You're right, hardly anybody talks about Joseph Conrad anymore, and it breaks my heart. I love him so much, but he requires a lot of concentration, so people tend not to give him enough of a chance. But he's totally worth the extra work! Don't be terrified of long Dickens novels. The longer they are, the longer you'll get to live in his world with his loveable characters! Personally, I never want them to end. You have an awesome pile of books there! No matter what you choose, you'll have a great Victober!
I’ve never heard of Victober, but this couldn’t be more timely for me. I’m about to start a course in Victorian gothic literature, and I’m currently re-reading all my favourite novels. I especially enjoy the Sherlock Holmes stories and of course Bram Stokers Dracula
A couple weeks ago, I finally read all the way through Middlemarch after making two attempts in previous years. I think I wasn't ready for it back then. I now have more life experiences that helped me understand what the characters were going through.
Hi. This is my first visit to your channel. That's an ambitious list you've got there! I love Middlemarch and have always been blind and deaf to the merits of Dickens (my loss, I know.) Elizabeth Gaskell is fabulous and, I think, a pretty easy read. I've read "Wives and Daughters" and "Sylvia's Lovers" -- highly recommended. Conrad is fabulous but you have to be in the right headspace to be bothered. Oh, and the Moonstone is wonderful too -- a perfect skewering of Victorian society and a fun read. Cheers and enjoy!😊
Thank you for visiting! Ha, I'm not a devotee of Dickens to be fair. I've loved some (A Tale of Two Cities) but also really didn't get on with others (particularly Oliver Twist for some reason). I'm really looking forward to exploring Gaskell! Have a great day Margaret!
Victober! It must be my month then. I've read all of the fiction on your list, most if it many years ago. I would agree with you about the Sherlock Holmes stories. They are the ultimate comfort reading, and are best savoured, a little nibble at a time. They are too precious to be binged! Bleak House I read this summer along with most of Charles Dickens' other major works. It is one of my favourites, along with David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Have fun!
My daughter and I read Nmiddlemarch this summer and loved it. I am near the end of Mary Barton and the characters are so well developed. Ty he story touched me deeply and was so suspenseful! I enjoyed your Vlog… it was my fist time on your channel.
Just found your channel. I haven't read any of the books on your list but I have added some of them to my own list. This will by my first Victober so it should be fun :)
Hi just want to say that The Pickwick Papers is one of my all time favorites! Loved it. Have not delved into any others yet. Loved The Woman in White years ago. I just read The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot and Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy and now starting Far from the Madding Crowd. 😊
Ah, it's wonderful to hear The Pickwick Papers is your favourite! It really feels like one of the less popular of Dickens's works. Thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoy Far from the Madding Crowd!
What a lovely list of possibilities. Just one of them would be plenty for me! I love the pacing of your vlog, a good deal slower than so many that begin to sound like auctioneers with their rapid fire delivery and slurred enunciation. I’ve never heard of Victober before but what a great idea! Now I’ll have to search my shelves for something that has been languishing….aah, I have The Time Machine, by HG Wells. That’ll do nicely!
I read Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' for an English project @ my Canadian boarding school, an assignment that took me to a public library in Toronto to do my individual research, down to buying a heavy metal chain to mimic bondage. In the end, I was the only student that attained top marks with my re-enactment of the narrative story. All this to say you can't go wrong with Conrad! Happy reading Celine🎉🖐
Sounds like an excellent way to enjoy it! I've started reading it now, and it was way less intense than I was expecting from hearing people talk about it
I definitely think it means you should go book shopping!😉 Woman in white is perfect for victober. I would not want to read Blake house & Middlemarch in the same month! Pickwick is one of if not my very least favorite of Dickens. It doesn’t feel Dickensian to me. 🫤 Loved Rossetti’s poetry. Wilde is always a good idea. 😊
Ha, thank you for enabling my book buying habit! I'm hoping The Woman in White will give me perfect autumnal spooky vibes. Sorry to hear you didn't get on with Pickwick, I've heard it's quite different from his other works. Thank you for watching and leaving a comment! 🙂
The Woman in White is great. I love Wilkie Collins. I’ve got Bleak House on my list too. I read it at school and hated it lol. I also plan on reading The Importance of Being Earnest. Great video 😊
Thank you! I think school could honestly make me hate the best book, ha. The moment I HAVE to read something it becomes such a chore. Hope you enjoy The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde is so much fun!
