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.)