February Wrap-Up and March Plans

Once upon a time, I thought today was February 29th. Well, folks, apparently I have not gotten used to the Western calendar in all my years of life.

Anyway, this month wrap-up was meant to be published in the month of February...I've decided that since I really like to read other people's monthly wrap-up posts, I thought maybe I would do the same. Nice way to keep on track with reading goals.

Books finished this month:
Ivanhoe
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens (biography)

Events I participated in:
Celebrating Dickens

Favorite book of the month:
Great Expectations

I just barely finished Great Expectations in the nick of time to review it for Celebrating Dickens. I expected to be able to read more during February, but I made the mistake of getting myself knee-deep in two chunksters (albeit smallish chunksters) at a time. Not so good. After feeling like I had been smack in the middle of both Ivanhoe and GE for weeks and weeks with no end in sight, my motivation started to decline just a bit...so next month (it's February 29th, remember? Work with me) I'm taking a break from chunksters! No need to beat myself to death with books; it's about having fun, right?

Right. So this month, as per A Modern March, I'm going to immerse myself in modern literature, allow myself to read some other stuff for my other challenges (and just for fun), and challenge myself to get through as many books as I can!

Dickens and Me

For Celebrating Dickens at Fanda Classiclit, those of us who are participating are celebrating Dickens's 201st birthday today by writing a post about "Me and Dickens"--a little something about our experience with Dickens that the man himself would appreciate, as a little birthday gift.

Dickens has rather loomed in the background of my life. I have many very specific memories with him, myself. I've seen several adaptations of A Christmas Carol, as most of us have, since I was a kid, and last year I finally buckled down and read it, albeit for a class (although sadly, a little far in advance for Christmas). Around the same time, I read a biography of Dickens and was enthralled by his multi-faceted life. In high school, all my friends were reading A Tale of Two Cities for school (while I was homeschooled) and had so many different opinions of it that I just had to read it myself. I watched the BBC adaptation of Our Mutual Friend last month and loved it. And of course, being an English major, I often feel totally surrounded by loyal followers of Dickens.

And yet...I have yet to figure out what all the hype is about.

Celebrating Dickens--starting, er, yesterday

Everyone, this month I'll be focusing on...

Thanks to Fanda at Fanda Classiclit for hosting!

I'm excited for this event! I'm planning to read Great Expectations (I have a lovely copy on my shelf right now, waiting to be read) and Our Mutual Friend. Both are quite long and I have Ivanhoe to finish as well, but I'd love to get all the way through them in February. I also thought about Bleak House, but that's another gigantic chunkster, so I may not go for that one unless I finish the other two earlier than expected. I may also read a Dickens biography. I'm looking forward to immersing myself in Dickens!

Want to join? Click here! 

Celebrating Dickens!

So far this year, I have been pretty pleased with what I'm reading. For months I've been starving for "fun" books, having been reading so many classics for school. So at the beginning of the month, I marched out (well, drove out) to the library and brought home a stack of my favorite non-classic genre, memoirs.

Well, this has all been really fun, I don't deny that. But now that I've forsaken classics for a few weeks, I'm discovering that now the tables have turned: I'm hungry for classics now. I was wanting dessert, but now that all I have is dessert, I'm wishing for my red meat and green vegetables! (Okay, I think I've been reading too many food books.)

Also, ever since I read A Christmas Carol for one of my classes, Charles Dickens has intrigued me more than ever before. I realized how very unfamiliar I am with Dickens, having only read that slim little book and the ever-popular A Tale of Two Cities. I've never read Great Expectations or Oliver Twist. I've never read the ones my teachers and English student friends have praised to the skies, Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House. What's wrong with me?? So I put just about every popular Dickens book on my Classics Club list and vowed I would read more Dickens in 2013.

So, you can see that I would jump at the chance to dedicate the month of February to celebrating Dickens and all his works!

During the month of February, I'll be reading Great Expectations and any other Dickens books I deem I have time for (I'm crossing my fingers for Our Mutual Friend, but we'll see...). I'll also hopefully be able to read a biography about his life to learn more about who he was and what writing meant to him. (I actually have already read a biography about Dickens, but despite that, I know very little about him.) I want to really spend the month of February entering the world of Dickens!

Posts:
Dickens and Me
Great Expectations