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broodings from the burrow

February 2, 2021


books that predate me from my tbr list
posted by soe 2:36 am

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl focuses on books from my to-be-read list that were written before I was born. Here are ten I’ve been meaning to read for a while:

  1. The Odyssey by Homer (I’ve had a pretty copy sitting on my desk for several years. Maybe 2021 is the year to crack it open.)
  2. The Sagas of Icelanders (I dragged this ~800-page tome with me to Iceland thinking I’d hunker down and read myths from the 1200s while on vacation there. I did not.)
  3. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (Karen and I were supposed to read this together a decade or so ago and I totally kept flaking on her. I’ll get to it someday.)
  4. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (My two best college friends and I watched the movie, a travel adventure set in an Italian castle, a quarter century ago and I’ve been meaning to get back to it for a while. Maybe this year I’ll check out the source material, which dates from the 1920s.)
  5. Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham (Don’t you want to read it based just on the title? Add to that it’s a satire skewering the literary world of London in the early 20th century and I’m doubly in.)
  6. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (This routinely makes it onto lists of underappreciated, humorous novels of yore. There’s also an edition with Roz Chast illustrations, which tempts me even more.)
  7. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (I’ve long meant to read all the Bronte novels, and this is my college roommate’s favorite of the bunch.)
  8. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (While I’ve intended to read this since I first devoured Little Women in elementary school, I haven’t tried since middle school. I can probably get through it now.)
  9. Le Petit Nicholas by René Goscinny (I picked up a copy of this French children’s classic when I was in France more than a decade ago and I should really get around to reading it.)
  10. Around the World in 72 Days by Nellie Bly (A memoir (based on the newspaper columns) of a journalist’s attempt to beat the 80 days it took the fictional Verne hero to circumnavigate the globe. Who doesn’t want to read a travelogue of a cutting-edge Victorian era newspaperwoman?)

What old books are on your reading list?

Category: books. There is/are 7 Comments.



The only one I’ve read from your list is The Odyssey by Homer and that was for Literature Class. I Hope you can stop by:

https://collettaskitchensink.blogspot.com/2021/02/top-ten-books-written-before-1978-222021.html

Colletta

Comment by Colletta 02.02.21 @ 4:04 am

You went a long way back with the Odyssey! I do have a soft sport for Homer I have to say! And Pickwick Papers is not the best Dickens in my humble opinion…. I did put a little twist on the topic this week: rather than disappearing into the classics (where there are so many that I love but rarely blog about) I went for books published in the year I was born!

Comment by Michael @ The Book Lover's Sanctuary 02.02.21 @ 4:27 am

Cakes and Ale is a fabulous title!

My post.

Comment by Lydia 02.02.21 @ 8:11 am

Ooh I’d love to read that Nellie Bly one, I listened to a podcast episode about her and her expose on the asylum a while back and it was super interesting.
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/02/top-ten-tuesday-301/

Comment by Jo 02.02.21 @ 9:41 am

Way back when, sometime after we’d seen the movie at least once, I read Enchanted April during a Conn vacation. It was so disappointing, and the characters were not the same (and in at least one case, a likeable character from the movie was very much not a likeable character in the book.). I read the whole thing, but found it to be disappointing (so much so that I have written it twice!) and not a good read. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Comment by Rebs 02.03.21 @ 2:08 am

I really enjoyed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you!

Comment by Poinsettia 02.03.21 @ 12:59 pm

I cracked up at your explanation for #2. I would say that’s the opposite of a beach read, but to be fair, Iceland is kind of the opposite of a beach.

Totally forgot about Le Petit Nicholas — I have only read it in French (for class), but we did a whole video project for it and everything. Yet I didn’t realize it was considered a classic.

I read a Scholastic book about Nellie Bly when I was a kid and loved it (Nellie Bly, Reporter) and was really intrigued, but I never got around to reading her writing — that memoir sounds great.

A big chunk of my TBR is old books no one’s ever heard of, but some of the ones that might (…might) be recognizable are Dragonwyck by Anya Seton, Animals Are My Hobby by Gertrude Davies Lintz, National Velvet, and The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden.

Comment by RS 02.05.21 @ 10:18 pm