In 2014 I Want To...

... read Tolstoy and Chekhov

O from Behold the Stars is hosting a Russian Literature Challenge. I will participate, but I'm not yet sure how many books I will read or what those books will be. I only know that I want to read Tolstoy and Chekhov. I will definitely read War and Peace next year (famous last words) and I thought I could perhaps try to read all of Tolstoy's major works. The last piece I read by him, years ago, was The Kreutzer Sonata. To say I hated it at the time would be an understatement - I despised it as I rarely despised anything in my life and it colored my view of its author ever since. It's time to read more and make up my mind. So 2014 might be the year I decide if I hate Tolstoy or not. Ah, the suspenseful life I lead.

As for Chekhov, all I know of him through cultural osmosis make him sound like someone whose works I'd enjoy reading. I confess part of it is that I've been a little obsessed with this beautiful passage from Katherine Mansfield's journal for a while now and it made me crave to read Chekhov.

“Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.” 

... read Henry James 

Remember that time when I thought reading the complete works of Henry James will make all of my problems magically go away? I have decided that the only flaw in that plan was my lack of follow-through, so I will be returning to my Know Your James project in 2014. I also plan to read Leon Edel's five-volume biography of HJ. It is the best thing I bought this year and so far I've only read half of the first volume, because I'm awful.

The books ❤❤❤

... read Ursula K. Le Guin 

My general policy in life is to follow book recommendations from Emily. It's a good policy, I'm happy with it. It made me read Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Michal Ajvaz and my first book from Ursula K. Le Guin: The Lathe of Heaven (which I will review at some point in January). And since I liked The Lathe of Heaven quite a lot, my New Year's resolution is naturally to.... 

...or at least as many of them as I can manage in a year. If you have any favorites, feel free to share them in the comments so that I know what to read first. (I don't think I'll be reading her backlist in chronological order. It seems a bit much to be doing that for two authors.)

... tell you all about it 

I haven't been very good at keeping track of my reading on the blog. I read some wonderful books this year that I didn't get around to reviewing: Winesburg, Ohio, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Shirley, All Quiet on the Western Front, Native Son, The Golden Notebook. I will try to review some of these next year and try not to fall so far behind on my reviewing in general. It's not so much the sharing aspect of it that worries me - though I'm sure I missed a lot of great conversations by not discussing these books - as it is the fact that the posts I write are aids to memory (as Francis Bacon would call them) and boy, does my memory need them.

I think this is my last post for this year, so happy 2014! 

In Our Reading Lives

You may have noticed a distinct lack of Claudia and Alexis on the blog last week. That was because Claudia was too deep in the throes of Fretting About Life & Grad School to ramble about her reading and Alexis was busy moving house. While the aftereffects of fretting and moving are still being felt, we are back to blogging this week. Alexis has read The Language of Flowers and will talk about it soon(ish) and Claudia will be back discussing Henry James and whatever else strikes her fancy. If everything goes well, we hope to also launch a small side project this week, so keep your fingers crossed for us. 

But enough about our short-term plans. You might have noticed the pretty picture in our post. It's pretty self-explanatory. We signed up for The Literary Others: An LGBT Reading Event organized by Adam of Roof Beam Reader. We will be reading at least two books for this event (Giovanni's Room and Angels in America), but a lot of the titles on Adam's list appeal to us and we might have to start reading in September to cover more of them. We strongly encourage you to join. If you don't know what to read, there is an excellent list of recommendations on the sign-up post. It includes classics, contemporary fiction, YA, non-fiction, erotica, fantasy. You will definitely find something there to appeal to you. 

Farewell, Victorian Celebration. Welcome, Lazy August

This is the last day of Allie's two-month Victorian Celebration, so it's time for a wrap-up post. First of all, we would like to thank Allie for organizing this event. We had less time to dedicate to it than we would have liked, but, nonetheless, we are very happy to have participated. To tell you the truth, it kept us blogging. We both had a complicated couple of months in real life and, if not for this commitment we'd made to read a handful of Victorians in June and July, we're not sure we would have had the drive or the energy to continue with the blog. So, thanks, Victorians, for not letting us quit.

