2016: A Year of Classics

A ‘Classics’ New Year Resolution

Have you ever been browsing through a 2nd hand market bookstall , glanced over the battered spines embossed with exotic titles, and thought ‘I should have read that book’, ‘I wish I understood book’, or ‘I’d like to say that I’ve read that book’?

The knee-jerk response is usually ‘Oh, I’d like to, but I just don’t have the time’.

Mine was too. Until I started to walk away, but then stopped and thought to myself, ‘Well, make time then!’

So it is, that I find myself faced with a list of ‘Classics’ compiled from a combination of the ‘100 books you should read before you die’ compendiums, books which I’d always meant to start reading (I’d never got round to starting the ‘Rabbit’ series) and plain old idle curiosity.

Thus, armed with a schedule and a similarly intellectually curious sister-in-law (who’d just come off the back of reading a book a week in 2015….granted, not many of them were classics….OK, none of them were, but still an impressive achievement), we’ve put together our Reading List for the coming year.

2016 Classics

Feb: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Might as well start off with a chunky one!)

Mar: Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (Bit more light-hearted, more contemporary)

Apr: Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Classic, but quite weighty)

May: London Fields by Martin Amis  (Again, more contemporary)

Jun: 3 Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (Lighter Classic – quite topical to Wallingford as was written on this stretch of the Thames)

Jul: Middlemarch by George Eliot (Classic – appropriate for Summer!)

Aug: One Hundred years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Could be harder going, but Summer holiday reading)

Sep: Rabbit, Run (1st in a series) by John Updike (I’ve been dying to start reading this series for years – something to look forward to!)

Oct: 1984 by George Orwell – (Contemporary classic)

The Classics Format

The plan is as follows:

• At the end of each month, we’ll discuss the nominated book
• I’ll write up our comments in a short blog (bullet points only – nothing too heavy)
• Maybe include a favourite excerpt / section of writing to illustrate the writer’s style / greatness.

The format will probably change as we go along, so I’m not going to be too specific at this stage.

Just watch this space……or more accurately, a blog in about a month’s time on Dostoevsky.