ElizabethBraun

Recent site activity

'I've Read.....' - classics to read and love

According to the '1% Well-Read Challenge', I'm already about 5% well-read, but that's not to say that the 1001 Novels to Read Before You Die is the be all and end all.  In fact, given that it only contains fiction and a dispproportionate quantity of 20th century fiction at that, it's rather a lop-sided list.  Also it's a list according to one person's taste and not to be taken that seriously (esp as it's been recently up-dated deleting many older works in favour of some written within the last few years - considered classics already, huh??), so here's my own:

 

The Bible 

At the end of 2008, I'd read through the complete scriptures 11 times in 5 different versions, with one more nearing completion, and started working through 1 more 'New Testament', (better called 'Christian Greek Scriptures'), which I will probably fill in the Hebrew text ('Old Teastament') of later on via on-line reading plans. 

New World Translation: 7 times - easily the best available, 8th in progress: Gen - Deut, current congregation reading (2009-2013) Gen-Deut 27.

New International Version

Good News/Today's English Version

New Living Translation

Stephen Byington Bible in Living English

Contemporary English Version: Genesis - Galatians
 
New Century Version: Genesis - Exodus 22

The Message: Matthew - 1 Corinthians

20th Century

Brent-Dyer, Elinor M - 37 of the 62 Chalet School books, The School By the River

Fitzgerald, F Scott - The Great Gatsby

Forster, E M - A Room With a View

Ishiguro, Kazuo - The Remains of the Day

Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird

Orwell, George - Animal Farm

Ransome, Arthur - Complete 'Swallows and Amazons' series

Rhys, Jean - Wide Sargasso Sea

 

19th Century

Alcott, Lousia M - Little Women and Good Wives, about half of Little Men.

Austen, Jane - complete novels, including fragments and juvenilia, Sanditon completed by someone else and 2 lots of Pride and Pejudice from Darcy's angle (20th/21st C, of course and not really JA).

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth - Lady Audley's Secret, Aurora Floyd, The Doctor's Wife

Brontë, Anne - Agnes Grey, The Tennant of Wildfell Hall plus some poems

Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, The Professor

Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights plus some poems

Collins, Wilkie - Almost all fiction in print (except Iolani, which I haven't got to yet): Armadale, Basil, The Biter Bit & Other Stories, The Black Robe, Blind Love, The Dead Secret, The Evil Genius, The Fallen Leaves, The Frozen Deep, The Guilty River, The Haunted Hotel, Heart and Science, Hide and Seek, I Say No, Jezebel's Daughter, The Law and the Lady, The Legacy of Cain, Man and Wife, Miss or Mrs, The Moonstone, Mr Wray's Cashbox, My Lady's Money, The New Magdalen, No Name, Poor Miss Finch, A Rogues Life, The Two Destinies, The Woman in White, The Yellow Mask & Other Stories

Conan-Doyle, Sir Arthur - complete Sherlock Holmes works

Dickens, Charles - Great Expectations, Bleak House, Hard Times

Elliot, George - Middlemarch

Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary

Gaskell, Elizabeth - Mary Barton, Ruth, My Lady Ludlow, Cranford, North and South, Wives and Daughters, Cousin Philis, The Moorland Cottage and Other Stories

Gissing, George - The Odd Women

Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the Durbervilles, Under the Greenwood Tree

James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers
 
La Fanu, Sheridan - Uncle Silas
 
Oliphant, Margaret - Hester
 
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte - The Yellow Wallpaper

Trollope, Anthony - The Warden, Barchester Towers, Dr Thorne, Framley Parsonage

Verne, Jules - Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Wells, H G - The Time Machine

Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Ernest, Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance, Salome (which I did NOT like!)

Wood, Ellen - East Lynne

 

18th Century

Burney, Frances - Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla

Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe

Godwin, William - Caleb Williams

Goldsmith, Oliver - The Vicar of Wakefield

Hays, Mary - Memoirs of Emma Courtney
 
Haywood, Eliza - The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

Lennox, Charlotte - The Female Quixote

Radcliffe, Ann - Romance of the Forest, Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian

Richardson, Samuel - Pamela, (Clarissa in progress - ad infinitum!)

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley - The Rivals, St Patricks Day, The Duenna, A Trip to Scarborough, The School for Scandal 

 

Pre-18th Century

Jonson, Ben - The Alchemist

Shakespeare, William (perhaps.... and perhaps not....who really wrote those plays, I wonder...) - Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Measure for Measure.
 
 
 
History
 
Hibbert, Christopher - Queen Victoria, A Personal History (in progress)
 
 
Language related
 
Teach Yourself Linguistics (in progress)