Looking Back at "Back to the Classics"

2015 was the year where I consistently forgot that I had signed up for a reading challenge, only to remember in December and quickly fill in the qualifying books from the previous months. It also was the year I exceeded my 100 Book annual goal (by a mere seven, of course, but I'll take what I can get), so it was not a total loss. In any case, I completed the Back to the Classics challenge hosted by karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com, and here are the results:

1.  A 19th Century Classic -- any book published between 1800 and 1899.

A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain

2.  A 20th Century Classic -- any book published between 1900 and 1965.

The Mystery of the Blue Train 

by Agatha Christie

It’s only taken reading the majority of her work, but I’m finally getting the hang of solving Agatha Christie’s mysteries.  I successfully deduced whodunit for The Mystery of the Blue Train and have felt immensely proud of myself ever since.  I wouldn’t say this was either Christie’s best-plotted puzzle or her easiest. Instead it strikes a pleasant chord between the two, and seemed to me an amalgam of Christie’s usual fare of Murder Mystery Set In The Heart Of England and her less famous espionage novels. I would recommend this to be “read” as an audio book, as there may (or may not) be a clue that’s more obvious when read in text.  It all depends on how hard the reader wants to make the detecting.

3.  A Classic by a Woman Author.

The Mill on the Floss 

by George Eliot

4.  A Classic in Translation. As in last year's category, this can be any classic book originally written or a published in a language that is not your first language.

The Gambler 

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Alexei Ivanovich gives up a tutoring position in a peevish general’s annoying family for the more stable occupation (in comparison to the general’s dramatic family life, at any rate) of roulette. The general’s delightfully crotchety grandmother, played by Dame Maggie Smith, arrives and also gets addicted to gambling. The main conflict of the story comes from Alexei’s addiction, his love for the general’s stepdaughter Polina, and his jealousy against the other men in Polina’s life. This novella is what I would expect of Dostoyevsky. It’s well written, the style is impeccable, and the theme is vaguely depressing.   

5.  A Very Long Classic Novel -- a single work of 500 pages or longer.  This does not include omnibus editions combined into one book, or short story collections. 

Vanity Fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray

6.  A Classic Novella -- any work shorter than 250 pages.

The Clicking of Cuthbert

by P.G. Wodehouse

I was worried when I began reading The Clicking of Cuthbert, because it came in a collection of short stories and novellas that all centered on the theme of golf, and I do  not play golf or understand the jargon of the game. Luckily for me, my understanding of the game is at least as good, if not better, than most of Wodehouse’s characters, most of whom are either pretending to be experts to impress a girl, or think they are experts and end up losing their butlers in a bet against someone who actually knows how to play. As per usual, Wodehouse is hilarious. I’m sure these stories would be even more humorous to a reader who plays golf themselves; apparently, if only to judge by the amount of stories written about it, Wodehouse was a fan.

7.  A Classic with a Person's Name in the Title.

Doctor Therne

by H. Rider Haggard

The story opens with young and brilliant Doctor Therne in South America, running from guerillas (not gorillas; those are in Africa and Tarzan of the Apes) and falling in love with the standard noble, pure and innocent Victorian Heroine. Exactly what one might expect from the author of King Solomon’s Mines. Except then Therne marries the heroine and takes her back to the tame English countryside. In fact this book is less action-adventure than cautionary tale, in this case, caution against anti-vaccination factions. Therne doesn’t battle Hottentots; he battles the older, more respected, but more traditional physician of the small country village he sets up practice in. His rival ruins Therne’s life and medical reputation, only to have a rich anti-vaccination proponent and his conspiracy-theory wife rescue Therne and set him up as a political candidate who upholds their values. This was written at the dawn of vaccination against diseases like tuberculosis, and I found it interesting how little time has changed the argument s of both sides. Therne himself is an interesting protagonist in that he is cowardly, ambitious, arrogant, yet at times still sympathetic…not quite the usual hero fare for Victorian literature of the time. 

