Lia Embarks - Exploring the Literary World

Hello everybody! My name is Lia and I joined (almost) exactly a month ago! I've spent my time snooping around, and figured I should make a post to introduce myself and begin to track my reading. I'm an undergraduate student studying history, and while my true love is classic lit, I hope in 2025 I can incorporate some historical fiction into things. I'm always looking to understand authors/artists that are considered "timeless," but also want to try and find some hidden gems.

I read two books a month for two book clubs, and otherwise just pick up whatever I feel like reading. Let's start off with...

Read so far in 2024 In rough chronological order

1. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
2. Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man And The Sea
3. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
4. E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
5. E.M. Forster, Maurice
6. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
7. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
8. Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
9. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
10 .Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train
11. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
12. Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin
13. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
14. Virginia Woolf, The Waves
15. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
16. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

I feel good about my reading this year, it picked up during the second half, and I definitely found quite a few favorites. Some of the books here were very challenging for me, but I persevered!

Currently Reading

1. Toni Morrison, Sula (book club)
2. Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills (book club)
3. Dante, The Inferno—for class, must finish before December!
4. Herman Melville, Moby Dick—about one third through, hoping to finish before New Years

To Be Read

1. James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room—Library of America collection on its way!
2. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights—for Victober

So, yeah! That's what I've got going on :) I'll update this thread with some more specific thoughts I have on these books, and I'll try to participate more in other people's threads, now that I've gone and made a post! I also would like to work on the way I think about books and improve my review-writing skills.

Thank you for reading and hosting this wonderful group!
Lia

Welcome, Lia! That's an impressive selection of literature for the year so far. Did you like Pnin? I found it surprisingly funny when I read it. I wasn't expecting that after reading Lolita. I too enjoy history. Do you have favorite eras/topics? I read a lot about WWII, but enjoy well-written history about almost anything. Currently I'm trying to learn more about Chinese history and have discovered Frank Dikötter's wonderful books.

Welcome, Lia! What a great list of books! Looking forward to getting to know your reading.

>2 labfs39: Hi Lisa! I loved Pnin! I hadn't read any Nabokov before, and it has made me very excited to dive into Lolita, although when I say that people warn me about the difference in tone, haha. I enjoy reading about the turn of the century / early 1900s because I find that period so fascinating. My grandfather often talks to me about his WWII reading, I'll have to ask him for recommendations, along with check out your library!

A lot of heavy reading there! I read My Antonia in high school and loved it. I really should read more Willa Cather. I've also read The Goldfinch, The Inferno, and I loved Wuthering Heights. Just finished a reread of Moby Dick. It's kind of a slog in the middle, but it picks up again at the end! I read it in conjunction with Ahab's Wife which was a very interesting comparison.

Welcome to Club Read, Lia! That's an impressive list you have there! I like the Pnin love: I read it last month. I enjoyed the humour, but I also felt so sorry for Timofey Pavlovich Pnin.

>5 WelshBookworm: I'm with you on loving My Ántonia. I wrote a paper on it, so I was forced to really get to know it personally page-by-page. That's good to know about Moby Dick! I think I've hit the slog, but I'm gonna make it through! My friend read Billy Budd by Melville and liked that—I have to be sure that MD isn't my first and only Melville.

>6 Dilara86: Thank you for your welcome! And yes, more Pnin visibility! If only he knew how much people truly loved him.

>7 lianove3: I should read Billy Budd. My daughter studied it in her last year of high school and really liked it. I meant to borrow it afterwards but somehow never did...
I should also re-read Moby Dick. It's quite clear that I was too young when I first read it and that it all went over my head.

What's Victober?

>7 lianove3: When I read Moby-Dick, I accidentally hit on a strategy that really worked for me. About every other chapter is a dry "scientific" exposition on some aspect of the whale and the alternating chapters are more plot-driven. I was reading in smaller chunks and ended up starting a reading session with a "boring chapter" (when I was fresh and motivated) and ending with a plot chapter (which left me interested and more likely to pick it up again the next day). I loved it.

>8 Dilara86: Haha, I'll try and capture as much of Moby Dick as I can so that doesn't happen to me! Also, Victober is a reading challenge on YouTube where people try to read Victorian fiction during October. I don't post on YouTube, but I thought it would be a good excuse to finish some books that I've dropped midway through.

>9 ELiz_M: Ohh, that's very helpful! I'll have to apply that to my reading. I've definitely hit the slump where I think a lot of people give up, but not me!

I'll add my welcome to the rest, Lia. You've got several favorites of mine on your "read so far this year" list. Do you have a specific area of concentration in your history studies?

Sula by Toni Morrison

I feel like I wouldn't have enjoyed this if I hadn't had some previous exposure to Toni Morrison's writing, so I'm glad that I did. This was much, much shorter than Song of Solomon but left me with just as much to think about. The book follows two women that grow up in a small Black town during the 1920s. That's about all I can say, after that it gets pretty out there. There was one specific part in this book that shocked me so much I yelled "what?!"

I watched this review which mentions how Morrison doesn't write characters, but rather people. This was especially apparent in how you feel toward the characters after the shock I mentioned—somehow they still hold a sense of rationality, but why would a rational person make the decisions they did? These questions about human complexity all seem to lead toward questions about hate. That the people who hate are just as equally human as those who don't, and the ramifications of that truth.

I know I missed a lot about this book, and I might add to it after I discuss it in my book club, but wow, what a book! Maybe I'll read it again since I have some time before the meeting. I won The Bluest Eye in a raffle so I'm excited to read that.

>11 rocketjk: Thank you! I don't have a specific concentration, but I hope to figure out which areas I prefer over the next few years so that I can focus on those!

>12 lianove3: My favorites were Beloved and The Bluest Eye. I have a couple more of her books on my shelves that I should get to: A Mercy and Recitatif.