Join a Classics Book Club

The Internet is consuming more and more of my time. When we leave the house for anything, my boys groan when I have to “just check Facebook,” and it inevitably becomes a delay.

So while reading classics isn’t really new for me, I notice that I don’t read nearly as much as I used to. This is true unless I count mindlessly clicking from political blogs to Facebook to entertainment blogs as reading, which I don’t.

For this challenge, I picked up Anna Karenina, which my local library’s classics book club is reading this month. I heard about it only a few days before the meeting, so I didn’t quite get through its 817 pages in time. Nevertheless, a librarian sent an encouraging email for readers to come even if they didn’t finish the book, so there I was discussing Russian literature on a Wednesday night.

I have a lot more reading to do.

If I really want to challenge myself, maybe I should give up the Internet for a week. That idea will require some serious deliberation.

Next month: Emma.

Update: I made tasks on my 101 things in 1001 days list to read 15 classics as well as finish Anna Karenina (Link: Driving in the Car with Anna Karenina)

Here are the classics:

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• My Ántonia by Willa Cather (My Ántonia Didn’t Change, But I Sure Did)
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (I Am Not Rebecca)
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (A Christmas Quest: Solve the Riddles to Find Your Present)
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway
• Candide by Voltaire
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
• The Iliad by Homer