Don't be afraid of tolstoy! I read " Anna Karenina" when i was 14 and loved it! He became my favorite auther of all time . He is very readebale and easy to read . His language very simple but also very beautiful. You can read his shorter works ( especially the death of ivan yilich and hadji murat) .

Happy New Year, Lucy! Don't fear Anna Karenina. The hardest thing about it is lifting it.

With Russian literature, you need to be careful because proper enjoyment can depend on the translation. The older public domain translations are fine but change the novels flow to read like a Victorian English novel (Constance Garrett translations) and not the environment of the 19th century Czarist Russia that they were written in. I recommend the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation as the one that has the best and accurate flow. Enjoy diving into Russian classics!

Anna Karenina is wonderful and to me it was a surprisingly easy read. I read it during my summer holidays within a week.

You're so gonna love The importance of being Earnest, I know I did. If you are looking for translated classics, I do recommend any novel from Gabriel García Márquez, I love his writing.

Also the Importance of Being Earnest is sooooo hilarious. It's not meant to be taken seriously but it's one of my favorite plays of all time.

Just grabbed my copy of Anna Karenina off my bookshelf. I have been putting it off for a long time but when I saw you say you were going to read it, i thought I should do the same.

I just finished My Cousin Rachel and I loved it. Enjoy. Anna Karenina is on my 2019 list.

I haven't read too many classics but my favorites so far are definitely the Sherlock Holmes stories- my dad had a collection with the original Strand printings and I read it as a young teenager. *fond memories*

I love how you've arranged your books in the background. It's really nice to not see the classic white book shelf.

She reads classics *_subscribe_*

I want to thank you for making these videos. I am a 16 year old girl and I love YA books. But I’ve always been drawn to classics. I own quite a few but because of my age I have never felt like I am “mature” enough to read classics. But your videos inspired me and I just purchased a few more classics to read when I get back from vacation. I’m sure I’ll have a great time reading them. I love how you’re so passionate about them.

Thanks Lucy... You are my "go to" person for Classics books recommendations 😘

If you like the ww1 poetry book I can recommend “All quiet in the west” it’s about the experience of a German boy who was still at school before he and his classmates decided to join the army. It revolves around their journey and is written and inspired by the life of the author who was a soldier himself. I read an loved it

Madame Bovary is one of my favs!

Anna Karenina and A Tale of Two Cities have been on my tbr for the longest time! aaah I need to read The Importance of Being Earnest, because I do love Oscar Wilde! lovely video, good luck! x

Hi Lucy, my classics book club read Madame Bovary a few years ago, and I was surprised by how much I liked it. It feels very modern (even if the story isn’t) and there are surprising funny parts. And A Tale of Two Cities is great. IDK if you are interested in American lit, but John Steinbeck is my favorite author. My favorite book of his is also a short and funny one: Cannery Row. His love for lovable misfits blazes through the book.

All Sherlock Holmes are wonderful! The Hound of the Baskervilles is also amazing, but check out the short stories too! I love The Speckled Band.

I love how you analyse and make books much simpler and easier. I can tell that you’ve overcome this fear of reading and now you encourage others to become an avid reader like you. I appreciate your effort and inspiring videos! Also love your british accent and you’re gorgeous !!

i'm reading "Anna Karenina" right now! and you're the one who got me into the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen. (finished Jane Eyre two weeks ago)

You should read dostoevsky and turgenev .i'd recommend first love and his novels by turgenev. And dostoevsky idiot and crime and punishment are both great. Also ivan bunins short stories and chekhovs they are great. Also the wings by kuzmin . It was the first russian novel which feautured same saxe themes ( it was published in 1905 i think) . Also the corydon by andre gide.

If you like 19th century realism, you should definitely read some Émile Zola! Its one of my favourite French writer.

You'll love The Importance of Being Earnest!!!! It's my all time favourite play, nothing beats Wilde's wit!

I am planning on starting my Thomas Hardy journey because of you!

