What I Read May 2021
A classic heavy month. I didn’t read many books, but most of the ones I read or at least finished this month were classics.
Villette by Charlotte Brontë. I finished this this month. I enjoyed rereading this in a readalong well enough. But the self-indulgently emotionally tumultousness in this style of Romanticism (or maybe just Romanticism period) is not my thing. I was quite over Lucy’s frequently self-imposed (and seemingly rather enjoyed) sufferings and smugness.
And So I Began to Read: Books That Have Influenced Me by Faith Cook. A family friend gave this to me. I found it interesting, but she only mentioned religious books which I’ve little interest it, theological works I mean.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. I wrote my extremely flattering in this post.
Can You Forgive Her by Anthony Trollope. Definitely a Trollope fangirl. I though I might have enjoyed this more than some of the Barchester Chronicles. So now I have the luxury of enjoying the rest of the series.
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë. I started this as the next book in the same group as Villette. But oh, I forgot just how much I loved this, in the kind of love that makes me want to hold it close and not share too much. Someone in the group mentioned how Charlotte wrote more in the realism style rather than Romantic (Romantic proper, it is still romantic, of the still-waters run deep kind that I absolutely adore).
4 Comments
Catherine
I really need to read some more Bronte stuff, I’ve only read Jane Eyre/Wuthering Heights. Might put Shirley on my list! George Eliot’s another one, I don’t know why I’ve never read any of hers.
Rachel Olivia
Shirley has North and South vibes and is written in realism rather than romanticism style (which clearly, I greatly prefer). I need to reread Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall as their is adaptation with Toby Stephens and Rupert Graves on Amazon that I want to see.
I’d definitely NOT start George Eliot with Mill on the Floss, my sister said it put her off Eliot for ages (it had to have been like a decade). Middlemarch, while a slow start, I think is the best one to start with. Eliot novels seem to me to be massive like Dickens, but more straight to the point than his, I think. She also has smaller novels like Silas Marner but I didn’t like that. I hadn’t really heard much of Eliot until in my twenties, I guess she wasn’t as huge over here or just out of vogue? Trollope I heard even later.
Elizabeth
This makes me want to get back to reading. What’s you favourite/least favourite classic?
Rachel Olivia
Well, I have quite a few one star classics on Goodreads, including, The Great Gatsby, The Aeneid, Frankenstein, and my most recent, The Mill on the Floss. I think I haven’t rated enough as 5 stars though. I just finished rereading Shirley, definitely a 5 star for me as are (or should be) most of the LM Montgomery books.