I resonate so much with your comments. Mary Barton has the slight edge for me over North and South because it was such a massive page-turner, but I do think North and South is better written. And I'm the same with romances. Just can't do them. Give me a drama that has a little romance on the side. 😅
RE SHERLOCK HOLMES. I'm not surprised that some people find Sherlock Holmes not exactly to their taste. He's highly intelligent and he's very much aware of that fact. From the lofty intellectual heights on which he is perched he looks down on mere mortals. Like an eagle surveying sparrows as he soars above. Unlike say, Raskolnikov who thinks his superiority makes him above the law, Holmes' intentions are good but he's a bit insufferable. When I first encountered Holmes as a reader (I'm sure I saw couple movies with basil Rathbone as Holmes before I met him as a reader) I tried to see if there was any historical character like him. In fact Doyle supposedly based the character on a Professor he encountered and admired when he was a student in Medical School. The only historical figure that I saw any affinity with was Julius Caesar. Caesar was a sort of superman, great intellect, writer, orator, statesman, general, linguist And more than a bit of a show-off. (Consider the business about dictating 7 letters at one time.). I really think there's a strong resemblance. And so you have, in Holmes, a Caesar, reduced to playing The Great Detective. Altogether a marvellous and fascinating fictional character who resembles a fascinating and very real historical character
I read New Grub Street 2 years ago for Victober and absolutely loved it. It had layered characters, offered a deep insight into writers' minds and the publishing world and had a remarkable sense of weather, class, gender and society. The writing style was maybe not as dreamy as you'd prefer but it did the story justice.
Really great analysis of why these are favorites, Jennifer. I especially enjoyed your comments on North and South, which is one of my favorites. Your comment about reading as a teen is so true--for me that is what makes Jane Eyre my favorite of all time. I read it at about age 12/13 and totally identified with young Jane. Every time I re-read it, I re-live those feelings of being young, quiet, misunderstood and unjustly treated, and then revel in feeling vindicated as Jane fights back, matures and overcomes adversity.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles IS my Roman Empire. I cannot emphasize this enough, not a day goes by without me thinking about it. Loved to see your opinions on the favorites and the least favorites ❤️ Your commentary is relaxing and intriguing as always!
I was that angsty teenager that fell in love with Wuthering Heights! I was 13 when the movie came out with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall. A friend and I went to see it and we were crying so hard that we sat until the next showing before we were able to leave. Later my mom and I watched the Laurence Olivier - Merle Oberon movie on TV. Keep in mind that both movies were only the first half of the book. When I read the book later that year I was horrified at what happened but I was hooked forever.
I loved New Grub Street when I read it, it was a really interesting story with some fantastic characters. I actually found it very readable, not dense at all but more like a modern novel. It's not a very happy book but it has plenty going on. I recommend it 😊
Like you, I'm not a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. I find it so grating when he begins asking question after question that only he himself already knows the answers to. It's like he's showing off and making a game of it when there are always lives and livelihoods at stake! Speaking of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have you ever looked into his involvement with the infamous Cottingley Fairies? To this day, Doyle's claim to fame is his deeply skeptical and rational Sherlock, yet the author himself was fooled by a couple of young girls and some hokey cardboard cutouts. When I remember that, I don't feel so bad for disliking his Sherlock stories...
Jane Eyre is also my favorite Victorian novel - I loved the kookiness of Rochester and the duality of the couple by having our "plain Jane". I loved both characters and the stark contrast they brought to the novel. Also, the flickering candles gave it a superb gothic vibe.
I think Charlotte Brontë did such a great job creating a genuine exchange between two people and them ending up falling for each other even if he’s not ideal or it not being an ideal situation. It felt realistic, their conversations and interactions. I don’t think it’s a romance to aspire but it does seem believable, so I find that very impressive. (I’m doing a re read now so idk if I’ll feel the same after reading 😅)
I think I chose Wuthering Heights because of the prose and I think what we can learn about the characters. It mostly broke my heart for young Heathcliff and sadly what happens throughout the rest of the novel because he chooses revenge. I may feel different things for other characters on another read. But yea for me Emily Bronte made a “grotesque” masterpiece.