The tunnel was of the few mandatory readings in high school that I greatly enjoyed! Ernesto Sábato in general is one of my favorite authors. There are two classics I wanna tackle this year: Middlemarch (which I started in December and so far is pretty great), and the Brothers Karamazov. I've started it soo many times, and it is soo good, but the length and the language are so daunting! If I manage to finish it, the next Russian book on the list for me will be The Master and Margarita, which a lot of my Russian friends keep recommending me.

So glad to hear that you'll be reading "The Tunnel", I read it last year and absolutely loved it. 🤗 Greetings from Argentina 🇦🇷💕

I read My Cousin Rachel in 2018 and I absolutely loved it - I would also recommend Frenchman’s Creek! I study the importance of being earnest at college and it’s a great play, very funny and witty. I also have Anna Karenina on my TBR, you’re definitely motivating me to pick it up!

I'm so glad I found your channel! I love reading classics, and it's so rare to find someone who can appreciate them like I do. My top 3 classics are Dracula, Villette, and Wuthering Heights. The Bronte sisters are amazing and I love them.

Hi! I've been following you for a couple years now and it amazes me and also makes me very happy to see you evolve from an enthousiastic literature fangirl to a critical thinker reconsidering the ideas proposed in the books that you read. In this video alone, you already touched so many interesting ideas and analyseses that I hadn't even thought about. I love how you explain in a very accesable way why classics are still relevant today.

So pleased to see that you are including Tolstoy! Russian classics are incredible - Dostoyevsky too is just such a glorious writer. His ‘Brothers Karamazov’ has been one of my top 3 books of all time since I first read it at University. With best wishes, M

Anna Karenina in my opinion is a very easy read. And the depth of the characters made me love Tolstoy so much

I got Anna Karenina and my cousin Rachel for Christmas, can’t wait to read them

The Importance of being earnest is really really good!!

I always recommend Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen to anyone interested in classics. Hugely popular in Europe and the US 70-80 years ago, she's more of a modern classic and a bit (unjustly imo!) overlooked now (although you'll probably see why if you give her a try, she's got an... interesting attitude to things that's all about ideals and sacrifice and overall isn't exactly feel-good). Regardless thematically she has a lot more to do with older classics than modern fiction. She's a Danish author but wrote her books in English herself, and interestingly more often than not the English version came first! Seven Gothic Tales and Anecdotes of Destiny are both good places to start, but all her short story collections are great. Almost all of it is set in the 18-19th century and it's got a huge Thousand and One Nights feel to it -- lots of ambiguous narrators, stories inside stories, and there's this very intricate ornate quality to it as well. It's all about the stories rather than the characters, and how people fit into a bigger picture. A few of the stories have explicit gothic/fantastical elements but they all feel mystical and mysterious somehow even when there's nothing overt going on. This is all a bit vague, but saying anything more would be unnecessary spoilers, and Blixen's stuff is notoriously difficult to describe anyway.

The biggest trouble I had with Tolstoy were all those Russian names that were very similar. I was not happy with the ending of Anna K (read in high school). I need to read War and Peace sometime. I enjoyed the various types on your TBR. Happy New Year! I can't wait until your book comes out, I've already preordered it!! You must be so excited!

Madame Bovary I read twice, very well written and very emotive. It’s not an easy read in the way it makes you feel.

Two other "Last Man" quick reads are "Level 7" Mordecai Roshwald a bit dark and "I Am Legend" Richard Matheson which has a Wow!!! ending. Both are afternoon reads of a few hours. I read them over 50 years ago and still remember them and have forgotten thousands. My wife and I owned a brick and mortar used book store and for years I read at least a book a day so I could discuss them with customers who also recommended ones I should read. I was also reading way ahead of my grade I did a book report in the 6th grade on David Copperfield and my teacher asked me several specific questions before she believed I really had read it. I grew up in a home that read and we had a set of Harvard Classics which I read cover to cover. I also liked College Literature books from used book fairs over Readers Digest. Now I am re reading authors from back then that I liked Huxley Sartre and a lot of technical books in Math, History, Archeology, Geology, Astronomy, Physics. I am also taking open classroom courses in a variety of subjects. Best of luck and many classics are available as free e-books. I was also fortunate to stumble into a divorce sale in the 70's where I picked a set of Great Books of the Western World for $100.