Now on to the main attraction of the Victorian Celebration: other people's posts. We enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts and added quite a few books to our TBR piles in the process. And, with the caveat that we didn't have a lot of time to check everything (especially on new-to-us blogs), there were a few series that we absolutely loved and want to highlight:

• Fanda's excursions into Victorian London: Fanda set out to explore Victorian London as depicted in Dickens' Sketches by Boz, covering popular pastimes, occupations, transportation etc. We loved this project for its nice historical glimpses - useful & enjoyable even if one isn't that much into Dickens.
• Allie's Author Focus: Allie profiled some of the most important Victorian writers: Dickens, Hardy, Eliot, Collins and the Brontes. Sometimes it's nice to have this sort of broad overview of an author's life and work, and with every post, we felt like we were slowly mapping out the Victorian period.
• O's reading organized by decade: we are not quite sure when o from Délaissé sleeps, but she read something from every decade of the Victorian period for this event, and wrote eloquently about the books she read. She's an inspiration. Also, check out this post for some very interesting thoughts on one of those decades (the 1870s).
• Becky's reviews of the Jane Eyre movies: this is one of the most helpful things the internet has thrown at us lately. Becky watched ten film adaptations of Jane Eyre, reviewed them individually and then compared their strengths and weaknesses. It's a great project and we're very grateful to Becky for her recommendations.

Okay, so that's how awesome people spent their Victorian Celebration. What did we do? Well..., we started with a list, completely ignored it in June, and then tried to catch up by reading & reviewing the following things in July:

• Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson 
• An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
• Daniel Deronda by George Eliot 
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• What Maisie Knew by Henry James
• Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
• The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton 
• How to Marry An English Lord by Gail McColl and Carol Wallace

As you can see, we're still four books short of the original list:

• Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (to be read in August)
  
• Charles Darwin, On the Origins of Species (started but not yet finished)
• A.S. Byatt, Possession (to be read in August in a Goodreads buddy read)
  
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (unappetizing. maybe someday?)

We'll cover these books in the near future (and we're not quite talked out about the already-reviewed titles either). Also, Claudia won Villette in a giveaway organized by Kristi from Kristi Loves Books (thanks, Kristi!) so that will be one of the books discussed in August.

We're not going to lie. This challenge has been much fun and got us through a blogging slump, but we're sort of looking forward to an August of less-scheduled reading too. What about you? What did you read? What posts from the Victorian Celebration did you like? What do you plan to read in August?

Ready for A Victorian Celebration

June is just one day away and that means A Victorian Celebration, the event hosted by Allie from A Literary Odyssey is about to begin. We're very excited to take part because we love the dear old Victorians in all shapes and forms, and a tribute to them is always a good idea in our book.

Our love for the Victorians declared, here's what we'll be reading throughout June and July:

Fiction written in the Victorian period

• George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
• Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
• Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
• Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
• Henry James, What Maisie Knew

Fiction set in the Victorian period

• Edith Wharton, The Buccaneers 
• A.S. Byatt, Possession

Non-fiction

• Giles Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians
• Gail MacColl, To Marry an English Lord
• Charles Darwin, On the Origins of Species

We're really looking forward to reading: The Buccaneers and On the Origins of Species.

We have mixed feelings about reading: Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations. Alexis is reading Wuthering Heights for the first time and she's not sure whether she'll enjoy it. Claudia is mildly allergic to Dickens.

This list is just to give you a taste of the main focus on our blog in the next two months or so. Of course, reading magpies that we are, we might get distracted by other shiny Victorian titles and add them to the list/read them instead. Oh yes, and we'll also be covering some Victorian poetry and Victorian essays in two new series we're planning.

If you haven't signed up yet, you can click on the picture below for the sign-up post on Allie's blog. And now we're off to see what everyone else is reading.

Coming Down with a Bout of Books

You can read more about it here.

Having a relatively free week before all the craziness that is the end of the school year comes down on me, I've decided to join the Bout of Books read-a-thon. This means that starting tomorrow, May 14th, and through Sunday, May 20th, I will try to read more than I usually do. And since lately my usual has been pretty unimpressive, it won't take me much to go past it. At least that's what I hope.

So, this week I plan to read, reread or finish:

• Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster (already started)
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (already started)
• Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
• The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy 

I'm not very good at writing meaningful updates while I read, so I will probably just keep track of my progress & thoughts on Twitter and review books here when I'm done with them. Wish me luck :-)