Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Well. Well, well, WELL.

Before I begin, I should warn you that in my experience so far, one can either say nothing about Mrs. Dalloway, or one can write a hundred pages about it. Finding a middle ground is practically impossible. I'll attempt to find the middle ground right now, but I'm just warning you, I might get carried away.

Reading this book was sort of...surreal. Probably because it was a stream of consciousness novel (I know--Captain Obvious here). I'd never actually read a stream of consciousness novel before, so it was quite a bit of of a stretch, but it was well worth it.

Going off the stream of consciousness theme, these were probably close to my thoughts as I read the first 25 pages:

"What? What? And...who? What? Where? What? And what's that...and this? And who? And what?"

Okay, you get the picture. It would have been easy to throw this book away, never to look at it again (except for the fact that I had to read it for a class--whoops). But like I said, this book was worth the mental journey.

Top Ten Books I'm Most Excited to Read

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

Today is a Top Ten Tuesday freebie and since my literary excitement is still new and fresh, I thought I'd write about books I'm excited to read! (Both from my Classics Club list and otherwise.)

10. The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe. This isn't on my list, but I need to read it for a class. I'm actually really excited about it! I'm severely deficient in pre-Victorian novels (except for Shakespeare), so I'll be glad to get one under my belt. Especially because a) it was written by a woman, and b) at the time it was written, novels were just starting to get popular. Aaaand it's a Gothic novel. It just intrigues me...

9. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. Oh, Dickens! I'm really excited to just get my teeth into this book. It's been a while since I've read a really massive novel, and I also want to get a lot more familiar with Dickens (hence my many titles by him on my list of classics). Plus, one of my professors mentions it and how wonderful it is every couple weeks, and she is one of my favorite professors (despite some horrific expectations, but that's another blog post).