Ranking every classic I read in 2020✒️

hey it's really nice to have you here nice to meet you my name is emma if you are new to this channel and if not hi welcome back how have you been i am really looking forward to sitting down with you guys right now and filming this video because i've never done this video before but i thought it would be fun to go through all of the classics that i read in 2020 and rank them all from my favorites to my least favorites i read a lot of classics this year which was really fun and i'm really looking forward to kind of speaking about them all i don't think i'm gonna go on any kind of long synopsisy um explanations because we would be here all day but i'll maybe say like a brief little sentence of what it's about where it ranks in my list why how much i enjoyed it and maybe something fun about it so if you would like to see how many classics and what they were that i read in 2020 then you're in the right place grab yourself maybe a cup of tea i have some turmeric tea currently way too warm to drink so we'll just let that cool for now but let's get started all right so i read 27 classics in 2020 which is pretty good a few of them were on audiobook but most of them um i do have here let's just get into it coming in at number 27 my least favorite classic that i read this year but honestly i have to say i enjoyed all of them i don't think i rated anything lower than three stars on this whole list so that's pretty good that being said my least favorite classic of the year was strange fiction by h.g wells i find myself not really getting along most of the time with h.g wells his novels his short stories in this case because strange fiction is a collection of about i think six or seven short stories of his all about science fiction different things like that i just really find myself having a hard time connecting with his works or caring too much about them although i do really like the island of dr moreau that's kind of the only exception i've found so far but strange fiction just hosts a whole bunch of weird creepy sometimes really interesting science fiction stories i wasn't loving everything that was happening in them i didn't find myself really like gripped or held tightly as i imagined the readers of the day would have been so yeah i didn't hate it by any means i still enjoyed reading it but i think out of all the experiences i've had this year reading classic literature strange fiction definitely ranks at the bottom that is the first one uh we have on the list 26 is candied by voltaire i read this at the start of the year and like it was fine i honestly don't have too much to say about it it is a little satire that goes against the notion that all outcomes are the best possible outcomes because we live in the best of all possible worlds and we follow our protagonist candide as he goes through life literally having every single horrible thing you could ever imagine ever happened to him how he survives it how his philosopher friend keeps telling him oh it's okay everything happens for a reason everything will work out because this is how it's supposed to be this is how it's meant to be so voltaire is really rebelling against that notion and saying really it doesn't make much sense that you've just decided that everything happens for a reason everything's the best when really sometimes things are just cruel and things happen for no particular outcome reason there's no logic so that's kind of what this little book of mostly like philosophy and satire is about it was fine it was quite an interesting commentary and conversation to have um it just definitely wasn't the best classic i read all year and like i really felt that so um it is quite short if you would like to have the experience for yourself but that is candide i do think it's a worthwhile read but definitely not one i'll be like really excited to return to anytime in the future number 25 is another short story it is because i'm not really a fan of short stories but i really have to say i really love this i gave it four stars it just does rank a bit lower because it was quite short it's quite an early creation of sylvia place and that is mary ventura and the ninth kingdom this is an extremely short story detailing mary who was actually sylvia classmate i believe in school and she takes this trip on a train and quickly finds out her destination is horribly frightening and scary and so she's trying to do everything in her power to talk to the people on the train learn how to get off of this train it was beautifully written i think it was just such a nice little densely packed short story where every sentence there was something there for you and i loved it i loved it so much once again though that was just really short and i think there were so many other amazing classics i got to experience this year so it does rank quite low on the list but i would highly recommend coming in at number 24 and 23 actually we have two agatha christie novels coming in at number 24 i think i would put murder on the links first um this one was actually quite good this is the second book in the hair heel poirot series so i couldn't find the first one on audiobook so i listened to murder on the links this one's set in france and there's kind of like an arch nemesis that pearl has to deal with and there's a murder obviously um on this kind of golf course that's just being built the links and we follow a whole host of people in the house and the servants and the man's wife mrs reno who's been murdered and it's just your classic detective story i loved it i got to read this in october it was fun it was great um i just think standing it up next to a lot of classical works that i read once again um it does rank quite low number 23 would be death on the nile which i enjoyed a little bit more than murder on the links this one is set in egypt and we're following a boat a steam barge i think that's going down the nile quite slowly and there's a very um famous woman there who's murdered and then pro of course has to question everyone on the little boat and what's going on and of course we go to a whole host of really historic uh kind of ancient egypt sites which was interesting and i know it's being turned into