I read Silas Marner recently and really enjoyed it, want to read Middlemarch but is a bit of a beast and think i might wait until next year. I'm planning on reading Canterville Ghost for Victober which is nice and short! 😂 I really enjoy Oscar Wilde's writing, I have read Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest so hoping Canterville Ghost lives up to my expectations.
I want to get to Middlemarch but I just finished The Luminaries and I need a few shorter length book in between before subscribing to another larger novel
Last year I've read The Pickwyck Papers (it drags a bit in the middle part but overall it's great fun) and earlier this year I read Mary Barton (it's amazing, as Gaskell always is, imo). Also this year I was reading The Five on audiobook and I had to stop because it was too much misery in one go 🙈. But I'm considering finishing it this Victober 😊
That's a shame of The Five, but totally understandable - sometimes it can just be too much. I'll make sure to break it up with some happier reads as well. Hope you have an excellent Victober!
As usual, your videos are so enlightening, hope you read all of them and enjoy the Victober. I love Hound of Baskerville, this year might try The Study of Scarlet.
I had to pause and replay when you mentioned a Phd to see if I heard right, you look a lot younger (said in the nicest possible way from a fellow female apparently around the same age). Anyhow nice video, will watch more!
I read Elizabeth Browning's The Sonnets from the Portuguese some time ago, but I confess that I have read none of Robert Browning's poetry apart from "A Tocatta at Galuppi's". So, I have to read more by him. Have you read Sheridan LeFanu's stories? For me they are the most terrifying of the Victorian era ( I think that the Victorian ghosts stories are the best) apart from Bram Stoker's stories. By they way, I found in a library The Lair of the White Worm ( although in Spanish) by the latter . Do you know this work? Take care.
I've yet to sample Robert Browning - I might give him a shot once I've finished Aurora Leigh. I've read Carmilla and quite enjoyed it, but I think it's probably due for a reread! Would also love to explore more by him, his bibliography sounds fascinating. Do you have a favourite of Fanu? I've only read Dracula by Stoker so far, but am very keen to try more! Hope The Lair of the White Worm is excellent (it certainly sounds very fun)
@@TheEclecticLibrary Well, I have two favorite stories by Le Fanu that scare me the most: "Mr. Justice Harbottle " and "Squire Toby's Will". And believe me, his spooks are among the most terryfing in literature.
As you indicated Pickwick Papers doesn't have much of a plot so it's 700+ pages can be tough to get through despite it's being one of Dicken's funnier works. I highly recommend The Woman in White(and all Wilkie Collins) a great story with terrific villains that moves along quickly despite it's length.
I love a good villain! Looking forward to exploring Collins more. I think I might read the Pickwick Papers by just reading a chapter here and there rather than sitting down and reading from start to finish. It sound like that might be a better way of tackling it
Huh, I just got my first Joseph Conrad book today - Heart of Darkness. Also on my book haul today, Habit of Being by Flannery O'Connor, The Greek Passion by Nikos Kazantzakis, and Which Lie Did I Tell, SIGNED by William Goldman. Yesterday's book haul was The Bookshop, and Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald, And the Mountains Echoed SIGNED by Khaled Hossein, and The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski.
And yeah, at the bookstore, Conrad pretty much never sells. We were just talking about it because the owner has like a fifteen-volume set of Conrad's books that hasn't sold, and he's not sure what to do with it because he doesn't want to donate it, but Conrad just doesn't sell.
Wow you've got Dickens' 3 biggest novels there LOL! I love Pickwick Papers, and the other two are great as well. "The Five" is incredible - it was amazing at how quickly the women were assumed to be prostitutes! Not only was it informative, it was an enjoyable read too. Well, it was a difficult read, but I enjoyed it... well you know what I mean! LOL!
