Next up for my is an Emile Zola book, The Sins of Abbé Mouret. This is the 9th book in the Rougon-Macquart series. I'm reading all 20 of them, one every other month. I love his memorable characters, vivid descriptions, and look at 19th century French society and the rise of the bourgeois.

I'm rereading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It's short but is very slow to read, because I find myself having to reread paragraphs for content because the words tend to just wash over me (in a beautiful way).

Anyone else planning to read more classics in 2026?

Anonymous wrote:I am going to re-approach Ulysses by James Joyce. I studied one chapter as part of my undergrad degree and I think it needs to be read / looked at in pieces, slowly. My mother said she could sit down and read it start to finish, but I don't know genuinely how much she was able to take in that way.

Anyone else read the whole thing, got advice?

Don’t you have enough pain and misery in your life without having to add more? Your eyes will glaze over like your mother’s, mindlessly skimming then turning the pages just so you can brag, “I’ve read Ulysses!”

Joyce wrote Ulysses to prove that if you slather on layers of compacted crap and call it literature read by “smart people”, the crowds will buy the book and place it in a prominent location like a coffee table so others will think they are smart, educated and sophisticated.

The most accurate review I read was that this book should be picked up and flung as far away as possible.

Examining a turd slowly, sniffing and examining closely its consistency, ruminating on what a person ate to produce this specimen of human excrement, would be more interesting than attempting to read Ulysses again. I could not make it past about six chapters before I concluded it is a big stinker.

I grant that Joyce is probably a genius, was highly educated, and his technical proficiency with English of the highest order. However, reading about people frying kidneys in a pan or using the toilet, no matter how perfectly written, does not make for an interesting story.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just reread Wuthering Heights and I was so disappointed! I remember it as a favorite when I read it in my 20s. Now, in my 40s, I was so annoyed at all the characters. I didn't find Heathcliff and Cathy's love at all convincing. All the characters were bitter, vengeful, and bad people. It was a totally unenjoyable reading experience. Bummer!

Agreed. I remember hating it in high school and rolling my eyes over people being all swoony over it. And teenage me still wants to know exactly what he did with that dead body.

Agree also. Was very underwhelmed even as a teen -- and I liked other Victorian era books and must have read Jane Eyre 3+ times. The Wuthering characters, though, were somehow both overwrought & dull and I thought Heathcliff was a PITA even back then.

Anonymous wrote:I just reread Wuthering Heights and I was so disappointed! I remember it as a favorite when I read it in my 20s. Now, in my 40s, I was so annoyed at all the characters. I didn't find Heathcliff and Cathy's love at all convincing. All the characters were bitter, vengeful, and bad people. It was a totally unenjoyable reading experience. Bummer!

Agreed. I remember hating it in high school and rolling my eyes over people being all swoony over it. And teenage me still wants to know exactly what he did with that dead body.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just reread Wuthering Heights and I was so disappointed! I remember it as a favorite when I read it in my 20s. Now, in my 40s, I was so annoyed at all the characters. I didn't find Heathcliff and Cathy's love at all convincing. All the characters were bitter, vengeful, and bad people. It was a totally unenjoyable reading experience. Bummer!

I want to read it again, but I think you can't approach it as a love story. You have to approach it like they are sort of anti-heroes. Hurt people hurt people, even hot and sexy hurt people living in the moors. I think Heathcliff is just a really screwed up person with a lot of childhood damage who probably doesn't have the internal tools to ever be happy, and Cathy is immature and kind of a mean girl, right? Her real tragedy is that she dies before she really gets a chance to sort her sh*t out. If you reframe it as a tragedy of human mistakes, rather than a love story, maybe it's better? Or maybe I'll also just be irritated by them.
My favorite book about the moors might now be Secret Garden. I love the housekeeper. It's a super fun book to read out loud.

Yes, true, not a love story. But I still found it intolerable. I'd love to hear what you think if you reread it.

Anonymous wrote:Read Sula and now tackling Song of Solomon both by Toni Morrison who won the Nobel prize for literature. Are they classics? They read difficult in the grand style of difficult 20th century reads like Ulysses and Faulkner full of deep cultural references and rife with symbolism. Are they "important" novels? Feels like it. Are they "good" ? ask me when I'm done. (and I can't wait to be done). It's very inside-out- like, the black experience in america from the intimate interiors of 20th century black americans. It's important to give voices to these feelings. But difficult stream-of-consciousness reading. With some magical realism and post-modernism thrown in.

