Classics Book Tag

oh hello my name is Mara and welcome to books like wow so I am doing the classics book tag today I think I originally saw this maybe on Sam's nonsense I can't remember I'll see if I can find the video that I originally saw this on and link it below it actually is a blog based book tag like I don't think this one started on YouTube but I wanted to do this because I have been reflecting lately on how much I want to get back into some classics reading and we'll talk a little bit more about that as the tag goes on but anyway I've just been in like I've been enjoying classics a lot you'll notice that there's a lot of bear spaces right now behind me on my bookshelf because the other reason I wanted to do this was to show all my beautiful penguin cloth pounds I've been getting a lot of them recently so I've just been enjoying collecting those and yeah just all around this felt like the right time to do a classics tag so yeah let's just dive into these questions so the first question is an overhyped classic that you really didn't like and three come to mind I did not like any of these and they have a lot of people who really love them the first two I think I've talked about before in my popular books I hate video and those are the Grapes of Wrath I really think is it just didn't work for me I would be curious to read it as an adult because I think some of it had maybe had to do with the fact that I was a teenager and like didn't get it or like wasn't reading it for the same reasons I might be reading it now so there was that one the call of the wild is one of my all-time least favorite books maybe my least favorite book by Jacqueline and I just really I just really hated it I know a lot of people actually really loved that book but um and you know I think it's like a classic for children or teens it gets brought up a lot so maybe but like I read it as a child slash teen and like hated it anyway so there's that one and then another one I don't think I've mentioned before that I really did not like was my Antonia by Willa Cather again the skits I've mentioned this a few times I feel like a very bad American because I don't tend to really like American literary classics very much like I tend to much prefer the kind of European end of things for what is considered to be a literary classic but anyway those are some of the ones that I personally don't enjoy but I think with all books of course it's very your mileage may vary the next one is a favorite time period to read about I guess I would just say generally the 19th century that seems to kind of be my sweet spot for classics like I really like you know some of the Regency stuff with Jane Austen but then definitely getting to Victorian literature is what I what I particularly really enjoy like because even getting into sort of more the like later period like edging closer to Edwardian I also enjoyed that with someone like I think Oscar Wilde would be still in the 19th century like the very late 19th century so anyway yeah I would say that the 19th century particularly in the UK tends to be my favorite I do really like someone like Shakespeare so I can get into some of that I do like some medieval literature as well as well as like some of the actual like real like greco-roman classics I can get down with that too and you know fairy tales yadda yadda yadda like I like it all pretty much but in terms of like a lot of my favorite seem to be clustered in the 19th century the next question is what is your favorite fairy tale and unquestionably for me that is Beauty and the Beast I think prana ste probably because I loved Belle so much in the Disney adaptation like I you know of the Disney Princesses she was the one I looked the most like and she was like a book nerd which is what I've always been so I really loved and identified with her and I think it just made me love that fairy tale it's also my favorite fairy tale to have retold to me I am just an absolute sucker for a beauty and the beast' retelling my very favorites are Angela Carter's in her collection the bloody chamber but yeah I Beauty the Beast for sure ok number four is what is the classic you were most embarrassed to have not read yet now I will caveat this by saying that I I don't believe in reader shame or shaming people for having or having not read things in terms of a book that I am surprised that I missed in my like in my youth youthful reading of classics because I really like Dickens a lot so I'm just surprised that I never actually I don't think anyway have read this that's David Copperfield so this is one that I would definitely like to get to it is a big honker of a book so we shall see but yeah I mean expectations is probably my favorite Dickens and based on what I know about this I think a lot of the things that I like and great expectations in terms of like kind of the coming of age or biography kind of piece of it I think that I would really like this so yeah this is I guess less embarrassing more just like I am surprised that I didn't didn't have at least the first round of pass at this and my youth so yeah this is one that I would like to get to at some point the next one is the question I'm most excited about which is what are the top five classics you would like to read soon so I am thinking and I'm not committed myself to this because I don't know I just want to think about it a little bit more but I am thinking that for next year I'm probably going to pick a list of six to twelve classics that I want to commit to getting to just because I've recently been remembering how much I love reading classics I've read I think three or four this year and every time I'm like I really like classics why don't I make time to read these more particularly Cranford was a good reading experience for me this year so anyway of the ones that I kind of have on hand that I've been thinking about reading some of the ones that might go on that list include the moon stone by Wilkie Collins because this is a book that I got halfway through and then like misplaced I think basically and so I didn't finish it but it is like the one of the original mystery novels ever written and another Wilkie Collins we will talk about later in this list that I absolutely adore so I was really enjoying this and it's a it's an easier type classic to get through so like I would like to go ahead and polish this off actually this year if I get a chance I would like to finish this one off another one that I may read this year because a friend of mine and I have talked about doing kind of a buddy read together of it because our book club won't be back in session until next February