a movie which is quite exciting so death on the nile did rank a little bit higher next book i really loved and it is the wind in the willows by kenneth graham i'm so happy that i got to read this one this year it was so sweet i remember watching the movie from my childhood being a little bit scared by actually because there's quite a lot of like frightening characters and things that go on i'm looking at you mr toad but um this was one of the coziest books i read this year i have to say the prose was charming beautiful so sweet so meandering and just you really felt like you were sinking into the story taking your time the wind and the willows follows a whole host of animals who are friends we follow them on their adventures and more often than not misadventures the trouble they get into we have a toad who's obsessed with cars we have a badger quite the grumpy badger who lives in the woods and it was just really sweet it was really sweet i loved it so this comes in at number 22. 21 we have the only jane austen i read this year i think and that was sense and sensibility this is definitely my least favorite of austin's novels that i've read now this i think was my fourth yes my fourth austin novel um pride and prejudice of course still remains my favorite but sense and sensibility was interesting i just really like hated so many of the characters in this book and of course it does speak a lot to austin's talent there's so many funny bits in here of course i always love reading jane austen it's always such a nice fun also very cozy time really uplifting and i did enjoy sense and sensibility but it's definitely one of i think the least memorable classics i had the experience of reading this year so that's why it's a bit low down on the list but i'm really glad to have read it i definitely want to at some point read all of her works so that's that one it's a play and that is a lady windermere's fan by oscar wilde i absolutely adored it i love it um this is an extremely short little play we're following lady windermere she loses her fan and there's just so much about victorian society and oscar wilde's wit and his prose and just his beautiful beautiful way with words i love love loved it this year i got to read so much oscar wilde and i'm so happy that i did because i absolutely adored every single one of his works that i stepped into yeah lady windermere is just a fun character to follow in here because there's so much going on even of course it's taking place in the span of a few pages but i really really i loved it so that is number 20. we have the lion the witch and the wardrobe by c.s lewis i loved it this is my first time reading it although it's a story i've definitely grown up with in childhood i really really enjoyed it i have to say i still think i prefer the film version but this one was just such just such sweet good fun once again another really cozy book by we're following a group of four siblings and when they stumble through a wardrobe in england they are transported into the fantasy world of narnia where they quickly find out there is a prophecy about them and this really uh villainous woman called the white witch so they kind of have to see what that is all about and go on this huge adventure to save narnia from eternal winter and this uh ruler and stuff like that and it was just it was really sweet really nice um yeah it was definitely very young i was a very young classic to read i mean it is a children's book but i really enjoyed the experience show number 17 i'm really glad i got to read the symposium by plato this year this was really good fun honestly um i found so much in here that i was so interested in and would love to explore more in the future especially the end i think couple of speeches where they talk about um humans and our kind of nature and our genesis as being born connected to another person and one person is really two people and we go about our lives essentially trying to track down the other person who was like at one point fused to us that was so interesting oh my gosh i loved it but if you don't know what the symposium is about it's basically a drinking party where a whole bunch of men get together and discuss what they think love is what the nature of love is about what merits what values what prose what cons what love is and how it affects life and humanity and everything like that i absolutely i loved it i loved it it was great um i'm really glad i got to read it because i've never read it before so definitely another one that i would recommend number 16 we have a book that like i'm still a little bit ambivalent about and i'm not quite too sure but i really still think about it it is crime and punishment by dostoevsky yeah i don't know i read this in february first i'm reading dostoevsky first i'm reading crime and punishment um so affected by it i was so impacted and affected by it it put me in the worst mood i think um ever and it was so interesting to see the effect it had this follows a very poor student uh we're in russia and he's extremely poor he thinks that puts him above the moral law his name is raskolnikov and so he commits a murder it's basically what sets this book off and from there we follow his extreme guilt and his him worrying about what's going on a detective comes around and all of this stuff of course we have a whole bunch of characters and a whole host more things happen than that but i'm just really not too sure what to think about it like i think i enjoy the experience more of having finished it and being able to sit and think about it and kind of having the story with me rather than actually enjoying the experience of reading it i do think since february i just feel like i've read so much and i think i would actually enjoy this so much more now even though it's not quite been a year yet but i'm really excited to read this again and again honestly um and just see how my thoughts change about it but overall i did enjoy it i'm just still i don't know i don't know i think it's just because it affected me so much but um regardless i think it's a book i'm really glad to have read so that is number 17. number 15 is a book that i really love and now as we're getting kind of into my top 15 it's really hard to