Calling all literature fiends

NEW BOOK CLUB LIST POSTED HERE

Hello, lovely readers. I have been dying to tell you all about some big new things that will be taking place on the blog this year! I’m incredibly excited about 2015 and what it has in store for me, and I hope you’ll be equally enthused when I tell you all my plans. So let’s get started, shall we?

First of all, I’m in the middle of rebranding.

Rebranding? But you’ve barely been around for six months!

I know. Isn’t it crazy? And you cannot imagine how much I’ve learned in that short and sweet period of time. I’m currently trying to synthesize all of this new blogging knowledge and implement it for myself, but I’m still a newbie, and you probably won’t hear from me about new names, domain addresses, etc. until February at the earliest.

Another new series that I am way too excited about appeals to all of my nerdy, bookish tendencies. For those of you who are new, I was an English major in college, and once you start devouring books and participating in lively discussion about them, you don’t want to stop. I haven’t analyzed and argued and pondered and hypothesized about a book since May, which is just too long.

Therefore, I am starting a book club! Along with college friends and (hopefully) family members, I would love for you to participate! And this isn’t just a book club; it’s a book club of “the classics,” the books that book clubbers have been reading for centuries (or at least since the term was coined way back in 1905). You can read all about the benefits of reading the classics, but one of my favorite things about the new series is that I can read them for free on any e-reader! Hello, bus reading.

Here are my current Book Club Classics selections for the year, but I’m always open to suggestions!

January – Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
February – A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
March – A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
April – A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
May – Candide by Voltaire
June – The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
July – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
August – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
September – The Awakening by Kate Chopin
October – Dracula by Bram Stoker
November – Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
December – The Chimes by Charles Dickens

Things you should know right away…
Some of these books are long. (But then what would a list of classics be without some serious tomes?) I’ve tried to alternate between a longer book and a shorter one. Therefore, Candide, Voltaire’s short, satirical piece, gives way to Dumas’s masterpiece novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. Also, as the year comes to an end, the books will get considerably shorter. In fact, December’s book is actually one of Charles Dickens’ annual Christmas short stories. (This is the one story that I’ve already read on the list, and in my opinion, it’s better than his more famous A Christmas Carol!)

I started reading Age of Innocence on the plane ride home from London, and I’m really enjoying it so far. I’m not sure what I thought it was about, but I was definitely (and pleasantly) mistakenly. I hope you’ll pick up (or download!) a copy, and join me for the first book club post. I might even try to put together one of those nifty linkups for any of my fellow bloggers out there! Bring your questions, comments, and even any complaints to the blog on the last Wednesday of the month, and we’ll have a grand ole time immersing ourselves in the best of classic literature!

What is your favorite “classic?” Do you have any suggestions for the book club list?