so we're like maybe we should just pick a classic to read for December and that is Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen so I have read I have been specifically trying to parcel out my Jane Austen because there's so few of them I've read four of hers I've read Emma persuasions Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice but I have Northanger Abbey Mansfield Park and then love and friendship which is I don't believe a complete work but it is some Jane Austen to read so really two two of her main novels left and this one I've always heard is good for the fall I'm also a little surprised / disappointed myself that I didn't read this as a part of the whole I just realized that the pages are all messed up in this that's so sad I am sad that I didn't read this as a part of my thesis on bromance because this like I think is making fun of romance are like playing on some what at the time we're sort of classic tropes of romance so anyway I'm interested to read this in like I said I think I may even be able to get to this this year and then three that would definitely be candidates for the project I was talking about for next year one is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh I've actually never had any Evelyn Hwa but this and scoop are two that I've always wanted to get to and yeah I just I think that I will really based on what I know of him and some of like the quotes and stuff I've seen from him I think I would really like this and I'm very interested in the kind of project that this book has cuz I know a lot about what's in this book so yeah this is definitely on that list another one that I really would like to get to sometime soon because I've never actually read any Anne Bronte is the tenant at wild filled hole I would really like to read this and Agnes gray but I've heard that both are wonderful Jane Eyre is my all-time favorite book and I really like everything that I've read from the Bronte's thus far so I would really like to try and Bronte and I'm actually a little maybe this goes in my embarrassing category I'm a little ashamed of myself that I've not gotten to her yet but that definitely is emili´s and then the fifth one that I might get to next year would be The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas now he is one this is a book that I read in my youth and I suspect I read an abridged version just because this is such a look and I don't remember it being this long so I think I may have read an abridged version but yeah I really enjoyed this one I read this as a kid and I would really like to revisit it as an adult so those were ones that I'm thinking about these these three in particular are ones that might go on that kind of six to twelve books the classics that I want to get to next year the other thing I've realized is with my new job during the week it's hard for me to get a lot of reading in and evening but and and what just so you know in terms of how I like to finish books I really like being able to sit down and finish a book in one sitting just because if I I'm I have so many books going at one time if I don't do that like I can have up to ten going at one time if I'm just sort of dipping in and out but I think reading classics and smaller bursts is like much more how I like to read them so I'm thinking that like if I picked a classic to have as my sort of like during the week like hour of reading kind of book cuz that's about all I can really handle usually in the evenings it might be a good way for me to get through some of these kind of bigger intimidating books and leaning into what I'm in the mood to read during the week um so anyway all that to say I'm still kind of mulling if I'm gonna do that or not but that's something I'm definitely thinking about doing because I do love classics and I really want to get to some of these that I've been wanting to either like reread or read for the first time ok the next question is your favorite retelling modern book or series like book series based on a classic like your favorite retelling and I have a whole video about rage howling so I'll link that somewhere but the one that immediately comes to mind to me that I've really enjoyed recently is hearthstone which is a Pride and Prejudice retelling in a and an alternate world with Dragons like it's a fantasy book that has that's like based on Pride and Prejudice and I am so delighted to tell you that there is a new series that's coming out with this so I've got the first one on order I can't wait to or not the first one but like the next book in the series which I had no idea I this works completely perfectly well as a standalone so if you don't want to get into a whole series or commit to a whole series you could just read this one but I'm really excited that there's gonna be more and by the time this is going up I may already have it I'm not sure but but yeah this is just like I really this is one of my favorite retellings okay and then the next one is your favorite movie or TV version of classics that you've enjoyed and actually I - I'm somebody who really likes adaptations moving TV adaptations of books I'm not like some purist who's like oh they're all terrible I definitely don't feel that way and there's a lot that I've enjoyed some of the ones that kind of came to mind the David Suchet ITV Poirot adaptations of Agatha Christie are like excellent and people absolutely love them my personal favorite poro adaptation is the 1970s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express we'll get to the most recent one soon in a different question but I think those work really well there's been a lot of really excellent adaptations of Pride and Prejudice both as like retelling something like Bridget Jones's Diary but I think you know the BBC Pride and Prejudice to me is like the like the canonical Pride and Prejudice retelling that one is like the best one but also like Lizzie Bennet diaries that web web series is absolutely fantastic and like a great modern reinterpretation I love that yeah there's just been a lot of really good Pride and Prejudice adaptations oh also like the the 2005 I think movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was also really really good I thought for something that was not like a series but like just they had to do the whole book in one movie I thought that was the best one I've seen so yeah there's a lot of great Pride and Prejudice movie TV adaptations fairy tale wise I would say kind of what I was saying earlier that the Disney Beauty and the Beast is my personal favorite it's just I think missed all chuck wise I just love it so I like that and then in