Very interesting Jennnifer. I think your discussion raises several issues that I would like to comment on, but I will break my reactions into several posts. What amazes me most is the absence of the Big Three as anyone's favorites: Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope. And with the exception of Emily Bronte all these writers were regarded as pigmies in comparison to the Big Three. Elliot was much admired and little read. Charlotte Bronte was often read but not much admired. I had to read Silas Marner in my first year in High School. I had an excellent English Professor. who didn't ruin it for us. I actually liked the book, and thought it well done, but --and I cannot explain this very well-- I came away with the feeling, that I never wanted to read anything else by her--and I never have. It's not that I dislike her or disparage her abilities, it's just that she's interested in things that I am not. I can't think of any other writer that I feel this way about. I want to talk about Sherlock Holmes, but I'll save that for another post.
I am shocked at the missing authors as well!! And is there anyone anywhere who is talking about Thackeray at any given time?? I never hear a word about him….
He seems to have fallen from grace into total oblivion. Dickens was number 1 and Thackeray a close second. Trollope, who is my favorite, a distant third with Emily Bronte and George Elliot given respectful nods, but not really in the Top Three.@@janetsmith8566
Hi Jennifer, my favorite is Jane Eyre…first Victorian novel I read…because it’s about so many different themes, one of which I’ve never heard talked about, which is understandable. To me the book is about Redemption. All the way through to its climactic love story, when you read for this approach, there it is, shouting at you, and as a Christian, I tear up every time I read it or think of the writer, whose Bible you can view on TH-cam…marked up throughout like mine…Remarkable person, writer, and book. Love you!
I’ve finished Odd Women by George Gissing. His writing is not intimidating at all. But he doesn’t like happy endings. New Grubb Street is an important book if you’re interested in publishing. Authors and publishers say that his book still shows what happens in the publishing industry nowadays . It’s a must read.
I still couldn't pick one favorite but I loved Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Withering Heights, North and South, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Barchester Towers, and Frankenstein. This probably isn't all of them, and even though it feels like I read a lot of them it feels like there is still more to try.
How interesting that readers don't even think to explain why a book is a favorite, but it's so true 😂 Dorian Gray could also be a case of "season in life" type of book. I read it in my late teens and early 20s and loved it. I re-read it recently, 20 years later, and DNFd.
I do love Jane Eyre, but The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is right up there, too, IMO. 🤓 I have a love-hate relationship with Wuthering Heights; I hated it when I read it the first time (which was only 6 or 7 years ago) and yet, I thought about it for months afterwards. I also love A Tale of Two Cities and of course A Christmas Carol. Anthony Trollope is probably my favorite Victorian writer and I love The Way the Live Now, so that would probably be my final answer! 😆 But...I am a huge Holmes fan, too. 😂 🤷🏼♀
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is my number one Victorian novel so far, but I have a lot of books to read to compare it to once I am done. I have not read The Tenant of Winfield Hall yet. I will try to read Woman in White one day. When I first tried to read it, I could not get into it. I love the story as shown in a movie and The Moonstone too. I just have not read them. A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite Dickens novel but I really want to read Our Mutual Friend. David Copperfield is quite a story in movies, which has been done many times. I liked the book too. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a very moving story too but Far from the Maddening Crowd is my favorite of Hardys so far. New Grubb Street seems interesting; I read just a little of the beginning on Amazon and I could get into it if I got it.
I read all of the Sherlock Holmes books and stories over Summer, and I am currently reading Anthony Horowitz' The House of Silk. I also have a wee collection of Holmes movies in my DVD collection. So I don't have any problems with Holmes! 😄 I think the reason people can have problems with Holmes is that these were printed in the Strand magazine, so would not have been read all at once (although they were certainly published as collections). I've noticed that authors like Dickens, whose books were in serial form, suffer from the same criticism among modern readers. I think that now we're so used to "bingeing" that we forget the context of how Victorian books were originally received by their readers.
Read "The Woman in White" within past decade and it is definitely my favorite Victorian novel with the mystery and melodrama and dear young protagonists. This, even though I finally finished David Copperfield this summer and did love it.
It's so interesting that so many of us agree on the same few books! Dorian Gray was one of the first books I read in English and it has been one of my favourite books of all times ever since. Wuthering Heights is another of my favourites. As for Sherlock Holmes: While I like Doyle's stories, I absolutely ADORE all the characters/stories that were inspired by SH, like Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc, Hornung's A. J. Raffles (Bunny is a far better Watson!) and the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett.
