Top Ten Favorite Classic Books

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for our Top Ten Favorite Classic Books, which is one of my favorite topics! It's also incredibly hard to just pick ten!

1) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

3) Persuasion by Jane Austen

4) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

5) The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

6) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

7) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

8) I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

9) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

10) Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

 

BONUS: Shakespeare! I can’t pick between his plays so I’m going to give him his own bonus spot.

It’s Complicated: My Relationship with Dickens

Happy birthday you old fool! In the past decade I’ve read half a dozen of Dickens’ books and I’ve had a mixed reaction to most of his work. I liked the first two I read, A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities. Then I read Oliver Twist and was not a fan at all.

The next time I read Dickens I was a little nervous. What if I hated it and it put me off of his work entirely? So I read Great Expectations in 2010 with some high expectations of my own and I officially fell in love. The book was just wonderful! With unforgettable characters like Miss Havisham and a wonderfully twisty plot I was in heaven. A book that lovely would be hard to top, but the very next one I read, David Copperfield, quickly became my favorite.

Now I haven’t loved everything Dickens wrote, but I’ve learned to appreciate his unique style and expect certain things. He will inevitably shove the book full of quirky characters. He’s got a serious problem with debtors’ prison because his own father ended up there. He will drone on unnecessarily about certain things and you just have to go with it. But despite or perhaps because of all that, his books are unlike any others.

It's incredible that some of his characters, stories and opening lines have become so ingrained in our culture that we don't even think of their origin anymore. Think of, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." or Oliver Twist asking for more gruel or Scrooge's redemption! For an author to have one book that is that well known is a great feat; to have a dozen is truly something. 

So in the end I fall firmly in the fan section of Dickens’ work. Like most authors, some of his books are stronger than others, some resonate more with me personally, but overall his talent is undeniable. I will continue to pick a new Dickens novel every single year to curl up with. When I run out of new ones I’ll just have to go back and re-read my favorites.

In honor of Dickens' birthday this month I'm reading Dombey and Son. Fanda is hosting a Celebrating Dickens event and you can get the details here. If you have any Dickens books or movies you've been meaning to get to I hope you'll join in!

A few thoughts on his books...

Great Expectations

David Copperfield

Bleak House

Images from here and here. 

David Copperfield

David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
★★★★★

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

What a great first line! So don’t judge me, I was under the impression that this particular Dickens novel was about a missionary in Africa. I had avoided it for years because Dickens talking about missionary work sounded incredibly dull to me. That was David LIVINGSTONE, not Copperfield and he was a real missionary, not a character.

Anyway, misconceptions aside, this novel is a great example of what Dickens does best. He writes about a young man, orphaned and surrounded by dozens of colorful characters as he tries to make his way in the world. My favorite part of this particular Dickens’ tapestry is the varied people he brings into his protagonists’ life. They’re never boring and tend to have fantastic names.

There’s the eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood, who is convinced Copperfield’s mother is going to have a girl. Then David is born and she’s so disappointed she leaves the house immediately and never talks to her again. There’s Mr. and Mrs. Macawber, a curious pair who are devoted to each other, despite the mister’s tendency to get them into debt.

Copperfield’s step-father, Mr. Murdstone and his sister are an obviously sinister pair, while Steerforth, David’s schoolmate, just makes you a bit uneasy at first. Peggotty is David’s servant and dear friend and her courtship is hilarious.

Without giving anything away, I would add that I didn’t love the character of Dora. You meet her about half way through the book and she’s the equivalent of a dizzy blonde. No offense to blondes out there, but you know what I mean. I just found her incredibly annoying. On the flip side we have Agnes, Copperfield’s close friend. She’s clever and kind and I loved her.

This book feels a bit light-hearted at first, but it takes a darker turn as the characters are forced to deal with some horrible things. Apparently Leo Tolstoy once said that chapter 55, The Tempest, “is the standard by which the world's great fiction should be judged,” high praise from Mr. War and Peace himself.

There are also some wonderfully funny parts in the books, with lines like…

“He was always doing something or another to annoy me, or I felt as if he were, which is the same thing.”

One section gives a detailed account of David Copperfield getting wasted with his friends. It’s not something you ever think you’ll stumble upon while reading classic literature and because of that it’s even more delightful when you do.

After a few rocky years, I think I can officially say I’m a big fan of Dickens’ work. I haven’t loved everything he’s written, but the deeper I go into his lesser known works, the more I enjoy them. I think the key, for me at least, is to pace myself. His books are too similar to each other to read in a binge. If I read only one a year instead, I find myself eagerly anticipating the next one.

Well done Dickens and thanks for not writing about missionaries.