8.  A Humorous or Satirical Classic.

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough

9.  A Forgotten Classic.  This could be a lesser-known work by a famous author, or a classic that nobody reads any more.  

God in the Dock

by C.S. Lewis

10.  A Nonfiction Classic.  A memoir, biography, essays, travel, this can be any nonfiction work that's considered a classic, or a nonfiction work by a classic author.  

Notes from a Native Son

by James Baldwin

I felt alternately sorry for or cross with James Baldwin while reading his essays.  He’s simply so angry, and he can’t seem to agree with anyone. It annoys me when I read critiques of novels where all the critic does is put down another person’s work, without in any way suggesting improvements. He doesn’t like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Native Son, he doesn’t like the president, he doesn’t get along with his father, he doesn’t want to be a preacher, he doesn’t like the black cast of Carmen, he doesn’t even seem to like Paris or Switzerland, though he goes to these places to escape America (which he really doesn’t like). All right, I can agree how many of these things can arguably be described as flawed or wrong in some way.  But Baldwin stops there. He doesn’t suggest change. Maybe he’s too hopeless even to imagine it? 

11.  A Classic Children's Book. Pick a children's classic that you never got around to reading. 

Grimm's Fairy Tales

by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

I’m tempted to put this into the Humor category, because as I began to reread fairy tales as an adult I became very snarky and heckling toward them, and overall had great fun. A lot of people make a big deal over how much darker and gorier the original Grimm fairy tales were to our Disney picture book retellings. In actuality, a lot of our bowdlerized Disneyfication was actually started by the Grimm brothers who edited and streamlined the stories as a continual process with each edition. When read by an adult, even these gory details (the Cinderella stepsisters cut off their toes to try to cheat the shoe-fitting test, then get their eyes pecked out by those sweet twittering bluebirds) are so nonsensical and weird as to be a sort of dark humor. I remember reading The Goose Girl, where I was instantly emotionally invested in the Goose Girl’s talking horse Falada (which is an awesome name that I would use on a horse if I ever had one for some reason). The talking horse, though, immediately gets beheaded by the Goose Girl’s evil maidservant, in order to keep the horse from talking.  Except the horse hasn’t actually had any lines yet. And then the evil maidservant, posing as a princess, has the head put on a pike on the wall…where Falada proceeds to talk to the Goose Girl from the afterlife, only basically he tells her nothing helpful, only a bad little poem about how sorry the Goose Girl’s mother would be to see her like this. It’s all so non sequiter as to be funny. I mean, it’s a TALKING HORSE. Why even include it in the book, and give it a NAME (a courtesy which not even the main character, villain, or love interest get), if you’re immediately going to kill it off ?  And why even say it’s a talking horse if it won’t talk until it’s dead?  And why have it talk after it’s dead if you’re only going to have it guilt-trip the main character, instead of actually telling her something helpful?  I feel like the Grimms needed to edit that one a bit more. Maybe a sequel, called FALADA, REVENGE OF THE HEADLESS HORSE* is in order.  

*Copyright pending since that is actually an awesome idea that I must now see through to publication.

12.  A Classic Play.  Your choice, any classic play, as long as it was published or performed before 1965.  Plays are only eligible for this specific category.

Richard III

by William Shakespeare

The main character of this play—one can hardly classify him as a protagonist, much less the hero—is a snide, conniving, crooked (in more ways than one), murderous fiend. He also happens to be the ill-gotten king of England. And yet for all his plots and crimes and deceptions, he’s quite honest about it…to the audience, at least. His very first scene is practically a revel in his villainy, and in my mind’s eye I cast him in a bowler hat, cape, and twirling a long handlebar mustache. Unlike Shakespeare’s other plays which are so layered with themes as to be open to interpretation, this play is rather straightforward both in plot and in moral, but really the only point of interest is the gleefully nefarious Richard himself.  He is, if there is such a thing, delightfully evil, as opposed to the plodding, dull, sanctimonious “good” characters who are his inevitable victims. It’s almost a shame for him to lose. All in all, this might be my favorite Shakespearean Comedy yet.