Ha, I totally do! The sensationalist press in Victorian times was quite something. I did a little bit of work with newspapers from those times and they would make excellent clickbait articles nowadays. Thank you for stopping by! ☺️
" Sherlock Holmes arrived in heaven. The angels turned out en masse to meet him. The Lord himself descended from his throne to bid him welcome. ‘Holmes,’ he said, ‘we have a little mystery up here that you may be able to help us solve. Adam and Eve seem to have disappeared. Nobody has been able to locate them for aeons. If you could possibly uncover them for us….’ Holmes darted to the fringe of the assemblage and hauled two frightened and surprised angels before the Lord. ‘Here they are,’ he said. Adam and Eve admitted their identities. ‘We got tired of being stared at and asked for autographs by every damn new angel who came up here,’ they explained. ‘We assumed aliases and these simple disguises and got away with them for centuries, until this smarty-pants ferreted us out.’ ‘How did you do it?’ marvelled the Lord. ‘Elementary, my dear Lord,’ said Holmes. ‘They were the only two who had no navels.’"
I love Conrad, but his work got less good the more success he experienced. His earlier books--and Lord Jim is one of them--are better than his later books. I love it. I also love Almayer's Folly and The Outcast of the Islands. Conrad has fallen out of fashion because of the naked colonialism in many of his stories, though he's not entirely uncritical of colonialism the way Kipling was, I guess. It's hard to recover from a book that dismantles your masterpiece the way Achabe's Things Fall Apart dismantles Heart of Darkness. I love Rossetti's poems. The Goblin Market is my favorite.
Very interesting, regarding Conrad! I'll pay attention to whether I feel the same, whether his later books just aren't as good. The way I've read Conrad, (which might have been overly optimistic), he does seem quite critical of colonialism itself, while falling into racist conventions at the same time. Good point about Achabe, that's probably had a significant influence. Glad to hear you love Rossetti! I can't wait to dive in
I would pick "The Woman in White" which is fun and entertaining (much more so than "The Moonstone"). Middlemarch is fabulous of course but if you want pure entertainment, well-written, go with The Woman in White.
I read all of them except for the last one about Jack the Ripper's victims. Nostromo was a good book, but I don't think it's Victorian. It is very political.
You're right, hardly anybody talks about Joseph Conrad anymore, and it breaks my heart. I love him so much, but he requires a lot of concentration, so people tend not to give him enough of a chance. But he's totally worth the extra work!
Don't be terrified of long Dickens novels. The longer they are, the longer you'll get to live in his world with his loveable characters! Personally, I never want them to end.
You have an awesome pile of books there! No matter what you choose, you'll have a great Victober!
Thanks a lot Faye! That's definitely true, that Conrad requires focus. He's not an author I can read when I'm sleepy. Hope you're having a great week!
I’ve never heard of Victober, but this couldn’t be more timely for me. I’m about to start a course in Victorian gothic literature, and I’m currently re-reading all my favourite novels. I especially enjoy the Sherlock Holmes stories and of course Bram Stokers Dracula
That's wonderful, Jayne! Hope you have an excellent time in your Victorian gothic literature course, it's such a wonderful literary time period
Middlemarch is great. Take your time, don't rush it, and let it grow on you. It can be slow at times, but it is very moving at other times.
I'm looking forward to the journey!
A couple weeks ago, I finally read all the way through Middlemarch after making two attempts in previous years. I think I wasn't ready for it back then. I now have more life experiences that helped me understand what the characters were going through.
That's wonderful! The value we get out of books depends so much on where we are in our own lives
Hi. This is my first visit to your channel. That's an ambitious list you've got there! I love Middlemarch and have always been blind and deaf to the merits of Dickens (my loss, I know.) Elizabeth Gaskell is fabulous and, I think, a pretty easy read. I've read "Wives and Daughters" and "Sylvia's Lovers" -- highly recommended. Conrad is fabulous but you have to be in the right headspace to be bothered. Oh, and the Moonstone is wonderful too -- a perfect skewering of Victorian society and a fun read. Cheers and enjoy!😊
Thank you for visiting! Ha, I'm not a devotee of Dickens to be fair. I've loved some (A Tale of Two Cities) but also really didn't get on with others (particularly Oliver Twist for some reason). I'm really looking forward to exploring Gaskell! Have a great day Margaret!
