Classics TBR (Or Books I'm Embarassed I Haven't Read Yet)

I have been super into classics lately – like, it's an obsession at the moment, and I thought I would share the ones I want to get to next (the ones I'll read after all the books residing in piles in my room right now).  But hey, it's called a TBR* for a reason.

I've always been intimidated by Charles Dickens' books.  I love A Tale of Two Cities, which you will know if you've been around here for a while, but I tried reading David Copperfield in middle school, and I don't recall the experience fondly.  This year, though, I want to change that and read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.  Oliver Twist because it's not too long and Great Expectations because I've heard so much about it.

Okay, so this is the book I'm super embarrassed I have not read.  The Hobbit.  I've seen the movies, but the book has never appealed to me because it is a children's story and because it's about a treasure hunt, which sounds kind of dumb compared to the epic tale of The Lord of the Rings – like, they're saving the world!  But I definitely do want to read it, just because I think it's essential reading for a book lover/Tolkien fan.  Obvs.

Confession: I really don't want to read Moby Dick.  I absolutely abhor anything that has to do with deep-sea, the ocean, fish, or generally large bodies of water.  But I feel like I need to read this one, just because it is such a classic.  Face your fears, Ella.

I don't know much about The Catcher in the Rye, but again, another book I feel like I should probably read because it's a classic.  So yeah...

I haven't read anything by John Steinbeck, but this week I went to the library and picked up Cannery Row by him.  I was looking for shorter books, especially classics, that I could whip out in very little time and that one was less than two hundred pages.  Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath are pretty big books, but I'm excited to read Cannery Row, and I'll hopefully get to those longer ones later this year. 

Les Mis is one of those super daunting humongous books that I'm afraid I'll start and never finish.  I'm hoping it might be something similar (maybe) to A Tale of Two Cities, but we shall see.  I would like to get to that one this year.

I am a huge fan of George Orwell's dystopian books: Animal Farm and 1984, and I've heard that Fahrenheit 451 is also a dystopian book about a future in which something happens with books (like, they are destroyed maybe?) and I love those kinds of books, so hopefully I'll get to read this one.

And finally, another chunker of a book.  Vanity Fair is gigantic, but I want to read it because it sounds really interesting and also because the cover.  It's too pretty.

And those are the classics on my TBR for this year!  I have no idea if I'll be able to get to all of these in the coming months, but I'd like to try.  Thanks so much for reading and I will be back on Friday to talk about stuff I've been enjoying around the web.  xo, Ella

Also, as a sidenote, if you are wondering, the covers of Great Expectations, Moby Dick, Les Mis, and Vanity Fair I found are from the Penguin Hardcover Classics edition, and they are beautiful.  Here is the link to the page on the Penguin site.  I know you can get quite a few of them through Amazon, and I'm sure the Book Depository would have them, too. 

*For those of you who don't know, TBR stands for to-be-read.  So when someone talks about their TBR, they are talking about the books they have not read yet (both owned and not owned).