terms of my favorite kind of what I was talking about with Bridget Jones's Diary and the Lizzie Bennet series like a retelling and movie TV version I would say clueless which is a retelling of Jane Austen's Emma is my favorite sort of like retelling the story but it to a modern audience that I've seen on teeth unlike the big screen I just think it has a lot of fun with what's happening in this book I think it brings out interesting themes that are underlying in the book when it gets translated and that to me is what I always really liked in a retelling or an adaptation is for it to be an an interpretation that lends new light to the original source material so yeah like I said I like a lot of these at like a lot of adaptations of classics I mean I even like the campy three musketeer slash man in the iron mask movies from the 90s like those are fun that are adopted like from Alexandra Dumont like I tend to really like adaptations there's only a few like I mean I definitely have a list of ones that I don't like we will get to that in a second but like in general I'm into the project of adapting classics for TV and movie because I think it's a great way to get people like thinking about the source material again oh and I'm sorry I also forgot since insensibility the sort of like direct movie retelling of this is fantastic the one with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet from I think like 95 ish it was directed by Angley and it is a beautiful movie it is a beautiful beautiful movies I really recommend that one maybe that that may be my favorite just like straight up adaptation of a classic I've seen just it's so well done yeah I really love this particular one okay and then the eighth question are the worst classic - movie adaptations and again I have several and this is very based on taste some of these I think are objectively bad and a couple of them are just like preference wise so I'll start with like the ones I think are more preference wise I guess and then get into a couple that I think are just like objectively not good so I will say that I am sure that the hunting of Hill House miniseries adaptation on Netflix right now I'm sure it's fine I will just say that it is so different than the source material that it's just hard for me to think of it as an adaptation and I couldn't get through it because I was just like this is not the book so I think I would probably like it in a year cuz I just recently reread this so I think in a year when I'm like a little more distant and I'm not thinking of it as an adaptation as much but more like and inspired by kind of thing I probably could get into it but like just my preference I don't think that this is very good another one that's definitely like very much a preference thing is the Cranford adaptations I read this for booktubeathon as my book that I was gonna then watch the adaptation of I watched a couple of episodes and for me it's a very well-done series like do not get me wrong it's not that it's poorly executed it's just that I don't think that they are bringing out in their adaptation the parts of this book that I really liked because I really saw this as sort of a book of intense like loneliness and like the quiet desperation of women who don't have men to care for them in a highly patriarchal society so like that was what I was interested in and I just don't think that's what this adaptation was interested in so therefore they're sort of just a mismatch of like taste another one that's just like taste wise I actually I think most people would probably agree with me I don't think Jane Eyre has ever been well adapted like I've never seen one that I was Oh like you really capture what's great about the book yeah basically just I don't think that this has a good adaptation yet and hopefully someday we will get one and I may be biased because this is my all-time favorite book so I may have a particularly high standard for it but yeah not good and then three that I think are just like objectively bad the first is the adaptation of The Hobbit that Peter Jackson did now I didn't include I forgot to mention this but I think that the Lord of the Rings the Lord of the Rings adaptation that Peter Jackson did is one of the best adaptations that's ever been done as sort of like a classic book and I would I would consider talking at this point to be the classic of fantasy literature I think that's fantastic I think the project of trying to adapt the Hobbit as a war movie the same way that that was sort of the genre lens he brought to the Lord of the Rings like I'm gonna make these like a war movie he tried to do that with a hobbit and the source material just doesn't support it it just doesn't work well because the Hobbit is much more like romp II and fun and like more of a kind of like quest type story like a fun quest and I think that his adaptation like drains the fun out of it it's also a book called The Hobbit and like The Hobbit in the movie Martin Freeman seems to be the thing that Peter Jackson is least interested like he's least interested in following him so it just fundamentally did not work the second Hobbit movie I don't like I think it's called the desolation of Smaug I think is that the second one is I would say it's one of the two worst movies I've ever seen like I just think it does not work as a movie and it doesn't work as an adaptation it's just bad in my opinion so I that is probably my least favorite classic a temptation now that I've ranted about it another two that I think I don't have as much kind of like just problems when I just don't think they're good what is the classic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice which I believe has Laurence Olivier as mr. Darcy but I can't remember I should look that up yeah it is a Laurence Olivier and then I think it's Greer Garson who's playing Lizzie and she's fine I just think totally this movie doesn't work like it's just not a very good adaptation I do really like the Laurence Olivier weathering Heights adaptation I think he's much more suited for a Heathcliff type character as opposed to Darcy I just I think it's a very of the kind of classic movie adaptations of classic books I think it's one of the least successful and then another one that I just didn't think was good was Murder on the Orient Express the recent one with Kenneth Branagh however you say his name yeah I think it's not a good movie it gets people enjoying the source material again so I'm thankful for it but it's not terrible it's just not accomplished and considering that the 1970s version of this is like one of my all-time favorite movies that I absolutely adore is