Victober! It must be my month then.
I've read all of the fiction on your list, most if it many years ago.
I would agree with you about the Sherlock Holmes stories. They are the ultimate comfort reading, and are best savoured, a little nibble at a time. They are too precious to be binged!
Bleak House I read this summer along with most of Charles Dickens' other major works. It is one of my favourites, along with David Copperfield and Great Expectations.
Have fun!
Thanks a lot Philip! I didn't end up tackling Bleak House this October, but it's looking like a good candidate for a winter read...
My love for Middlemarch knows no bounds 😍😭😍😭
I’m working on it!!
I can't wait to experience it!
❤ Middlemarch
My daughter and I read Nmiddlemarch this summer and loved it. I am near the end of Mary Barton and the characters are so well developed. Ty he story touched me deeply and was so suspenseful!
I enjoyed your Vlog… it was my fist time on your channel.
Thank you for watching! I'm really looking forward to Mary Barton. I've started Middlemarch now, and it's been a very nice read so far
Just found your channel. I haven't read any of the books on your list but I have added some of them to my own list. This will by my first Victober so it should be fun :)
That's lovely, I hope you have an excellent Victober!
Hi just want to say that The Pickwick Papers is one of my all time favorites! Loved it. Have not delved into any others yet. Loved The Woman in White years ago. I just read The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot and Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy and now starting Far from the Madding Crowd. 😊
Ah, it's wonderful to hear The Pickwick Papers is your favourite! It really feels like one of the less popular of Dickens's works. Thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoy Far from the Madding Crowd!
What a lovely list of possibilities. Just one of them would be plenty for me! I love the pacing of your vlog, a good deal slower than so many that begin to sound like auctioneers with their rapid fire delivery and slurred enunciation. I’ve never heard of Victober before but what a great idea! Now I’ll have to search my shelves for something that has been languishing….aah, I have The Time Machine, by HG Wells. That’ll do nicely!
Thank you for visiting! I'm very glad you enjoy the pacing. Hope you love The Time Machine! Wells is an excellent author.
I read Bleak House over the summer. Such an enjoyable read.
Glad you enjoyed it! I'm looking forward to diving into it soon
Bleak House is not only my favorite Dickens book, it's also a lifetime favorite for me. Enjoy!
Thank you!! Glad to hear you've loved Bleak House so much
The Five looks wonderful. I have added it to my want to read on Goodreads. Best Wishes!
Hope you'll love it when you'll get to it!
I read Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' for an English project @ my Canadian boarding school, an assignment that took me to a public library in Toronto to do my individual research, down to buying a heavy metal chain to mimic bondage. In the end, I was the only student that attained top marks with my re-enactment of the narrative story. All this to say you can't go wrong with Conrad!
Happy reading Celine🎉🖐
Ha, what an epic reading assignment! It sounds like you really threw yourself at it, I'm not surprised your teacher was pleased. Happy reading Joel!!
@@TheEclecticLibrary You'll be surprised to hear that I had kept the essay assignment with the teacher's marking rubric. Thanks Celine! Same to you😎🖐
Middlemarch is not that intimidating if you just relax into and let go of the idea that is intimidating. Just enjoy the ride!
Sounds like an excellent way to enjoy it! I've started reading it now, and it was way less intense than I was expecting from hearing people talk about it
Such a good list ! I'm excited to *keep going* with Middlemarch (it's definitely a journey) and I'm most excited for Villette by Charlotte Brontë.
Ha, solidarity regarding Middlemarch! I've started it now, and goodness me it's long. Hope you love Villette!
I definitely think it means you should go book shopping!😉
Woman in white is perfect for victober. I would not want to read Blake house & Middlemarch in the same month! Pickwick is one of if not my very least favorite of Dickens. It doesn’t feel Dickensian to me. 🫤
Loved Rossetti’s poetry.
Wilde is always a good idea. 😊
Ha, thank you for enabling my book buying habit! I'm hoping The Woman in White will give me perfect autumnal spooky vibes. Sorry to hear you didn't get on with Pickwick, I've heard it's quite different from his other works.
