"The back didn't make much sense.. but I want to read it anyway." LOL. 2013 was the first year I read Gaiman and of course I really enjoyed him. I read/listened to the Ocean at the End of the Lane and Coraline and his storytelling (along with his narration) is awesome!
Crime & Punishment is fantastic. I read it in school and one thing I had to do was make notes on people's names because everyone has more than one name so it can get confusing, so there is a little bit of a hint.
Don't feel so blah about reading these gems! Honestly, seeing your video makes me want to read classics even more! So I'm happy you chose these, because god knows I could never get through half of that list. Far From the Madding Crowd is being filmed as a movie right now, though :)
Barry, know your fans love you! Don't look like you dread waking up in the morning cause you're just giving a bad impression to new people that could love you like we do. Let your energy shine through. Happy new year. Ps: nice editing...
Lord of the flies is one of my favourite books, we had to read it for gcse English and I thought it was brilliant! I also liked to kill a mockingbird but I found the first half very slow
HHGTTG is fucking brilliant. As is Dostoevsky. Thomas Hardy, though, I just can't. I find him so dull. This might be because I had to read him in high school but we also read Orwell and Steinbeck and they didn't suffer because of it. I look forward to hearing your reviews!
Neil Gaiman is amazing! I just got "Ocean at the End of The Lane" for Christmas and I'm so excited to read it. Lord of the Flies is philosophical, but I liked it. If you're looking for a good laugh, Neil Gaiman co-wrote "Good Omens" with Terry Pratchett, and it had me in stitches
I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time last year. I can't wait to see what you think of it. I had the book in my house for years and now regret waiting so long to open it. The last page summed up the entire loveliness of the book....sigh....
Good luck. Oh, and if The Hitchhiker's Guide isn't to your taste, you might want to try Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, also by Douglas Adams. It's wonderful.
I've never read Lord of the Flies either, it's good to know someone else hasn't as well. :P Also, I thought To Kill a Mockingbird was brilliant. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it. I have so many books to read this year as well. I really love your videos, they're great.
have you read Crime & Punishment already? I absolutely loved it. It's in our high school syllabus, at least it was when I was in high school. Fantastic stuff.
Good luck! I had to read Far From the Madding Crowd in school and hated it. But it seems to be well-loved, so that may just be the fact that I had to read it for school. Lord of the Flies and Hitchhikers are brilliant though!
If you are into Stalinist Russia and literature in general you might love The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons, set in WW2, it is highly enjoyable read. if you you really get into it you will devour it and the two that follow. It is an epic love story but set against the action, tragedies, and courage associated with the war, centring on the blockade of Leningrad. The author instills literary sensibilities in the central character, hence the title. I loved that book and everyone I know who read it loved it.
2014 could be the year of Dickens and Russian literature for me as well: Great Expectations and War and Peace are high up on my list. There are so many books in your list that I want to read: American Gods, Far from the Madding Crowd, Crime and Punishment, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... All, actually. I wish you GOOD LUCK.
There were far too many books in that selection that made me think well that's depressing, that's bleak as hell, oh good god, that one's just about despair. You're going to have such a fun year!
'To Kill a Mockingbird' is quite slow at the start, but stick with it. It gets much better in the second half of the book once it gets to the trial and such. Good luck with your 10 choices!
I just finished American Gods and thought it was pretty great, however I did read the author's preferred text and thought they could have chucked a few pages here and there, so I'd probably recommend the edited version =)
This morning I bought "Far From The Madding Crowd" by Thomas Hardy, because recently I've found out this book is his best book...And now I watch your video (for the first time:) ) and see that you want to read it too. I'm not alone with this))
Due to my self inflicted poverty of 2014, I'm going to have to do less theatre, and less going out, but this can be replaced by making a start on reading all the Doctor Who books on my shelves... All 280 (ish) of them! Still at around 300 pages long, they aren't too bad to get through.