you may have already read this but all quiet on the western front is one of my favorite books. it takes such a realistic and heartwrenching perspective of wwi. your summary of despised and rejected made me really want to read it; i haven't read very many classics in the past few years, hopefully i can get back into it c:

The Mysteries of Udolpho is one I want to get to eventually, also because of Northanger Abbey! I'm intrigued to see what you think of Howards End. I personally enjoyed A Room With A View a lot more but I think that's because I like short fiction and it just came along at the perfect time for me. But I reckon you'll really love Howards End!

I love hearing about classics. I want to read at least one more Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen this year (trying to read all their works). And I think you'll love the importance of being earnest, it's hilarious and just so much fun!

Anna is probably the most beautiful female character in all books I read.

We studied Effi Briest briefly in our German class, it seems really cool and I can relate very well with her and was quite moved reading just an extract

i also struggled with 'hard times' while reading it, i think because it was written earlier in dickens' career and his writing style wasn't really *there* yet. on the other hand, 'a tale of two cities' was my first dickens and i loved it!

You will love My Cousin Rachel. It’s my favorite Du Maurrier book so far and I will be reading Frenchmans Creek pretty soon. Howards End was my favorite 2017 book along with The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

I’m currently obsessed with George Orwell’s 1984. I was given it for Christmas, and I’m loving it.

I'm reading Anna Karenina for the first time right now as well! I'm not an avid reader and I've been able to understand it so far so you're already better off than me! Hope you enjoy it!

The Importance of Being Earnest may be my all time favourite play.

I read Anna Karenina in 2018 and completely loved it! Just give yourself time to read it. It took me three months but it was well worth it! I find your list very interesting! In fact, I am thinking of maybe adding a few of these to my own list for this year. I love classics! And need to add some to my TBR. Thank you!

I loved the 2012 adaptation of Anna Karenina and afterwards read the book. It took me 4 months to finish it even as an English major 😂 good thing you're taking it slowly even though booktube sort of pressures you to read fast. I love Gothic literature 🖤🖤

Anna Karenina was so good I read it in a week and it is now one of my all time favs!

Just found your channel! There were a fair amount of books and authors you mentioned that I’ve never heard of, but I love finding new authors to enjoy! I want to read My Cousin Rachel this year too. Good luck on your reading goals!

So excited you’re going to read more Russian literature! My grad degree is in Russian politics so I enjoy studying all things from the region. I loved Anna Karenina, and there is so much great Russian literature from the Victorian era. AK is a hefty novel, but I have the feeling you’re going to love it Lucy! 😊

Anna Karenina is my all time favorite book! It is incredible! Once you start it you won't want to put it down.

This is a fantastic list! Not that I’ve actually read many of these books, but I’ve read about many of them, or at least heard about the authors in general. I’m also a big 19th-century Lit fan (and possibly a 19th-century lit scholar in the near future).

I've already begun my 2019 classics reading with Pride and Prejudice. I know, it is shameful that I haven't picked it up before now, but I had my reasons. But once I'm done with that... I'll definitely be reading more Agatha Christie this year, as I'm working through her books in publication order. I was also considering a re-read of Jane Eyre. After that I don't really know. I have tons of options to choose from, but if I try to plan it, I'll almost certainly end up avoiding them XD

I love your enthusiasm for my beloved Bronte sisters. I was curious if you have read "Madame Bovary", so I'm excited to see that you are planning to. Maybe by now you already have. It's probably the book I've read more often than any other (I read books multiple times), so I would love to hear your take on it. The translation is very important. I like a number of them - Lydia Davis and Adam Thorpe are two of my favorites.

You can definitely do Anna Karenina! It's not actually hard to read, just a little long. As a lover of Victorian Literature, you'll enjoy it.

This is such a great list! I'm excited to see which books you end up reading. I read Anna Karenina last year and the Mysteries of Udolpho a while ago and enjoyed them both. It was wise to give yourself time to read them. And having read Udolpho makes Northanger Abbey just that much more fun to read.