so it's just like it didn't live up to the alike the the adaptation of this that I really loved and I just thought it was bland and did weird things with the Poirot character I have a whole review and comparison of those two movies so I'll link that somewhere but anyway those are some adaptations I think did not work that well okay and then the ninth question is the favorite editions you like to collect more for classics this surprises no one given my shelf and what you've been looking at but the penguin clothbound classics are my absolute favorite editions I am trying to collect all of them and that will include some books that I don't like or don't have a ton of interest in but I just really I love these I think they're beautiful and they're books that I want to have for the rest of my life so I'm interested in having a complete set the only like thing that the penguin clothbound classics do not have that I would exhort them to consider having would be they don't have Shakespeare there's one there's the sonnets there's some of his poetry there's there's one of those in the collection but like give me like some Macbeth give me some Merchant of Venice I would be like all about that I would love for them to come out with I feel lease a few great Shakespeare ones in this edition so I don't have that the other addition I'm collecting for books that I classics that I want do you like I'm pointing to them the classics that I want that do not come in this is the every man's library edition with the red spines when I can get them I also have some of the black spines just because them's the brakes but yeah those are the other editions I quite like I just find both of them look really nice in the Shelf they hold up really well I like the I just like the way they're laid out I like the page quality I just I like those editions and then I guess I should say that for my favorite Agatha Christie classics I have been collecting them in this facility ssin so yeah I have more collections than I guess I realized it's a problem I'm about quarter okay and then the final question is an under hype classic you'd recommend to anyone so I'm gonna I'm gonna go two different ways with this the first one is sort of like a more straightforward interpretation of the woman in white by Wilkie Collins is one of my all-time favorite classics it's a it's a formative text in the mystery genre Wilkie Collins is does great work in that genre him and Arthur cut Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are sort of the progenitors of mystery as we have it today like they were some of the kind of foundational texts um anyway I absolutely love this book this is one of the books that most recommend to people who are looking to get into classics because I think it's very approachable and user friendly even though it's written in the 19th century it reads quite well to the modern ear and it just is such a fun kind of campy there's a lot of a sort of campy elements in this that are just a lot of fun I think it has some really interesting subversions of sort of like character types in terms of like the the damsel in distress and sort of like her knight in shining armor I think it undermines a lot of that and it has a female protagonists in here who I think it's just absolutely great it also has wonderful very mustache twirling villains and this so this is like my more straightforward answer the other thing though I just wanted to tell you is that one piece is cut I mean it's it is a big honkin book there's no getting around that it took me I think three years to get through this I read this in college and I actually would like to go back and reread this in like kind of more one go as opposed to breaking it up so much because this book is actually genuinely really good it you know I think it's it's almost underhyped in the sense of like I think that it may have a reputation of like oh that's just like something that pretentious people say that they've read because it's such a big book and it's a Russian classic and whatever like I think that there can maybe be sort of a feeling of like it doesn't deserve its hype and therefore almost becomes underhyped and I would just tell you that this is genuinely a fantastic book it has a lot of humor in it that I think is unexpected like in the one of the first chapters that like a bunch of guys get drunk and like steal a bear from the zoo and tie up a policeman and like put him out to sea like I mean like some crazy like hijinks in this at times it is it's definitely epic and I think that the battle pieces are where I get a little more lost but this was genuinely like an amazing book and at like I said I would like to reread it because I think it was probably a four star read for me but I think a lot of that was because I I broke it up so much because I would just get distracted and not finish it so like this is a rereading project I would really like to undertake because it's just it genuinely is really good and you know don't let it's sort of reputation keep you from giving it a try if you can if it sounds at all interesting to you and you can get through like a honkin long book it's definitely worth your while and I think it is genuinely a great classic that's worth reading still so yeah those are my classics picks for the classic book tag I made you a different video like now that I've gone through these questions I didn't get to really get into my favorite classics so maybe I'll do a separate video on that because I really love classics and I'm really in the mood been in the mood recently to kind of get back into that so yeah maybe we will we will see if I can do that but anyway if you enjoyed this video definitely like subscribe follow me on the social means if you are so inclined I have all that information listed in the description box below let me know if you have any favorite classics that I didn't mention and yeah I think that will do it I hope you're having a really lovely day and I will just talk to you soon bye [Music]

Channel: bookslikewhoa

Views: 34,968

Rating: 4.9739294 out of 5

Keywords: books, booktube, book tag, reading, literature, classics, the call of the wild, agatha christie, murder on the orient express, the grapes of wrath, my antonia, david copperfield, the moonstone, wilkie collins, the woman in white, northanger abbey, jane austen, emma, sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice, brideshead revisited, the tenant of wildfell hall, the count of monte cristo, heartstone, jrr tolkien, the haunting of hill house, cranford, jane eyre, war and peace

Id: 3eIEwl3i8dg

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018