I consider Toni Morrison's work "classics". Song of Solomon and Beloved are my favorites. I think I've read about 6 of her novels.

Anonymous wrote:Read Sula and now tackling Song of Solomon both by Toni Morrison who won the Nobel prize for literature. Are they classics? They read difficult in the grand style of difficult 20th century reads like Ulysses and Faulkner full of deep cultural references and rife with symbolism. Are they "important" novels? Feels like it. Are they "good" ? ask me when I'm done. (and I can't wait to be done). It's very inside-out- like, the black experience in america from the intimate interiors of 20th century black americans. It's important to give voices to these feelings. But difficult stream-of-consciousness reading. With some magical realism and post-modernism thrown in.

Definitely. I read Song of Solomon in college and thought it was one of the best books I had ever read. It reminded me of the 19th century Russian stuff, just in the scope and detail of people's lives -- how it presents important questions but also just really telling a good narrative story at the same time, with beautiful prose.

Anonymous wrote:Kate Chopin's The Awakening.
I came away from it wondering if it was rich people's problems.

Then there's Charles Dickens. Almost all his works seem to include hidden/unknown identities and massive bequests or inheritances based on that revelation. I suppose this was the dream for the average English working class Victorian.

I cannot remember The Awakening at all except that I read it in HS and thought it was like the best thing I'd ever read. It wasn't assigned reading -- I found it lying around somewhere. I don't think I can read it again now though -- might hit too close to home.

Anonymous wrote:I just reread Wuthering Heights and I was so disappointed! I remember it as a favorite when I read it in my 20s. Now, in my 40s, I was so annoyed at all the characters. I didn't find Heathcliff and Cathy's love at all convincing. All the characters were bitter, vengeful, and bad people. It was a totally unenjoyable reading experience. Bummer!

I want to read it again, but I think you can't approach it as a love story. You have to approach it like they are sort of anti-heroes. Hurt people hurt people, even hot and sexy hurt people living in the moors. I think Heathcliff is just a really screwed up person with a lot of childhood damage who probably doesn't have the internal tools to ever be happy, and Cathy is immature and kind of a mean girl, right? Her real tragedy is that she dies before she really gets a chance to sort her sh*t out. If you reframe it as a tragedy of human mistakes, rather than a love story, maybe it's better? Or maybe I'll also just be irritated by them.
My favorite book about the moors might now be Secret Garden. I love the housekeeper. It's a super fun book to read out loud.

I prefer Daniel Deronda to Middlemarch.

Read Sula and now tackling Song of Solomon both by Toni Morrison who won the Nobel prize for literature. Are they classics? They read difficult in the grand style of difficult 20th century reads like Ulysses and Faulkner full of deep cultural references and rife with symbolism. Are they "important" novels? Feels like it. Are they "good" ? ask me when I'm done. (and I can't wait to be done). It's very inside-out- like, the black experience in america from the intimate interiors of 20th century black americans. It's important to give voices to these feelings. But difficult stream-of-consciousness reading. With some magical realism and post-modernism thrown in.

I just reread Wuthering Heights and I was so disappointed! I remember it as a favorite when I read it in my 20s. Now, in my 40s, I was so annoyed at all the characters. I didn't find Heathcliff and Cathy's love at all convincing. All the characters were bitter, vengeful, and bad people. It was a totally unenjoyable reading experience. Bummer!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really enjoyed Middlemarch recently. I read Silas Marner years ago and always wanted to read more George Eliot but like others kept turning to shorter options. Once I started I was smitten and happy to go along for the journey. The dialogue was amusing and clever. I found the characters very relatable and the relationships felt authentic.

Middlemarch is so good!

did middle march not make you so sad though?? Like reading David copper field just gives me a lump in my throat of dread. I remember reading middle march through one of those epic everything shuts down Dc winter storms and stopping to bawl my eyes out. I wouldn't callout enjoyable.

I do like dickens other books and find him hilarious- the one about the debtors prison little dorrit is SO SO funny and making references to it kept my siblings up while we went through probate for a dead parent. I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway for bookclub - inspired by the Wedding People.

Some of Middlemarch is hopeful though-- like Dorothea's end.

Anonymous wrote:I am going to re-approach Ulysses by James Joyce. I studied one chapter as part of my undergrad degree and I think it needs to be read / looked at in pieces, slowly. My mother said she could sit down and read it start to finish, but I don't know genuinely how much she was able to take in that way.

Anyone else read the whole thing, got advice?

I haven't tried it yet, but good luck! I read Proust over a year in chunks between other books and it worked well for me.