I think you'll love Anna Karenina - it's long, but amazing.

This year I have read Crime and Punishment, Persuasion, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Currently reading Count of Monte Cristo.

Not to discourage you, but I had a lot of troubles with Anna Karenina. I set aside one month to read it and I almost didn't finish it in that time period. I ended up getting the audio book for it because I just found myself dozing off when I tried reading it myself. Maggie Gyllenhaals narration made it way more enjoyable for me.

"Anna Karenina" is so much fun reading" I couldn't put it down :)

We read Effi Briest next to Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina in school since they all have a common theme. Since you plan to read all three this year, I'd recommend to compare them

I'm also wanting to read The Mysteries of Udolpho mostly because of Northanger Abbey :)

I read Madame Bovary last year and loved it! And I must recommend you The Read and The Black by Stendhal, Chronicles of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, Siddartha by Hermann Hesse and La Charca by Manuel Zeno Gandía. These are some of my favoritr classics of all time. La Charca might be hard to find because it's a Puerto Rican classic. I read it in school and the end was so unexpected that to this day its still roaming my thoughts. All of these books are completely different but I'm sure you'll enjoy them.

Have you read Perfume? Its kind of about obsession. I loved A Tale of Two Cities when I read it :) I liked War and Peace way more than Anna Karenina.

I’ve read Anna Karenina. I read it pretty soon after starting to read Classics. I think you can definitely read it. Don’t be too scared. It took a while to read because of its size but I found the only really tough thing was all the Russian names, as they’re often quite similar to each other. It wasn’t a storyline that I really enjoyed but obviously that’s not a very common view.

Delighted to see War of the Worlds here! I studied it at GCSE - it's quite different but highly enjoyable. I'm also just about to start 'An Ideal Husband' by Wilde in A Level English Lit. In terms of personal reading I want to read 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess, 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Tender is the Night' by F Scott Fitzgerald, some Thomas Hardy and 'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller. In terms of recommendations, I'm a Classicist, so any Homer would really add to your already impressive repertoire. I'm very inspired by you to get back into reading for enjoyment - gained a subscriber!

You'll love Sabato, hi from his home country Argentina :)

Anna karenina , Tale of two cities , and the importance of being earnest are among the very best books I've ever read .... hope you'll enjoy them

You strike me as intelligent and a quality reader -- I believe you can handle Anna Karenina. In fact, since I haven't read it myself, I'll look forward to your honest feedback about it. Admire your attitude of challenging yourself to grow as a reader. Good for you! BTW, my very favorite Sherlock Holmes is The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is splendid! I predict you'll love it too (when you get to it).

You will LOVE, LOVE Anna Karenina, and anything of Tolstoy in general. It's so good that you won't put it down. Also, if you haven't read, try reading Dostoyevsky and Nikolai Gogol. Russian Lit is wonderful. I find the translation of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokovsky easier to read. It was also the translation recommended to me by one of my professors that had studied Russian Lit in St. Petersburg, Russia. I think you'll also love Madame Bovary. It's very, very sad, but a very well written. I've read it years ago, but I remember that I thought I disliked the characters, but in a conflicting way. I was made to feel conflicted between pitying them or despising them, which is telling of the author's great talent.

I read Howard's End along with the Close Reads Podcast through The CiRCE Institute. It's a book that I was very surprised by! I really enjoyed it. I'm sure I will read it again in the future.

Oh, The Sign of Four is wonderful Grand Guignol stuff served up at a breakneck pace - I envy you reading that for the first time and look forward to your thoughts on it. Also on Udolpho, which is a good one to wile away the cold winter nights. It's high time I re-read Tristram Shandy too ... interesting reading year in prospect.

You may also want to give a listen to the LA Theatreworks production of Arcadia. "The Castle of Udolfo" is mentioned in the play. The story is centered in the present on the Coverly Family Estate with half the action taking place in the present and the other half about 200 years in the past. How Tom Stoppard keeps this up, I am told, is by rigorous revision so that each scene follows the other. Anyway part of the action includes a landscape gardener, Mr. Noakes, who is an apostle of the Romantic. He takes the Coverly garden and tears its pastoral lawns and trees apart to bring in ruins "where there was never a house" and crags, giving the place a feeling of a carnival house of horrors. Lady Coverly supposes Mr. Noakes has read to much of "The Castle of Udolfo."