Thank you for watching and leaving a comment! 🙂
You have such a great line up of books!
Thank you!!
I adore Middlemarch! The Woman in White is on my list as well!
I can't wait! Hope you enjoy The Woman in White
The five is excellent, i hope you enjoy! Hallie Rubenhold also did a podcast on this which is wortha listenif you are so inclined
That sounds really interesting, I'll check it out!
The Woman in White is great. I love Wilkie Collins. I’ve got Bleak House on my list too. I read it at school and hated it lol. I also plan on reading The Importance of Being Earnest. Great video 😊
Thank you! I think school could honestly make me hate the best book, ha. The moment I HAVE to read something it becomes such a chore. Hope you enjoy The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde is so much fun!
I love George Eliot, but Middlemarch was such a struggle for me to complete! I hope you enjoy it more than I did..!!
Ha, thank you Joseph! I hope so too then 🙂
I read Silas Marner recently and really enjoyed it, want to read Middlemarch but is a bit of a beast and think i might wait until next year.
I'm planning on reading Canterville Ghost for Victober which is nice and short! 😂 I really enjoy Oscar Wilde's writing, I have read Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest so hoping Canterville Ghost lives up to my expectations.
Ha, that's fair enough, Middlemarch is definitely an intimidating book. I hope you enjoy Canterville Ghost - it's really fun in my opinion
I want to get to Middlemarch but I just finished The Luminaries and I need a few shorter length book in between before subscribing to another larger novel
Oof, fair enough! Hope you enjoyed The Luminaries. I really liked that it explored a setting I wasn't familiar with
Last year I've read The Pickwyck Papers (it drags a bit in the middle part but overall it's great fun) and earlier this year I read Mary Barton (it's amazing, as Gaskell always is, imo). Also this year I was reading The Five on audiobook and I had to stop because it was too much misery in one go 🙈. But I'm considering finishing it this Victober 😊
That's a shame of The Five, but totally understandable - sometimes it can just be too much. I'll make sure to break it up with some happier reads as well. Hope you have an excellent Victober!
As usual, your videos are so enlightening, hope you read all of them and enjoy the Victober. I love Hound of Baskerville, this year might try The Study of Scarlet.
Thank you! ☺️ Hope you enjoy The Study of Scarlet - the Baskerville one is one of my favourite Holmes stories too!
I had to pause and replay when you mentioned a Phd to see if I heard right, you look a lot younger (said in the nicest possible way from a fellow female apparently around the same age). Anyhow nice video, will watch more!
Ha, yes, I get that a lot. I'm turning 30 in June, but I still get asked whether it's my first year in university sometimes. Thank you for watching!
I read Elizabeth Browning's The Sonnets from the Portuguese some time ago, but I confess that I have read none of Robert Browning's poetry apart from "A Tocatta at Galuppi's". So, I have to read more by him. Have you read Sheridan LeFanu's stories? For me they are the most terrifying of the Victorian era ( I think that the Victorian ghosts stories are the best) apart from Bram Stoker's stories. By they way, I found in a library The Lair of the White Worm ( although in Spanish) by the latter . Do you know this work? Take care.
I've yet to sample Robert Browning - I might give him a shot once I've finished Aurora Leigh. I've read Carmilla and quite enjoyed it, but I think it's probably due for a reread! Would also love to explore more by him, his bibliography sounds fascinating. Do you have a favourite of Fanu? I've only read Dracula by Stoker so far, but am very keen to try more! Hope The Lair of the White Worm is excellent (it certainly sounds very fun)
@@TheEclecticLibrary Well, I have two favorite stories by Le Fanu that scare me the most: "Mr. Justice Harbottle " and "Squire Toby's Will". And believe me, his spooks are among the most terryfing in literature.
As you indicated Pickwick Papers doesn't have much of a plot so it's 700+ pages can be tough to get through despite it's being one of Dicken's funnier works. I highly recommend The Woman in White(and all Wilkie Collins) a great story with terrific villains that moves along quickly despite it's length.
