…. and I came down with a large carrier bag.
You may recall that a few weeks ago I was reorganising shelves and boxes of books, and bringing my LibraryThing records up to date. I should have known that as soon as I had everything straight books that I had put away in the attic would call. Loudly.
And so I went up with a bag, and I came down with this:
All of the Penguin Classics I could carry!
Next year I plan to read more classics and less crime. And maybe to knit a little less and read a little more.
Of course I won’t read all of the books I brought down next year, but I want to have them around again.
(I hate having to keep books in the attic, but there is no alternative while I am living with and caring for my mother in her home.)
It all started when I read the Review section of the Saturday Telegraph a week or two ago. There was an article about One Day by David Nicholls, pointing up all of the references to Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Suddenly I was interested in a book that hadn’t called me at all.
But then another thought struck. Wouldn’t it be better to re-read Tess?!
And then other classics began to call. It was time to go up into the attic.
Tess came down, and so did all of the other works by Thomas Hardy I own.
Middlemarch, and all of George Eliot’s other novels came down, because I really should like to read again, over an extended period, with Team Middlemarch.
Jane Austen’s novels came down, to celebrate Advent With Austen.
Les Miserables came down, because I have wanted to read this book for so long and Kate’s Library is hosting a readalong that will help me to work my way through slowly over the course of next year.
With all of those books coming down I really couldn’t leave Wilkie Collins or the three Bronte sisters behind.
It was fortunate that those works I own by Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, plus my copy of Vanity Fair, were downstairs already, as my bag wouldn’t have held any more books.
I’ve also moved my Elizabeth Taylor collection to the front of the Virago bookcase, ready to read with the LibraryThing Virago Modern Classics Group.
My Virago copy of The Odd Women by George Gissing, that Darlene recommended so warmly is also to hand.
So I’m not going to run out of classics to read, and re-read, any time soon …..
Fleur in her World 