Firstly, I loved My Cousin Rachel when I read it a couple of years ago so I hope you enjoy it! Also I recommend the film with Sam Claflin and Rachel Weisz Secondly, i'll mostly be reading whatever classics I need to for uni. I'm doing a module on the 19th century novel this semester which I think is gonna challenge me a lot. Mostly because we're starting with Vanity Fair and the size of that scares me 😂

This is my first time on one of your videos so not sure what all you’ve read, but here’s my suggestions for the future: I’m reading The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr by E.TA. Hoffman (German) and it is strange and fantastic! And I’m Canadian so a Canadian classic I would recommend is The Diviners by Margaret Laurence (1970s). Also if you’re interested in gender and sexuality in classics Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is great!

I'm a new subscriber and I love your content! You inspired me to read classics and explore their stories. If you are exploring classics from other countries, from my country, the Philippines, we have classic novels, the most famous of them are from Jose Rizal: the Noli Me Tangere, and El Filibusterismo. He also had written several poems. All of these novels have English translations. :)

It's crazy how similar our taste in books is! I just finished Howards End and fell in love with it. I think you'll really enjoy it. Anna Karenina is not as intimidating as it seems. It's been a while since I read any Russian literature, but I remember being shocked by how approachable Anna Karenina was (minus keeping track of the Russian names, which is always a bit of a struggle). My Cousin Rachel is definitely a book I'd like to read as well. I've also toyed with reading the Mysteries of Udolpho, but its size has always intimidated me too much. I hadn't realized how little Dickens you've read. I too, would like to explore more of his works. I was thinking of tackling David Copperfield or Bleak House next. Cold Comfort Farm is on my radar to read as well. Madame Bovary has been on my distant TBR for years now too. Your TBR is so ambitious, and you have fascinating themes to pursue this year! :)

Hi Lucy. Hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year! I'm starting a Classics challenge this year. I love classic stories but I'm not very confident when reading them. So I'm going to read the ones I already have waiting on my shelves but read them alongside an audiobook. I used to read like this as a child. I wasn't a reluctant reader I just found reading hard. My mum would buy books with the recording on cassette tapes so I could read along with it boosting my confidence. I thought I would try it again. Good luck with your endeavours, I hope enjoy all you read!

I read Anna Karenina, the same edition you have. I really enjoyed it, it’s really readable and surprisingly funny in places. It does waffle on at the end, I admit I skipped some passages, but still got loads of it. I am tempted to read War and Peace this year. Looking forward to your thoughts.

i've read despised and rejected and i thought it was an incredible, remarkable book! i hope you enjoy it, it can be both light and sweet and very heavy and difficult! good luck w everything

Don’t know if you’ve gotten to The Bride of Lammermoor yet (I haven’t, but hope to someday), but I would recommend watching Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor for inspiration if you haven’t already. It will only take a couple of hours and the music is beautiful.

Omg! I just started Anna Karenina and had the same fear!! It is huge but once I started reading it I fell immediately in love and it is so much easier to read than I imagined. I’m so glad I finally picked it up! I know you will love it too!

Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are both so amazing, I‘m sure you‘ll like them ☺️

Anna Karenina is a great book! Don't worry, Tolstoy's chapters are no more than five pages. It's make the book flow better.

I finished Anna Karenina a couple of weeks ago and I am glad that I did. It had been on my reading list for quite a while. I felt mixed feelings towards the protagonist, not always liking or feeling sympathy for her. I just finished Great Expectations yesterday. The was my first introduction to Dickens and lead me to start A Tale of Two Cities today. Best of luck with your list. You have given me a few ideas for my own list.