I love a good villain! Looking forward to exploring Collins more. I think I might read the Pickwick Papers by just reading a chapter here and there rather than sitting down and reading from start to finish. It sound like that might be a better way of tackling it
Huh, I just got my first Joseph Conrad book today - Heart of Darkness. Also on my book haul today, Habit of Being by Flannery O'Connor, The Greek Passion by Nikos Kazantzakis, and Which Lie Did I Tell, SIGNED by William Goldman.
Yesterday's book haul was The Bookshop, and Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald, And the Mountains Echoed SIGNED by Khaled Hossein, and The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski.
And yeah, at the bookstore, Conrad pretty much never sells. We were just talking about it because the owner has like a fifteen-volume set of Conrad's books that hasn't sold, and he's not sure what to do with it because he doesn't want to donate it, but Conrad just doesn't sell.
That is such a shame! And sounds like you've got an excellent book haul yourself. I don't have many signed novels, that's really cool!
Wow you've got Dickens' 3 biggest novels there LOL! I love Pickwick Papers, and the other two are great as well.
"The Five" is incredible - it was amazing at how quickly the women were assumed to be prostitutes! Not only was it informative, it was an enjoyable read too. Well, it was a difficult read, but I enjoyed it... well you know what I mean! LOL!
Ha, I totally do! The sensationalist press in Victorian times was quite something. I did a little bit of work with newspapers from those times and they would make excellent clickbait articles nowadays. Thank you for stopping by! ☺️
omg chikorita
I love chikorita with a burning passion that cannot be explained
" Sherlock Holmes arrived in heaven. The angels turned out en masse to meet him. The Lord himself descended from his throne to bid him welcome.
‘Holmes,’ he said, ‘we have a little mystery up here that you may be able to help us solve. Adam and Eve seem to have disappeared. Nobody has been able to locate them for aeons. If you could possibly uncover them for us….’
Holmes darted to the fringe of the assemblage and hauled two frightened and surprised angels before the Lord.
‘Here they are,’ he said.
Adam and Eve admitted their identities. ‘We got tired of being stared at and asked for autographs by every damn new angel who came up here,’ they explained. ‘We assumed aliases and these simple disguises and got away with them for centuries, until this smarty-pants ferreted us out.’
‘How did you do it?’ marvelled the Lord.
‘Elementary, my dear Lord,’ said Holmes. ‘They were the only two who had no navels.’"
Barry Barton is a rood gead.
Ha, your comment really made me laugh!
I loved The Woman in White! So, So Good. I am just about done with The Five and am really liking it. They were drunks not sex workers.
Glad you're enjoying The Five! Alcoholism was a huge issue in the Victorian period. I'm really looking forward to diving into the book
I love Conrad, but his work got less good the more success he experienced. His earlier books--and Lord Jim is one of them--are better than his later books. I love it. I also love Almayer's Folly and The Outcast of the Islands.
Conrad has fallen out of fashion because of the naked colonialism in many of his stories, though he's not entirely uncritical of colonialism the way Kipling was, I guess. It's hard to recover from a book that dismantles your masterpiece the way Achabe's Things Fall Apart dismantles Heart of Darkness.
I love Rossetti's poems. The Goblin Market is my favorite.
Very interesting, regarding Conrad! I'll pay attention to whether I feel the same, whether his later books just aren't as good. The way I've read Conrad, (which might have been overly optimistic), he does seem quite critical of colonialism itself, while falling into racist conventions at the same time. Good point about Achabe, that's probably had a significant influence.
Glad to hear you love Rossetti! I can't wait to dive in
I would pick "The Woman in White" which is fun and entertaining (much more so than "The Moonstone"). Middlemarch is fabulous of course but if you want pure entertainment, well-written, go with The Woman in White.
Thank you for watching! I will definitely dive into The Woman in White, I think it's time! Pure entertainment sounds excellent
I read all of them except for the last one about Jack the Ripper's victims. Nostromo was a good book, but I don't think it's Victorian. It is very political.
That's awesome! You're absolutely right about Nostromo - I forgot because Conrad's Heart of Darkness is Victorian.