TOP TEN TUESDAY: Books On My TBR Published Before I Was Born

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly discussion hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl (and formerly hosted by The Broke and the Bookish), and this week’s topic is “books on my TBR published before I was born.” These are all books I own, so I just looked at my nightstand and TBR cart for inspiration! Some of these were part of my challenge last year that I never completed, but that’s okay! I’m already a little more organized this year than I was last year.

  • Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf – I am that English major who has never read any Woolf…
  • The Shining by Stephen King – The only King I’ve ever read is On Writing, and I’m definitely changing that this year.
  • And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie – I want to read more of her mysteries, and I found a little mass market at the thrift store the other day!
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell – I feel like one should read both 1984 and this, so I want to get to this one this year.
  • Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen – I’m trying to read the rest of Jane Austen, but I definitely wasn’t feeling the last one I tried to read.
  • The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas – I read the abridged version of this, and the movie that came out a while ago is one of my favorites, so I should definitely read the unabridged version!
  • North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell – This is another one where I loved the mini series but have never read the book!
  • The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin – Le Guin is one of my favorite writers, and I’m working on reading all of her work.
  • East of Eden by John Steinbeck – Another one where I feel like a bad English major, but I just read Of Mice and Men a couple years ago, and now it’s time to read this.
  • If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin – The two other books of his I’ve read have been amazing, so I want to read this one before I watch the movie.

What is your favorite book published before you were born?

 

FIRST LINES FRIDAY: Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell

Hello, Friday! First Lines Friday is a feature on my blog in which I post the first lines from a book I am interested in reading, either a new release or a backlist title! For the next several Fridays, I will be featuring titles I am going to hopefully read as part of my 12 Decades/12 Months/12 Books challenge (#12decades12books). I still have never read anything of Elizabeth Gaskell’s work, and sometimes I question myself about it as she’s a contemporary of Charlotte Bronte. However, I am working on expanding my horizons during this quarantine time, and I placed an order for Wives and Daughters for my #12decades12books challenge.

To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the unseen power in the next room; a certain Betty, whose slumbers must not be disturbed until six o’clock struck, when she wakened of herself ‘as sure as clockwork,’ and left the household very little peace afterwards. It was a June morning, and early as it was, the room was full of sunny warmth and light.

On the drawers opposite to the little white dimity bed in which Molly Gibson lay, was a primitive kind of bonnet-stand on which was hung a bonnet, carefully covered over from any chance of dust with a large cotton handkerchief; of so heavy and serviceable a texture that if the thing underneath it had been a flimsy fabric of gauze and lace and flowers, it would have been altogether ‘scomfished.’

This is the last of her novels, published serially before she died and completely posthumously, and this was the title of hers (aside from North & South) that spoke to me.