Top Ten Books I'd Want on a Deserted Island

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. 

Here are the top ten books I would want on a deserted island...whether or not I've read them.

10. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. This book is everything I could want in a book, not to mention it's extremely long! I've been wanting to re-read it ever since I read it for the first time, so on a desert island I could really dig into it.

9. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. I can't die without reading a thick Dickens tome, you know. Sometimes I dream about the day I get to read this book...

8. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. A few days ago I wrote about being afraid of it, so I'd finally get a chance to face my fears. ...Yay.

7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. After three ridiculously long books to keep me busy, here's a book I would read on days when I was feeling depressed about, you know, being stranded on a desert island. And I would finally get more time to finish it.

6. My Jane Austen collection. (That might be cheating, but technically it is one book...) I could re-read some of the great ones and finally get into the ones I haven't read yet (i.e., Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey).

November Meme: Intimidating Classics

Today I'm going to answer the November meme question from The Classics Club:

What classic piece of literature intimidates you, and why? (Or, are you intimidated by the classics, and why? And has your view changed at all since you joined our club?) 

Oh, dear. There are really quite a few classics that intimidate me.

First of all, War and Peace. I know that's on basically everyone's list of intimidating classics, which might be why it intimidates me. It's not so much the length that's frightening; it's Tolstoy. I don't have a great history with Russian literature. I ended up putting down both Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina after getting a good way through them (although the main reason was time constraints, not so much boredom). I'm not sure at all how I'll fare with War and Peace.

Second, The Divine Comedy. I know next to nothing about it, honestly, and there is just nothing that interests me about it. I'll read it someday. But who knows when that day is...

Third, pretty much anything from the modernists. I'm just starting the modernism unit in my British Literary History class, so I can't really escape it now. I'm excited and intimidated at the same time. Mrs Dalloway is sitting on my bookshelf, waiting to be picked up and read, but I'm afraid I won't like it... I mean, I have read some modernist classics, of course, but I feel far from any understanding of the period.

What books intimidate you?