of options. It may come down to availability at the library, but I'm leaning toward All Quiet on the Western Front. I've been including other books between classics but as I do the math, if I'm going to get ten of these read, I probably need to step it up.
I'm still looking for suggestions, too, so if there's a classic that has stayed with you over the years as favorite, let me know what it is and I'll add it to the list if it's one I have never read!
Taking stock of how well I've stuck to my resolutions, I would say I'm doing a pretty good job! The recipes have been a ton of fun; I've been much more mindful in my tone of voice and speaking with kindness to my children and husband; and my first endurance event of the year is just a couple of weeks away when I'll run the Illinois marathon!
Most recently, I hit the 20% mark of my goal to read ten classic novels that somehow escaped my high school curriculum. While I had intended to read The Great Gatsby as my first endeavor, it was weirdly hard to get my hands on a copy at the library. Instead, I turned to a book on my shelf, choosing A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens as the first step to become a "real" English major.
With each of these books, it was immediately obvious why they are classics. I found each of them to be a bit slow going at first, but when the story finally turned the corner, they captured me and swept me along. I think Dickens' prose is a bit hard to read, with the Victorian sensibility and phrasing, but one I got far enough along that it became even a little bit familiar, it flowed more easily for me from there.
And the characters! So richly drawn across protagonists and antagonists, with what I found to be a surprising and delightful turn at the end with Darnay, who I think is clearly the hero of the story.
Gatsby, on the other hand, had a thoroughly 19th-century-modern voice and Fitzgerald's lyrical style sucked me into the Jazz Age. I couldn't quite figure things out in the opening chapters, but as the story unfolded I fell in line with so many of the commentaries I read in not particularly liking most of the characters. That's sometimes what makes a story great though, right? If I always want to like the characters, I suppose I should go back to reading nothing but romance novels. Ha.
I'm so glad I picked each of these books up. Gatsby is timeless in the flaws of its characters, as Two Cities is in its hope for innate goodness in humankind. So which classic should be next? My Goodreads list has plenty of options. It may come down to availability at the library, but I'm leaning toward All Quiet on the Western Front. I've been including other books between classics but as I do the math, if I'm going to get ten of these read, I probably need to step it up.
I'm still looking for suggestions, too, so if there's a classic that has stayed with you over the years as favorite, let me know what it is and I'll add it to the list if it's one I have never read!
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