I just set my reading challenge on Goodreads to 12 books (one per month) I feel that’s a bit ambitious for me but I’m determined. I’m going to be filming my 2019 TBR video at the weekend so keep an eye for that. Good luck with your TBR and as always, great video. Happy New Year!

First of all as a lover of classics I am so happy to see someone bringing them to light and put so much work into them. Second, I have read Anna Karenina and I have to tell you is not thay intimidating. It has a slow plot yes but it has a lot of character development and it is so gret to see stuff through our characters eyes! It was a great book and it sounds way tiresome and slow than it really feels. You can do it! A tale of two cities is an amazing masterpiece I love it with all my heart, but I do enjoy Dickens' plot and characters so much so that is probably why I loved it so much. Also the drama! So great.

One of my goals for the year is to read more classics and this is giving me so many ideas! The Importance of Being Earnest is one of my favorite books of all time, Ive reread it so many times 😊 Great video!

You should try Brazilian literature, it is absolutely amazing and very underrated. Some of my favourite authors are Brazilian, although I don't know how well they translate... but anyone interested in classics should give a chance to at least a few Brazilian authors. One of my favourite all time writers is Jorge Amado, he is very raw and real and truthful and has the most involving and fascinating books and stories I have read... he, clarisse lispector, Machado de assis, João guimaraes rosa( he is a bit harder than the others, but he is almost book God to me), Manoel de barros, Mario Quintana and Carlos Drummond (for poetry), Paulo coelho (very famous, but not my favourite. I included because it might be easier to find), graciliano Ramos and so many more that I can't list otherwise I'd be writing for hours.... all these writers changed my life and taught me a lot about everything. They are all unique, talented and profound artists and I'm very lucky to be able to read them. I'd give it a try as well as Russian literature, also very amazing... Anyway, if you're interested do a little research and you will find how rich our literature is, there's something for everyone.

I respect your curiosity. Please forgive any redundancy. The Collector by John Fowles is a good introduction into his work. Of course, The Magus is perhaps his magnum opus. 20th c. I am also a big fan of T.Hardy. Sounds like you have a full plate. Cheers!

I really enjoyed The Mysteries of Udolpho, even though I wanted to strangle the main characters sometimes. But that's why it holds a special place in my heart. And I loved the part when the mystery is solved. :)

Lucy, I just discovered your page and love your videos and your love of classics, which I have begun to include in my tbr lists. I am probably too late, regarding “ Anna Karenina,” but Oprah’s Book Club read that book, and on her website, they designed a very helpful bookmark. On one side, there are all the names of all the characters, and who they are in the book. On the other side, is a break down of how many pages to read a week, to finish the book in two months. I printed it out and lamented it. She did the same reading timeline for “A Tale of Two Cities,” and “Great Expectations.” I hope this helps you.

Great list! I really hope you enjoy Howards End, that was one of my favourite reads of 2018. I read The Last Man a couple of years ago and found it a bit difficult to get through, but it was a very interesting read and not at all what you would expect. Wilde's Ernest is one of my all time favourite classics, I would recommend the 2003 film adaptation with Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and Judi Dench if you've not seen it yet. Also love most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but the Sign of Four is one I really did not like. If you don't either, don't let it put you off and instead move on to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Ooh, Effie Briest is an interesting choice. I read it in high school but barely remember it. Definitely one for me to revisit. Hope you enjoy your 2019 reading!

Oh you've really inspired and motivated me. I have a shelf full of unloved and unread classics. Time to dust them off. Great video, thank you. Sharon x x

I would love to knuckle down and finish War and Peace this year. I won't be challenging myself to 100 books this year so it will hopefully be a more manageable goal. So many interesting books you have mentioned in this video!

I think I might join you in reading cold comfort farm. Im planning on sticking to comedy books, films and tv, for what I'm calling comedy January. After all the excitement of Christmas, January always feels a little bit sad, so I decided to fill it with cheer and joy😆😆😆😍😍😍😊😊xcx

Anna karenina should be my next book too! I love your videos!

I've officially added all of these books to my TBR list on Goodreads. I recently fell in love with Oscar Wilde and have been wanting to dive deeper into some of his other plays. Thank you for the recommendations!