What a treat to read all these wonderful classics this year.
1. To Kill a Mockingbird***** by Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird doesn’t really meet my own definition of a classic, which is a work 50 years or older; but, it is very nearly 50 years old, and I have no fear it will be a classic in years to come.
2. Heart of Darkness***** by Joseph Conrad
I know many people don’t like Heart of Darkness. I can’t say I ‘loved’ this book, but Conrad is a masterful writer. To think that English was his third language, wow.
3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde***** by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the epitome of the struggle all humans face with good and evil. It should be read by everyone.
4. Fahrenheit 451****1/2 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451 scared me. It is eery how there are so many similarities to today in that book.
5. Silas Marner****1/2 by George Eliot
I can’t wait to read more of George Eliot; I’m planning on reading Middlemarch next year. Silas Marner really demonstrates how a warm heart can grow cold but still find its way back to warm again.
6. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ****1/2 by Betty Smith
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn really surprised me. A wonderful book with such a powerful sense of time and place. Francie is a character I will never forget.
Fahrenheit 451 is a book that everyone should read and it should scare everyone who reads it. I find it completely ironic that it is on the banned book list year after year. We truly need to be careful and fight for an author’s freedom to express an idea without fear of censor – even those ideas we don’t agree with.
And Mockingbird is a timeless book. It belongs on any and every list it can be on.
cjh
Three of your six were also new-to-me classics that I discovered this past year. I was really surprised by each of them in different ways.