All of the Friday Memes!

Feature and Follow Friday (find the original posts at Parajunkee and Alison Can Read - go forth and follow!)

If you could, what book would you change the ending or a plot thread?

Oh man, What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge was a weird childhood reading experience for me, with the fun tomboy becoming the chastened goody-goody Angel of the House figure/Cousin Helen 2.0 at the end. Not impressed.

*controversial opinionzzz time* I'll be honest, I have mixed feelings about the Harry Potter epilogue as well – do people all really end up married to their high school sweethearts with 2.4 children? Was it strictly necessary to pair everyone off at the end? I’ve been thinking about this again with the H/Hr revelations, and the final chapter (combined with my constant sads about Everyone Is Straight And Dumbledore Is Not Good LGBT Representation) doesn’t totally sit right with me.

It's my birthday on Sunday so you should definitely follow me *jazz hands*

FridayReads

• The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov – I have to read this for my Russian culture class next week, and I’m not exactly overwhelmed with excitement about it, but I’ll see how it goes! 
• Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell – I have a library copy, as well as the lovely Juliet Stevenson audiobook, so I really want to get cracking on this! North and South was one of my favourite books I read last year. 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and read cool stuff!

P.S. I finished Gone Girl at 1am this morning and oh my gosh, Internet. Oh my gosh. 

Back to the Classics Challenge 2014

Internet, I have a confession. I have…not done a great job of reading over the last couple of years. I blame my laptop, and my depressingly bad procrastination habits.

But I’ve been reading a bit more over the last few weeks, and I’m realising that I’d genuinely forgotten how much I love the action of reading, of turning the pages and taking stories in slowly, of being so absorbed in a book that it’s always at the back of your head. Today I took a book into uni with me! I read in the library between classes! I hid in the toilets so I could finish a chapter before I walked home! (I’m reading Gone Girl at the moment; can you blame me?) I’ve missed this, people, I truly have.

The thing is, when I was younger I read whatever. I read Little Women when I was seven because my mum’s edition had a pretty cover and I’d finished all my library books. My parents gave me children’s classics for my birthdays and Christmas, and I read them all - I didn’t think about whether they were classics or not; I just wanted to read everything I could get my paws on.

That changed a lot with secondary school English and getting set books for essays, and again when I discovered book blogs and Booktube. I’ll be honest, I got scared. I have a fair few classics that I brought to uni with me that have been intimidating me from my desk shelf since September.

So I think, with the Back to the Classics Challenge 2014 daring me from my bookmarks bar, it’s time to say, “screw you, Doctor Zhivago! You think you can intimidate me with your 500+ pages of poetry and Tragic True Love TM, but I will read you this year.” Along with a few other books, I hope:

Required:

A 20th Century Classic Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

A 19th Century Classic Emma, by Jane Austen

A Classic by a Woman Author Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell

A Classic in Translation Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak

A Classic About War War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

A Classic by an Author Who Is New To You 

Optional Categories:

An American Classic

A Classic Mystery, Suspense or Thriller 

A Historical Fiction Classic

A Classic That's Been Adapted Into a Movie or TV Series

Extra Fun Category:  Write a Review of the Movie or TV Series adapted from Optional Category #4

Let’s do this, Internet. (I might even have time to finish The Luxe series as well this year. I never said I had sophisticated reading tastes.)