Read both Lord of The Flies and To Kill A Mockingbird for school didn't properly read TKAM though but LOTF is one of the best forced to read in class books I've read
I read Crime and Punishment last year... At first I thought it could be a little bit boring, but it was great. Everybody there is quite philosophical. I can't wait to read any other Dostoievki novel *-*
Good luck! To Kill a Mockingbird is easy enough, Grapes of Wrath is a total slog but the ending is unreal. I was never assigned Lord of the Flies either, we must be the only ones. The rest? Brave.
You will not regret reading American Gods, it's so good :) although I chose to write my coursework about it so right now I'm finding just looking at it stressful
Hey Barry, don't start Dickens with Pickwick Papers. It's funny and charming, but episodic. His favorite was David Copperfield (a surprisingly fast read) because it's autobiographical. Tale of Two Cities is also a lot of fun. W. Somerset Maugham made fun of Hardy in Cakes and Ale; don't read him the same year you're starting Dostoevsky! Death and gloom on the moors! Try Maugham's Moon and Sixpence or The Razor's Edge--the latter always a hit with my teenage students.
That's what I like to see: enthusiasm. ;-) To simplify your task, you could just read the first two Hitch-hikers books. After that, the law of diminishing returns sets in. Also, if Pickwick gets too much, then Great Expectations is a fabulous novel and wonderfully short. And if you like misery in fiction, try Jude the Obscure: a much more satisfying read than Madding Crowd, in my opinion.
I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird, and am currently reading Hitchhiker's Guide. To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty good, but there's more religious overtones than there was in the film. It's actually kinda funny watching the film after reading the novel, because it feels more rushed, and they only take a little time to allude to some scenes that the book is more descriptive of. Hitchhiker's Guide is kinda weird. I'm about a hundred pages in and I don't think I understand enough to describe it. It's suppose to be funny from what I read, but I only chuckled at a few lines. Maybe it's the absurdity of it? I don't know.
Dickens books are long because they were first published in serial form in news papers. Why don't you experiment with one of the novels by reading each chapter few days or one week apart. Gaimans books are usually easy reads.
Really good choices! Dostoevsky is great! (if you want to read another perfect Russian book, read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov) I didn't really like Lord of the flies, absolutely enjoyed American Gods, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is hilarious. I've never read anything by Dickens (Except for A Christmas carol) and Thomas Hardy is almost unknown to me. Don't blame me, I'm Hungarian.
UGH Lord of the Flies... it might just be because I studied it with a shitty teacher but I thought that book was sooo dry. Otherwise - good choices! Grapes of Wrath should probs be on my list too, seeing as I loved Mice and Men so much. Good luck indeed!
How on earth have I not discovered you before now?? And we're Goodreads friends even! We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird - YES.
Some of those books I've read, some of those I haven't. (And one I hated.) I hope you have fun with Crime and Punishment--simply because I fangirl about that book and Dostoyevsky, yay. Nevertheless, good luck with all of those :)
Why none of the works of Ayn Rand? She was a Russian author, and her book Atlas Shrugged was the second most influential book of the 20th century! We The Living, The Fountainhead, or Atlas Shrugged are all great books to start with. ... and if you really want to see a scary photo look up Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his Stanford Prison Experiment.
Hi) i'm half russian and half ukrainian and i just wanna say that it's fucking amazing to hear about great russian classic authors from people outside my native countries ;) Good luck) i like your videos)
Sooo.... fun story: I could nOT get through FFTMC by Hardy. Just look up Tom Hardy's old myspace. Way better Thomas Hardy experience, just saying (or Tess!) And Mockingbird is great! As is Gaiman! And Steinbeck! Woo 2014!
Oh god. I can't stand Dickens. LOVE Russian literature. For Crime and Punishement, pleeeeease read the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Pretty please?
1. Hitchhiker's Guide is pretty meh. It's not that interesting, not that funny but definitely worth a read. 2. I have yet to read t Dickens novel that I liked so ... sorry for you. 3. Crime and Punishment is great. 4. The same for American Gods. 5. I haven't read To kill a mockingbird either. Let's read it together ... if I don't forget :P Good luck ;)
HHGTTG is so incredibly boring. It is. Why don't you try Hard Times by Dickens - that's a short one. Crime and Punishment is the best! Really depressing! You'll love it!