put these in actual order so i do just want to say that but i love this book i read it in december and that is giovanni's room by james baldwin this was also my first james baldwin and i was blown away i adored it if you've never heard of giovanni's room this follows a man it doesn't really follow giovanni although he is our central one of our central characters it follows a man called david and he comes to paris looking to find himself but he ends up losing himself in this man named giovanni in giovanni's room because they developed this relationship with each other it's the 1950s and things are quite hard for david deeply struggling with his sexuality who he is he's constantly being barraged by these letters from home from his father beseeching him to come back to america and all of this stuff and it is a really painful book to read it's really hard book to read emotionally following david and giovanni their relationship there's also a woman that david is in a relationship with and it's just this huge complicated thing that it just really affected me as well like crime and punishment those are two i think of the most heavily emotionally affecting books i read this year giovanni's room was just james baldwin is just so talented and his writing in this book the symbolism the imagery just it was all so good so good in its devastating effects so i would really recommend but wow wow i'm so looking forward to reading more james baldwin next year i was so impressed with the story i read a shakespeare play this year and it ranks in at number 15 that is a midsummer night's dream i was honestly a little bit disappointed with this just because i think i had so many expectations but i really enjoyed it no matter what i did really love it of course i did but it was just a really fun lighthearted comedy it does have some serious bits put in there but i just really love shakespeare's writing obviously what else am i gonna say but there were some really nice lines and pieces in here and i was so happy to find so many wonderful kind of lines and things i would love to memorize and just really beautiful language that just glittered and glistened i loved it i would love to see this performed because i've never had that experience but um yeah i really did enjoy this very much looking forward to reading more shakespeare very soon so that is a midsummer night's dream some more oscar wilde another of his plays we have sadomay i did rank this one higher than the previous two plays i've mentioned just because like the language in this one i just feel like he really had the opportunity to be so decadent because this is a play about um in a sense decadence and richness we're set at king herod's feasting hall and we follow salome who is his stepdaughter and of course we also have his wife there we have his whole kind of court there and it's just a one-act tragedy but it is so devastating there's so much awfulness in this book in this play but there's also so much beauty and like the themes that he explores in here the writing that he goes and lets these people say in here it's just so beautiful i was blown away i'm just always so impressed by what he chooses to actually put down and how he chooses to talk about things there's a whole theme in here that i loved of the gays what different people's vision does to things what different people's vision does to different people um it was just absolutely beautiful so yeah that is salome um i loved it definitely one of my favorite wilds i've read i haven't read actually too many of them but i loved it number 12 is the castle of atranto by horse walpole this is really high up because this is one of the first gothic stories in gothic novels i didn't really know what to expect but like i don't think anything could have prepared me for the weirdness the wackiness the strangeness that was actually in this book um it was just so so strange we are following manfred who is the prince of atranto and he's desperately trying to marry off his son conrad to a lady named isabella but the very first page of this book begins with conrad being crushed by a giant helmet so he's out of the picture from page one from there manfred turns to isabella and we kind of learned that there's this prophecy about the principality of a transo that says the rightful owner of the castle and principality of atrantil will inherit it again once the original owner of atranto grows too large to inhabit it so it's kind of this weird wacky journey there's so many little bits and pieces in here there's romance there's murder there's mystery there's skeletons just like nothing could have prepared me for the strangeness that envelops the castle of a transo um it's a book that like i couldn't take too spooky like there were some cool of course very traditional gothic spooky parts but more than that i just found it really funny um and that was honestly fine i loved it it was so strange so wacky i would love to read it again i read it around halloween so really enjoyed would really recommend if you like to go on a strange kind of low budget haunted house fever dream ride i think this is the perfect choice we have if not winter this is five minutes of sappho translated by the one the only anne carson um light of my life so i rated this five stars i was absolutely enamored by the little small fragments that ann carson translates um there was just so much there and like they're not very long like let me show you i really wanted to sip up that tea but now i'm too excited they're very very short little fragments almost this whole thing but there's they just like invite you into so much consideration and like thinking about what sappho would have written there what could be on the page and like what ann carson leaves for you the language is so beautiful like so beautiful yeah i was just blown away i loved learning too about the greek because this does come with the ancient greek on one side and it was just so nice to like speak it out loud it felt like you were casting a little bit of a spell some of these are just so devastating someone will remember us i say even in another time invisible 2 in haiti's house you will go your way among dim shapes having been breathed out like oh my gosh oh my