I haven’t read enough but I just chose _Silas Marner_ over _New Grub Street_ and am making slow headway (coming out of a bout of illness) - page count was the deciding factor - but I have _Woman in White_ waiting in the wings and I may try to round out my Victober with that after hearing this. It’s been on my “list” for some time.
I just finished Jane Eyre and I am actually in both camps at once, if I had to describe my relationship with it it would be through the Rihanna lyric from love on the brain “Beats me black and blue but it fucks me so good and I can’t get enough, must be love on the brain” because I keep feeling like I’m slingshotting back between loving it and being critical of it. Charlotte Brontë writes some very radical things for her time and even now which I love, there’s so much hidden in tricky ways to analyze and dive into and also I just really like Charlotte Brontë after reading it. But I’m also very critical of how dull I found pages 50-100 and the last 120 pages, I think when Jane Eyre was really in its element is the middle 300 pages and I LOVED that part but I’m very harsh with pages the latter pages than the former pages I mentioned. I can live with Mr. Rochester being scum, but I’d be far less critical of the book if he had offered to send Jane to Madeira to see her dying uncle, he uncle gives her the money because he’s dying, he tells her she has cousins. she writes to Rochester where she’s going but Thornfield has already burned down by the time the letter arrives and he has no idea where Jane is and then she meets up with her cousins and everything continues the way it did after that. Why it didn’t immediately cross Janes mind to be like 1) I have a dying relative and the only blood relative I might ever get to know and 2) I need a distraction from whatever is going on in this house. If that were the case it would be a favorite book alongside Moby-Dick, Orlando and The Sound and The Fury, but as it is I just really liked it and it’s probably my favorite Victorian novel so far (I’ve only read Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Silas Marner tbf unless you also count The Turn of The Screw but I digress). I never expected to leave Jane Eyre feeling as passionately as I did about it though, so I really have to read more from the Brontë sisters.
Always going to be 'Jane Eyre' for me. I root for her, so much. Anything that's copied and parodied so much (the wedding) has got to be seminal. 'North and South' is up there for me as well. I found a partially quoted poem in 'Trilby' - thought - 'I like that, possibly a new Victorian poet to look out for' - looked in the notes, it was Byron. No wonder I liked it. 🤣
Interesting. Mine would be: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Bleak House by Charles Dickens The Woman in White by Wilkie Collin’s The Heir of Redclyffe by Mary Elizabeth Yonge
New Grub Street (that was my comment!) to me is not at all intimidating, i find his writing style really accessible. He wrote such interesting and complex relationships in his books and theres often some auto biographical elements, especially in NGS. As someone else said, they arent cheery but then again, how many 19thc books are? Odd Women by him is also brilliantly, remarkably feminist for the time and once again extremely readable!
Well.. my all time (thus far/ 4yrs in) favourite Vic novels are generally ones that make the top of most peoples worst list lol 😁🙅♀; Villette 💘💝, Portrait Of A Lady (i'd swap it out for The Golden Bowl if it was published a few yrs earlier) & Romola. JEyre has always been a solid 4* 'v.good / fine' for me & genuinely found parts (quite sizeable parts) of MMarch really slow & hard to get through. Gissings' TOWomen & TWhirlpool are both top VIc priorities (on shelf) & agree, NGrubSt's publishing theme is a cracker for the given period 👌Pretty sure i'll love Gaskell (screen adaptations are faves) when i get round to her.. 🧐👍😊
I resonate so much with your comments. Mary Barton has the slight edge for me over North and South because it was such a massive page-turner, but I do think North and South is better written. And I'm the same with romances. Just can't do them. Give me a drama that has a little romance on the side. 😅
The last couple of days I have been binge watching your posts. Thank you. I've found them to be very interesting.