Hey barry I don't unserstand why you make yourself read books that you don't want to read just so you can say you've read this and that by that author.in my opinion reading should be fun and enjoyable and not about which author you missed.
Wow.You're going to need more than luck. You look so sad in this video.Maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised by some of them.At least your willing to give them a go.
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Dicken's got paid by the word and he took full advantage of his employers. His books are all massive!
"The back didn't make much sense.. but I want to read it anyway." LOL.
2013 was the first year I read Gaiman and of course I really enjoyed him. I read/listened to the Ocean at the End of the Lane and Coraline and his storytelling (along with his narration) is awesome!
Crime & Punishment is fantastic. I read it in school and one thing I had to do was make notes on people's names because everyone has more than one name so it can get confusing, so there is a little bit of a hint.
I like your videos, dude, I know you don't get so much attention, but honestly, I get excited when you release book related videos, you entertain me
Alright, sir, you've motivated me to get more ambitious with my 2014 reading goals. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of these books!
Don't feel so blah about reading these gems! Honestly, seeing your video makes me want to read classics even more! So I'm happy you chose these, because god knows I could never get through half of that list. Far From the Madding Crowd is being filmed as a movie right now, though :)
Barry, know your fans love you! Don't look like you dread waking up in the morning cause you're just giving a bad impression to new people that could love you like we do. Let your energy shine through. Happy new year. Ps: nice editing...
It's strange that all of your books (except Neil Gaiman) are also on my TBR list and I love how you actually read the classics! It's so refreshing.
Lord of the flies is one of my favourite books, we had to read it for gcse English and I thought it was brilliant! I also liked to kill a mockingbird but I found the first half very slow
HHGTTG is fucking brilliant. As is Dostoevsky. Thomas Hardy, though, I just can't. I find him so dull. This might be because I had to read him in high school but we also read Orwell and Steinbeck and they didn't suffer because of it. I look forward to hearing your reviews!
Neil Gaiman is amazing! I just got "Ocean at the End of The Lane" for Christmas and I'm so excited to read it. Lord of the Flies is philosophical, but I liked it. If you're looking for a good laugh, Neil Gaiman co-wrote "Good Omens" with Terry Pratchett, and it had me in stitches
Brills
I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time last year. I can't wait to see what you think of it. I had the book in my house for years and now regret waiting so long to open it. The last page summed up the entire loveliness of the book....sigh....
This video cracked me up. It makes me feel better about my TBR pile of classics.
I'll be rereading Crime and Punishment this year; it's one of my favourites. Can't wait to see what you think of it!
Good luck. Oh, and if The Hitchhiker's Guide isn't to your taste, you might want to try Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, also by Douglas Adams. It's wonderful.
I've never read Lord of the Flies either, it's good to know someone else hasn't as well. :P Also, I thought To Kill a Mockingbird was brilliant. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it. I have so many books to read this year as well. I really love your videos, they're great.
have you read Crime & Punishment already? I absolutely loved it. It's in our high school syllabus, at least it was when I was in high school. Fantastic stuff.
Good luck! I had to read Far From the Madding Crowd in school and hated it. But it seems to be well-loved, so that may just be the fact that I had to read it for school. Lord of the Flies and Hitchhikers are brilliant though!
You've got really nice eyebrows! I can't stop looking at them! ❤🐴
great set of books! "crime and punishment" is amazing! enjoy!
If you are into Stalinist Russia and literature in general you might love The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons, set in WW2, it is highly enjoyable read. if you you really get into it you will devour it and the two that follow. It is an epic love story but set against the action, tragedies, and courage associated with the war, centring on the blockade of Leningrad. The author instills literary sensibilities in the central character, hence the title. I loved that book and everyone I know who read it loved it.
2014 could be the year of Dickens and Russian literature for me as well: Great Expectations and War and Peace are high up on my list. There are so many books in your list that I want to read: American Gods, Far from the Madding Crowd, Crime and Punishment, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... All, actually.
I wish you GOOD LUCK.
