TBR|5x Classics

Ik neem mezelf elk jaar voor om meer classics te gaan lezen, maar op een of andere manier lukt dat me toch steeds niet. Het kost toch wel wat meer moeite om deze boeken te lezen en daarom verkies ik steeds weer andere boeken boven de classics. Toch vond ik de classics die ik wel gelezen heb, vaak wel heel goed. Zeker To kill a mockingbird wat echt één van mijn favoriete boeken is. Daarom wil ik dit jaar toch echt een aantal classics op gaan pakken en de onderstaande vijf staan zeker op mijn to-read lijstje.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.

But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the ‘phony’ aspects of society, and the ‘phonies’ themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.

Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it’s a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger’s style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you.

The Handmaid’s tale – Margaret Atwood

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now…

Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

After the brutal care of the workhouse, the orphan Oliver Twist falls into the more welcoming arms of a den of thieves. But the sinister Fagin’s grip is not light, and life in the underworld where Oliver now finds himself often ends in a noose…

Vooral Pride and Prejudice en Oliver Twist moet ik nou echt een keer gaan lezen, want die heb ik allebei gewoon in mijn boekenkast staan. Die twee wil ik dit jaar dan ook echt gaan lezen, maar ook de andere drie wil ik eigenlijk dit jaar ook wel eens een kans gaan geven.

Welke classic wil jij nog graag lezen?