RE SHERLOCK HOLMES. I'm not surprised that some people find Sherlock Holmes not exactly to their taste. He's highly intelligent and he's very much aware of that fact. From the lofty intellectual heights on which he is perched he looks down on mere mortals. Like an eagle surveying sparrows as he soars above. Unlike say, Raskolnikov who thinks his superiority makes him above the law, Holmes' intentions are good but he's a bit insufferable. When I first encountered Holmes as a reader (I'm sure I saw couple movies with basil Rathbone as Holmes before I met him as a reader) I tried to see if there was any historical character like him. In fact Doyle supposedly based the character on a Professor he encountered and admired when he was a student in Medical School. The only historical figure that I saw any affinity with was Julius Caesar. Caesar was a sort of superman, great intellect, writer, orator, statesman, general, linguist And more than a bit of a show-off. (Consider the business about dictating 7 letters at one time.). I really think there's a strong resemblance. And so you have, in Holmes, a Caesar, reduced to playing The Great Detective.
Altogether a marvellous and fascinating fictional character who resembles a fascinating and very real historical character
I read New Grub Street 2 years ago for Victober and absolutely loved it. It had layered characters, offered a deep insight into writers' minds and the publishing world and had a remarkable sense of weather, class, gender and society. The writing style was maybe not as dreamy as you'd prefer but it did the story justice.
Really great analysis of why these are favorites, Jennifer. I especially enjoyed your comments on North and South, which is one of my favorites. Your comment about reading as a teen is so true--for me that is what makes Jane Eyre my favorite of all time. I read it at about age 12/13 and totally identified with young Jane. Every time I re-read it, I re-live those feelings of being young, quiet, misunderstood and unjustly treated, and then revel in feeling vindicated as Jane fights back, matures and overcomes adversity.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles IS my Roman Empire. I cannot emphasize this enough, not a day goes by without me thinking about it.
Loved to see your opinions on the favorites and the least favorites ❤️ Your commentary is relaxing and intriguing as always!
I was that angsty teenager that fell in love with Wuthering Heights! I was 13 when the movie came out with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall. A friend and I went to see it and we were crying so hard that we sat until the next showing before we were able to leave. Later my mom and I watched the Laurence Olivier - Merle Oberon movie on TV. Keep in mind that both movies were only the first half of the book. When I read the book later that year I was horrified at what happened but I was hooked forever.
Wurhering Hights has a virtue not for been just for Victobar but the spooky season as well
I loved New Grub Street when I read it, it was a really interesting story with some fantastic characters. I actually found it very readable, not dense at all but more like a modern novel. It's not a very happy book but it has plenty going on. I recommend it 😊
Like you, I'm not a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. I find it so grating when he begins asking question after question that only he himself already knows the answers to. It's like he's showing off and making a game of it when there are always lives and livelihoods at stake!
Speaking of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have you ever looked into his involvement with the infamous Cottingley Fairies? To this day, Doyle's claim to fame is his deeply skeptical and rational Sherlock, yet the author himself was fooled by a couple of young girls and some hokey cardboard cutouts. When I remember that, I don't feel so bad for disliking his Sherlock stories...
Wuthering Hights has a virtue to be not just for Victobar but also for a spooky season.
Jane Eyre is also my favorite Victorian novel - I loved the kookiness of Rochester and the duality of the couple by having our "plain Jane". I loved both characters and the stark contrast they brought to the novel. Also, the flickering candles gave it a superb gothic vibe.
My problem with Wuthering Heights is definitely because there’s no one I can root for 😂
I think Charlotte Brontë did such a great job creating a genuine exchange between two people and them ending up falling for each other even if he’s not ideal or it not being an ideal situation. It felt realistic, their conversations and interactions. I don’t think it’s a romance to aspire but it does seem believable, so I find that very impressive. (I’m doing a re read now so idk if I’ll feel the same after reading 😅)
I think I chose Wuthering Heights because of the prose and I think what we can learn about the characters. It mostly broke my heart for young Heathcliff and sadly what happens throughout the rest of the novel because he chooses revenge. I may feel different things for other characters on another read. But yea for me Emily Bronte made a “grotesque” masterpiece.
Fave Vic Nov? “our mutual friend” the first chapter grabs you by the throat and it never lets go!
I think Agnes Grey is way more romantic than Jane Eyre. I am with you on The Woman in White. I absolutely love that book.