There were far too many books in that selection that made me think well that's depressing, that's bleak as hell, oh good god, that one's just about despair. You're going to have such a fun year!
You will love The Grapes of Wrath, it's so so good. To kill a mockingbird is also very nice! Good luck :)
we pretty much have same preferences on books !! I plan to start with Crime and Punishment too !!! let's do this and I will wait for your review
Crime and Punishment is really, really good! Good luck with all your reading!
'To Kill a Mockingbird' is quite slow at the start, but stick with it. It gets much better in the second half of the book once it gets to the trial and such. Good luck with your 10 choices!
I just finished American Gods and thought it was pretty great, however I did read the author's preferred text and thought they could have chucked a few pages here and there, so I'd probably recommend the edited version =)
Lord Of The Flies and To Kill A Mockingbird are both fun, easy, fast reads. I hope you enjoy them.
This morning I bought "Far From The Madding Crowd" by Thomas Hardy, because recently I've found out this book is his best book...And now I watch your video (for the first time:) ) and see that you want to read it too. I'm not alone with this))
I have a rather similar list for the year. Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird are both fairly great! :)
To Kill a Mockingbird is on my list to read this year as well. It was also on it last year but I got lazy
Due to my self inflicted poverty of 2014, I'm going to have to do less theatre, and less going out, but this can be replaced by making a start on reading all the Doctor Who books on my shelves... All 280 (ish) of them! Still at around 300 pages long, they aren't too bad to get through.
Read both Lord of The Flies and To Kill A Mockingbird for school didn't properly read TKAM though but LOTF is one of the best forced to read in class books I've read
I read Crime and Punishment last year... At first I thought it could be a little bit boring, but it was great. Everybody there is quite philosophical. I can't wait to read any other Dostoievki novel *-*
to kill a mockingbird is a fantastic book as well as we need to talk about kevin. sounds like a great year of reading fo sho
We Need To Talk About Kevin is the last book I read and is absolutely fantastic! You will love her writing style (hopefully!) :)
Good luck! To Kill a Mockingbird is easy enough, Grapes of Wrath is a total slog but the ending is unreal. I was never assigned Lord of the Flies either, we must be the only ones. The rest? Brave.
You gotta do, Great Expectations. It's so great. It constantly made me laugh, although I was mainly laughing at Pip, god love him.
the grapes of wrath is a liittle bit heavy but insode is a GREAT BOOK!!
Although I'm not a huge Charles Dickens fan (too descriptive), I really liked The Pickwick Papers. Very funny.
I would highly recommend The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky as well
You will not regret reading American Gods, it's so good :) although I chose to write my coursework about it so right now I'm finding just looking at it stressful
Hey Barry, don't start Dickens with Pickwick Papers. It's funny and charming, but episodic. His favorite was David Copperfield (a surprisingly fast read) because it's autobiographical. Tale of Two Cities is also a lot of fun. W. Somerset Maugham made fun of Hardy in Cakes and Ale; don't read him the same year you're starting Dostoevsky! Death and gloom on the moors! Try Maugham's Moon and Sixpence or The Razor's Edge--the latter always a hit with my teenage students.
I need to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy too. I own the entire series for about 4 or 5 years now. It's a shame, really.
Hope you'll like To Kill a Mockingbird, good luck with your reading!
That's what I like to see: enthusiasm. ;-)
To simplify your task, you could just read the first two Hitch-hikers books. After that, the law of diminishing returns sets in.
Also, if Pickwick gets too much, then Great Expectations is a fabulous novel and wonderfully short.
And if you like misery in fiction, try Jude the Obscure: a much more satisfying read than Madding Crowd, in my opinion.
I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird, and am currently reading Hitchhiker's Guide. To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty good, but there's more religious overtones than there was in the film. It's actually kinda funny watching the film after reading the novel, because it feels more rushed, and they only take a little time to allude to some scenes that the book is more descriptive of.
Hitchhiker's Guide is kinda weird. I'm about a hundred pages in and I don't think I understand enough to describe it. It's suppose to be funny from what I read, but I only chuckled at a few lines. Maybe it's the absurdity of it? I don't know.
