I will cheerfully arrange being able to read one (or more) to line up with the reading speed/level of someone else if anyone wants to read with me.
William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poetry http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/262.html
Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass 1855 version
Stephen Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Frederick Douglass: Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim
George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Seamus Heaney: Beowulf
A shitload of poetry by: Auden, Yeats, Thomas, Frost, Pound, Eliot, Ginsburg
Along with ten other books I haven’t selected yet because I need to figure out which ones I want to buy. 🙂
(Have I mentioned that I hate poetry? Fully 10/29 things I need to read consist of masses of poetry. This is where I cry. Noah! Help!)
I should sync up with you to read Pygmalion. I’ve been curious about it for awhile.
Shaw is hands down my favorite playwright. My parents took me as a kid and made it mandatory that they take me to every Shaw play they could.
I think my favorites are Mrs. Warren’s profession and the Don Juan in Hell play within the play Man and Superman.
Hell is the home of honor duty justice and the rest of the 7 deadly sins, all the wickedness on earth is done in their name, where else but in hell should they earn their reward….
Have you bought all of the listed ones yet?
I’m sure I have a couple of them and would be happy to loan/gift them.
These are the ones I already own. That’s why I have them picked. 🙂
I’ve read all of Poe already I think, so that would be cheating. I’ll start with Wuthering Heights, because I’ve been avoiding that book on my shelf for at least ten years now.
And, if you don’t even want to read them, use the library rather than buying them… Your local library may also have a baby lapsit storytime program, which is fun… Rebecca has always liked going to the library, because there are always other kids to stare at in the children’s section.
I buy them because I mark them. It’s easier to study them later if I can mark the parts I know I will want a refresher on. I buy used. 🙂
The library may have some of the ones you haven’t selected on tape/cd/whatever. Most Dickens is best aloud…
I am skipping Dickens altogether because I don’t like him. Well… it’s not personal. I don’t like his writing. 🙂
I haven’t read Wuthering Heights, because seeing part of the movie was enough to know that I didn’t want to. A friend of mine said it was basically an over-written Harlequin Romance (back in the days when most formulaic romance novels were Harlequin, and there weren’t 30 different publishers doing formula romance novels).
This may save you some money….
http://www.readprint.com/
Re: This may save you some money….
And I’m certainly reading stuff that is old enough. 🙂
Oh christ. British literature was the one class in which I got a C in high school. The poetry was especially heinous. I never had the right interpretation. Good luck to you!
Can you pick any of the poetry? What sorts of things might be less heinous? Cause poetry is something I know somewhat well and could probably help if you want any.
I think I’ll try to read along with Mrs. Dalloway. 🙂
When you do R & G, are you gonna do the read it and Hamlet at the same time and follow the characters as they cross between plays thing?
I once heard of some theater troup that did it, splitting the stage in 1/2 or some such and doing it over 2 evenings — cause that would be one hell of a long show to sit through.
Always wanted to see that
While I LOVE Jane Eyre, I DISPISE Wythering heights… I just want to bitch slap the girl and kick the male lead in the balls…
Yes, it makes me violently angry