Very interesting Jennnifer. I think your discussion raises several issues that I would like to comment on, but I will break my reactions into several posts. What amazes me most is the absence of the Big Three as anyone's favorites: Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope. And with the exception of Emily Bronte all these writers were regarded as pigmies in comparison to the Big Three. Elliot was much admired and little read. Charlotte Bronte was often read but not much admired. I had to read Silas Marner in my first year in High School. I had an excellent English Professor. who didn't ruin it for us. I actually liked the book, and thought it well done, but --and I cannot explain this very well-- I came away with the feeling, that I never wanted to read anything else by her--and I never have. It's not that I dislike her or disparage her abilities, it's just that she's interested in things that I am not. I can't think of any other writer that I feel this way about. I want to talk about Sherlock Holmes, but I'll save that for another post.
I am shocked at the missing authors as well!! And is there anyone anywhere who is talking about Thackeray at any given time?? I never hear a word about him….
He seems to have fallen from grace into total oblivion. Dickens was number 1 and Thackeray a close second. Trollope, who is my favorite, a distant third with Emily Bronte and George Elliot given respectful nods, but not really in the Top Three.@@janetsmith8566
Withering Heights: thumbs down scarey creepy nasty. Yuk.
Wuthering 🤣
I read Wuthering Heights for the first time in my 50s and loved every minute of it.
Hi Jennifer, my favorite is Jane Eyre…first Victorian novel I read…because it’s about so many different themes, one of which I’ve never heard talked about, which is understandable.
To me the book is about Redemption. All the way through to its climactic love story, when you read for this approach, there it is, shouting at you, and as a Christian, I tear up every time I read it or think of the writer, whose Bible you can view on TH-cam…marked up throughout like mine…Remarkable person, writer, and book.
Love you!
I’ve finished Odd Women by George Gissing. His writing is not intimidating at all. But he doesn’t like happy endings. New Grubb Street is an important book if you’re interested in publishing. Authors and publishers say that his book still shows what happens in the publishing industry nowadays . It’s a must read.
Have you seen the 1994 BBC mini-series of "Middlemarch"? I actually watched it before I read the book and it made me appreciate it a lot more 😃
I still couldn't pick one favorite but I loved Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Withering Heights, North and South, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Barchester Towers, and Frankenstein. This probably isn't all of them, and even though it feels like I read a lot of them it feels like there is still more to try.
Jane Eyre is my favorite novel, period. I love Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, and Elizabeth Gaskell too. Cranford is also one of my favorite books.
I miss you 😢
How interesting that readers don't even think to explain why a book is a favorite, but it's so true 😂
Dorian Gray could also be a case of "season in life" type of book. I read it in my late teens and early 20s and loved it. I re-read it recently, 20 years later, and DNFd.
I also preferred Mary Barton ❤
So interesting. Mine, would be Tenent of Wildfell Hall right now I think.
I do love Jane Eyre, but The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is right up there, too, IMO. 🤓 I have a love-hate relationship with Wuthering Heights; I hated it when I read it the first time (which was only 6 or 7 years ago) and yet, I thought about it for months afterwards. I also love A Tale of Two Cities and of course A Christmas Carol. Anthony Trollope is probably my favorite Victorian writer and I love The Way the Live Now, so that would probably be my final answer! 😆 But...I am a huge Holmes fan, too. 😂 🤷🏼♀
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is my number one Victorian novel so far, but I have a lot of books to read to compare it to once I am done. I have not read The Tenant of Winfield Hall yet. I will try to read Woman in White one day. When I first tried to read it, I could not get into it. I love the story as shown in a movie and The Moonstone too. I just have not read them. A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite Dickens novel but I really want to read Our Mutual Friend. David Copperfield is quite a story in movies, which has been done many times. I liked the book too. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a very moving story too but Far from the Maddening Crowd is my favorite of Hardys so far. New Grubb Street seems interesting; I read just a little of the beginning on Amazon and I could get into it if I got it.
I read all of the Sherlock Holmes books and stories over Summer, and I am currently reading Anthony Horowitz' The House of Silk. I also have a wee collection of Holmes movies in my DVD collection. So I don't have any problems with Holmes! 😄 I think the reason people can have problems with Holmes is that these were printed in the Strand magazine, so would not have been read all at once (although they were certainly published as collections). I've noticed that authors like Dickens, whose books were in serial form, suffer from the same criticism among modern readers. I think that now we're so used to "bingeing" that we forget the context of how Victorian books were originally received by their readers.
