At first I thought this was asking for the books that have been on my TBR the longest. But in fact, it’s asking for the books on my TBR that were published earliest. Which I find much more interesting – mainly because I have no idea in which order I added most books to my TBR! So here are some classics that I’d like to read one day.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Street Haunting by Virginia Woolf
Weirdly, though I really want to know what a lot of these are like and understand the plot points that are referred to in popular culture, I also never really want to pick them up when I’m choosing which book to read next. It’s a conundrum.
What about you guys? Have you read any of these, and if so would you recommend it/them? Any on here you’d also like to read but also don’t want to?
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.
The Count of Monte Cristo will be a popular choice this week. It’s one of two classics I’ve read on my own, and I loved it! Many people are intimidated by the size, but it’s hard to put it down because so much is happening.
Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
https://readbakecreate.com/oldest-books-on-my-tbr-ten-oldest-books-i-own/
That’s what I suspected! At this point it’s been so long since I’ve read classics that the more intimidating factor is the language. I know I can read older English, I read all of Austen and some of the Brontes and some Dickens in high school, and once I got started it became quite easy. But now that it has been a little while it feels slow and unnatural in my mind, if that makes sense. I know I need to just put the effort in and get used to it again, but it seems like a lot of effort… and there are so many books on my TBR that don’t require it! Terrible excuse-making, I know!
I also have the Anne Bronte book on my list this week. I love The Adventures of Huck Finn, but I think I love the modern remake of it, James, more.
Check out my list: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2024/11/ttt-books-on-my-tbr-list-with-earliest.html
Do you think you can read James without having read the source material? I go back and forth on Huck Finn, but I really enjoy Percival Everett’s writing, so I’m more drawn to James, tbh!
Great list! I have only read Treasure Island from this list and I really liked it. I hope you like it too whenever you choose to read it 🙂
If you’d like to visit, here’s my TTT: https://thebooklorefairy.blogspot.com/2024/11/top-ten-tuesday-oldest-books-on-my-tbr.html
Oooh good! It’s one that seems like it might be a little easier to get into, so there’s a chance I might get to it one day! Lol
If it was me, I’d go for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, interesting because one of the characters is thought to be loosely based on Anne Bronte’s brother, Branwell.
Yes, I have tried it a couple of times and it seems like my kind of book…. but I had trouble getting very far! Does it get easier to read as you get deeper into it?