Dickens books are long because they were first published in serial form in news papers. Why don't you experiment with one of the novels by reading each chapter few days or one week apart. Gaimans books are usually easy reads.
Really good choices! Dostoevsky is great! (if you want to read another perfect Russian book, read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov) I didn't really like Lord of the flies, absolutely enjoyed American Gods, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is hilarious.
I've never read anything by Dickens (Except for A Christmas carol) and Thomas Hardy is almost unknown to me. Don't blame me, I'm Hungarian.
I have to do a comparison between Lord of the Flies and To Kill A Mockingbird for my final GCSE English coursework D:
You will love all of them. Every. Single. One. (Seriously though, We need to talk about kev, awesomeness).
UGH Lord of the Flies... it might just be because I studied it with a shitty teacher but I thought that book was sooo dry. Otherwise - good choices! Grapes of Wrath should probs be on my list too, seeing as I loved Mice and Men so much. Good luck indeed!
How on earth have I not discovered you before now?? And we're Goodreads friends even! We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird - YES.
Those Penguin English Library Dickens 😱
Two more. "Demons" by Dostoevsky and "Jorney to the end of the night" by Celine.
grapes of wrath is a winner. trust me.
I remember once hearing that Charles Dicken got paid per word, so naturally he wrote long books. Never got around to fact-checking that, though.
Some of those books I've read, some of those I haven't. (And one I hated.) I hope you have fun with Crime and Punishment--simply because I fangirl about that book and Dostoyevsky, yay. Nevertheless, good luck with all of those :)
Why none of the works of Ayn Rand? She was a Russian author, and her book Atlas Shrugged was the second most influential book of the 20th century!
We The Living, The Fountainhead, or Atlas Shrugged are all great books to start with.
... and if you really want to see a scary photo look up Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his Stanford Prison Experiment.
I've always wanted to read a Hardy book,is he any good?
Good luck Barry I don't envy your book choices :P
2:57 start of what song ??
Hi) i'm half russian and half ukrainian and i just wanna say that it's fucking amazing to hear about great russian classic authors from people outside my native countries ;)
Good luck) i like your videos)
I'm in AP literature so while everyone else is reading to kill a mockingbird I'm reading the Odyssey... Merp.
this guy' way of talking reminds me of philip seymour hoffman from Capote
The Grapes of Wrath has by far the weirdest ending in all western literature... I shudder.
Today I was in a bookshelf with my mom and I showed her Far from the Madding Crowd and she said that Thomas Hardy looks great. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?
Sooo.... fun story: I could nOT get through FFTMC by Hardy. Just look up Tom Hardy's old myspace. Way better Thomas Hardy experience, just saying (or Tess!)
And Mockingbird is great! As is Gaiman! And Steinbeck! Woo 2014!
I barely read ever anymore but I wanted to comment: that guy looks like WheezyWaiter...
Oh god. I can't stand Dickens. LOVE Russian literature. For Crime and Punishement, pleeeeease read the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Pretty please?
1. Hitchhiker's Guide is pretty meh. It's not that interesting, not that funny but definitely worth a read.
2. I have yet to read t Dickens novel that I liked so ... sorry for you.
3. Crime and Punishment is great.
4. The same for American Gods.
5. I haven't read To kill a mockingbird either. Let's read it together ... if I don't forget :P
Good luck ;)
The 1st few books I was like no why, they seem to old and pointless. Towards the end of the list they got better lol Good Luck !
That's only 9 books :(
i liked american gods. didnt adore it. but i did enjoy it
HHGTTG is so incredibly boring. It is.
Why don't you try Hard Times by Dickens - that's a short one.
Crime and Punishment is the best! Really depressing! You'll love it!
Hey barry I don't unserstand why you make yourself read books that you don't want to read just so you can say you've read this and that by that author.in my opinion reading should be fun and enjoyable and not about which author you missed.
Wow.You're going to need more than luck. You look so sad in this video.Maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised by some of them.At least your willing to give them a go.
Good Luck...You seem so happy to read these classics...NOT! lol
I've always wanted to read a Hardy book,is he any good?