Read "The Woman in White" within past decade and it is definitely my favorite Victorian novel with the mystery and melodrama and dear young protagonists. This, even though I finally finished David Copperfield this summer and did love it.
It's so interesting that so many of us agree on the same few books! Dorian Gray was one of the first books I read in English and it has been one of my favourite books of all times ever since. Wuthering Heights is another of my favourites.
As for Sherlock Holmes: While I like Doyle's stories, I absolutely ADORE all the characters/stories that were inspired by SH, like Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc, Hornung's A. J. Raffles (Bunny is a far better Watson!) and the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett.
Thank you Jennifer!
I haven’t read enough but I just chose _Silas Marner_ over _New Grub Street_ and am making slow headway (coming out of a bout of illness) - page count was the deciding factor - but I have _Woman in White_ waiting in the wings and I may try to round out my Victober with that after hearing this. It’s been on my “list” for some time.
I just finished Jane Eyre and I am actually in both camps at once, if I had to describe my relationship with it it would be through the Rihanna lyric from love on the brain “Beats me black and blue but it fucks me so good and I can’t get enough, must be love on the brain” because I keep feeling like I’m slingshotting back between loving it and being critical of it. Charlotte Brontë writes some very radical things for her time and even now which I love, there’s so much hidden in tricky ways to analyze and dive into and also I just really like Charlotte Brontë after reading it. But I’m also very critical of how dull I found pages 50-100 and the last 120 pages, I think when Jane Eyre was really in its element is the middle 300 pages and I LOVED that part but I’m very harsh with pages the latter pages than the former pages I mentioned. I can live with Mr. Rochester being scum, but I’d be far less critical of the book if he had offered to send Jane to Madeira to see her dying uncle, he uncle gives her the money because he’s dying, he tells her she has cousins. she writes to Rochester where she’s going but Thornfield has already burned down by the time the letter arrives and he has no idea where Jane is and then she meets up with her cousins and everything continues the way it did after that. Why it didn’t immediately cross Janes mind to be like 1) I have a dying relative and the only blood relative I might ever get to know and 2) I need a distraction from whatever is going on in this house. If that were the case it would be a favorite book alongside Moby-Dick, Orlando and The Sound and The Fury, but as it is I just really liked it and it’s probably my favorite Victorian novel so far (I’ve only read Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Silas Marner tbf unless you also count The Turn of The Screw but I digress). I never expected to leave Jane Eyre feeling as passionately as I did about it though, so I really have to read more from the Brontë sisters.
Always going to be 'Jane Eyre' for me. I root for her, so much. Anything that's copied and parodied so much (the wedding) has got to be seminal. 'North and South' is up there for me as well. I found a partially quoted poem in 'Trilby' - thought - 'I like that, possibly a new Victorian poet to look out for' - looked in the notes, it was Byron. No wonder I liked it. 🤣
Interesting.
Mine would be:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collin’s
The Heir of Redclyffe by Mary Elizabeth Yonge
New Grub Street (that was my comment!) to me is not at all intimidating, i find his writing style really accessible. He wrote such interesting and complex relationships in his books and theres often some auto biographical elements, especially in NGS. As someone else said, they arent cheery but then again, how many 19thc books are? Odd Women by him is also brilliantly, remarkably feminist for the time and once again extremely readable!
😊
Not into Sherlock Holmes either. Never have been. Never will be.
DG is the worst book! I don’t get the hype
Well.. my all time (thus far/ 4yrs in) favourite Vic novels are generally ones that make the top of most peoples worst list lol 😁🙅♀; Villette 💘💝, Portrait Of A Lady (i'd swap it out for The Golden Bowl if it was published a few yrs earlier) & Romola. JEyre has always been a solid 4* 'v.good / fine' for me & genuinely found parts (quite sizeable parts) of MMarch really slow & hard to get through. Gissings' TOWomen & TWhirlpool are both top VIc priorities (on shelf) & agree, NGrubSt's publishing theme is a cracker for the given period 👌Pretty sure i'll love Gaskell (screen adaptations are faves) when i get round to her.. 🧐👍😊
Bought a book about Sherlock Holmes just yesterday. 📗