Hello my loves!

This year has been…well I don’t want to say 2020 2.0, but it is kind of shaping up that way. To counteract the sheer chaos that is in the world, I am getting back to my organization roots by forcing myself to continue going through the metric ton of books in my Good Reads TBR. Same rules apply as before. I will go through ten of the books on the page and decide whether to remove them or if they can stay and my reasoning why.

First up:

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

This is a story set during the Civil War and Sherman’s March to the Sea. It tells the story of Scarlet O’Hara, the spoiled, selfish daughter of a plantation owner during the Civil War. While it has been out since 1937, there is still a lot of controversy surrounding this book. Some feel as if the book idealizes the South during the Civil War and after. It shows the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how the idea of the South rising again was born. Others claim it is “racist garbage.” Some say it is a romantic book that shows how people are flawed.

I am hesitant to pick this up. Let me clarify that this isn’t because it is controversial, but rather because (A) I’m very picky on my romances. (B) I struggle with historical fiction at the best of times. and (C) I don’t like unlikable main characters. For these reasons, I think I’m going to take it of my TBR shelf for now.

Verdict: Gone.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a story about a man who fights against a tyrannical head nurse in an Oregon State Mental Hospital. Nurse Ratchet and the main character go head to head over how she runs the hospital ward where he is a patient.

This is also a controversial book. A modern classic it was made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick. With this being said I am hesitant in picking it up. First, I’ve heard it has racist and misogynistic undertones. If I remember correctly, the main character is only in the hospital because he faked insanity, which is concerning. Finally, I’m not big on the post-modernist literary movement. It is just not something I really enjoy. I’m willing to give it a shot, but probably not any time soon.

Verdict: Kept, with a note.

A Room with a View by E.M. Forester

I need to go back to Mariah in 2012 and smack her…repeatedly.

A Room with a View is about Lucy who visits Florence, Italy with her cousin, Charlotte, from uptight Edwardian England. While visiting, Lucy is knocked off balance with the vibrancy of life in Italy. She meets a cast of colorful characters and begins to fall in love with a young man who is the son of one of the guests at the hotel. Unfortunately, she’s already engaged to upper-class, dull Cecil Vyse back in England. Will she choose the stability and expected life of Cecil Vyse or the lower-class man who she knows will make her happy?

I just…I don’t really jive with romances like this anymore. I understand WHY it was important in the time it was written and if I had read it around the same time I read Jane Austen I probably would have been all over it. Now? it doesn’t really catch my attention or interest.

Verdict: Gone, but without prejudice.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy

This one is easy to describe, because I can’t really. This is the third book in a series written by Baronness Orczy. The first book is the Laughing Cavalier and gives me distinct Count of Monte Cristo meets The Three Musketeers meets The Black Tulip vibes.

The Laughing Cavalier follows the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ancestor who works with his friends to defend the royalist cause and justice. I’ll give it a shot.

Verdict: Replaced by the first book in the series.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

This huge book (800+ pages) looks at the lives of a cast of interesting characters who live in Middlemarch. It covers a few years before the Reform Bill of 1832.

This sounds very Jane Austen-y. However, its hard not to want to read something by a female author in the 1850s who scandalized society on the regular. Everything from how she wrote (described by one contemporary as an insurgent) to her relationships. I want to read this and see what this unusual Victorian author wanted to give to us. (And she also read and commented on Jane Eyre soo…)

Verdict: Kept, but very very hesitantly.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

When he is hired as a drawing instructor to a beautiful young woman, Walter Hartright is drawn in to the sinister machinations of Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco, who is fond of white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. The line between sanity and insanity, and what identity is travels the labyrinthine halls of British country houses and a mad house. This book is considered among the first and the most influential of Victorian Gothic horror mixed with psychological realizations.

I adore gothic fiction. Two of my favorite books of all time, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, are gothic horror. I am actually excited to read this one.

Verdict: KEPT!

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

This is a novel that has no hero. Following two women who could not be more different, the book compares the two and follows their lives.

I have no interest in this book at this point in my life. I do not like unlikable characters on a whole and a whole cast of unlikable characters is just too much to fathom right now.. I appreciate the importance of this book in literary history and how rich the ideas behind it are, but it just does not sound like my cup of tea. Also have a not-so-tiny problem with the phrase “a woman of loose morals.” It just annoys me.

Verdict: Removed.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

This is a play that poked fun at the English class system through a retelling of Pygmalion and Galatea. The story is about a girl named Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl with a decidedly urban accent, who is taken in and mentored by Professor Henry Higgins as part of a bet. The idea is he can pass off any girl, even a cockney flower seller, as a polished young woman by teaching her proper manners and learning how to speak. Shenanigans ensue.

I saw the Aubrey Hepburn movie, My Fair Lady, several years ago and loved it, for the most part. For this reason, I would love to pick this up and see what the source material is.

Verdict: Keep.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

A famous comedy about mistaken identity that takes Wilde’s ridicule of propriety and etiquette to a funny turn.

I loved The Picture of Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde is an iconic writer. While I am hesitant to pick up a comedy, I have heard a lot of good things about this novella.

Verdict: Cautiously keep.

The Time Machine and the Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

In The Time Machine, a scientist travels 800,000 years into the future and finds the world populated by two races: The brutal Morlocks and the helpless Eloi. In The Invisible Man, a scientist goes mad when he discovers a way to turn himself invisible and begins to terrorize those around him.

I have seen the movie adaptations of both of these and loved them. Each of these offers a different aspect of one of the founders of science fiction and I cannot wait to dive in.

Verdict: Keep.

OKAY I am done with another half of a page. This page apparently focused on classics and I hope you don’t take anything I said about these as an attack against your favorites.

If you have any reasons why I should read the ones I have decided to get rid of, let me know. Otherwise, let me know if you’ve read any of these or if you are clearing out your own TBR.

Until next time, all the best coffee, wine, and books to you.

Mariah