goodness alright number 11 is a christmas carol by charles dickens i have recently just finished reading this this was such a fun time 2020 was the year i finally read dickens for the first time this was my first time reading a christmas carol i would highly recommend it was so fun the writing was beautiful i adored it it made me so emotional which i wasn't really expecting it really really hit home especially the scenes with the ghost of christmas past like it's just so sad and heavy and like i was really really affected which i wasn't i just didn't know what happened so i just really it has to be this high up because i adored it i loved it so much so that is a christmas carol number 10 we have great expectations by charles dickens which i did enjoy more than a christmas carol i loved it this was my first dickens book ever in my whole entire life um i just freaking fell in love with it it was incredible it was amazing this follows pip who is a young boy and he is offered the opportunity via an anonymous benefactor to be a gentleman and enter into high london society so he moves the london moves away from his sister and his brother-in-law in the country comes to london you follow basically his life adjusting to the city adjusting to his new position um and he's such a nice character to follow there's so many people i love in here there's so many spooky elements there's so many light-hearted elements i just really really enjoyed it i was so touched it's a book i've thought about for a really long time since finishing and i adore it so um that is number ten are we on ten we're in the top ten so this is my top ten number nine i have we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson um first shirley jackson book i loved it i loved it so so much i know many people consider this a modern classic but just for the sake of this video i lumped the two together because it's all the same to me it's all good books so we have always lived in the castle two sisters a big spooky mansion a town full of people who hate them a potential huge mass murder that's gone on in the family leaving the rest of the sisters family uh dead and it's just so strange so ambiguous so weird so wacky i almost said mary shelley shirley jackson's writing um i loved it it just really like fit what i wanted from the story i'm so interested in reading more of her works and i just i really would recommend i don't think it's a book for everyone because there's so many elements that um a lot of people dislike in novels but i think for me that just it just really worked for me and i absolutely loved it so that is number nine number eight is the broken wings by khalid gibran if you've seen my best books of the year video i'm gonna warn you you're probably gonna see all of the books i mentioned in there but at least um this is kind of ranking them all in class classic order i guess so the broken wings is a tragic love story set in lebanon following two people who fall in love they're destined to be torn apart unfortunately what i loved most about this was de bruyne's writing his beautiful poetic language was just wow something i didn't know i needed in my life this was my introduction to him once again this year i've just been so blessed discovering like so many authors these are like my first time reading a lot of their works for the first time so i absolutely was blown away so impressed um i can't wait to read more of his works because i have a lot more of them on my shelf waiting for me so i would really really highly recommend i completely forgot to mention the little princess by francis hodgson burnett i think this is technically my 10th so it's not actually great expectations i would put this below dickens so like that's where it fits i completely forgot about this one but this was so sweet so cozy i would highly recommend it is a children's book loved it number six is prometheus unbound by percy besheli another play i read this so early in the year and it's remained so high on my list for so long which is so nice so cool um this was just beautiful this is about prometheus it's based on each class's play prometheus bound but of course percy bishelly kind of takes that and turns it upside down i would really recommend the language in here is just like gold um loved it so much highly recommend number five is stories of god by rilka this didn't make my favorites cut just because i put a different work of relic is on their collection of his letters but i guess this one is also a classic because it's a collection of 13 stories all about god and it's basically him talking to children in these stories because they're meant for a young audience but anyone at all can enjoy them of course rilka had to be on here he's my favorite ever um so happy i got to read more of him this year and this really was so nice so comforting i loved seeing one of his earliest works that he put out and how he's developed since then and i just i loved it so much i can't even express number four we have the turn of the screw by henry james i am very shocked that it is up this high but this is also a book that i've been thinking about since i finished reading it and if that happens you know it's a really good book so this is another gothic ghost story uh victorian ghost story i love that i got to read so much of the gothic this year because it has been my favorite genre for so long but this year i feel like i really really delved into a lot of brand new ones for me which was nice so this one was just so nice once again i don't think this is one for everyone because it is so ambiguous there's so much unknown in here but i really did end up loving the writing in this book which surprised me because when i first started it i was like this is incredibly dense incredibly hard to break through to try and see what is actually being said here but that's so much involved in the plot of this story where we follow a governess who's taking care of these two young children and there's so much she is trying to shake out of them just like the reader is trying to shake out of this book and it was just a really like a big experience is what i wouldn't describe reading this book very very um just mind-blowing and i loved it so that is turn of the screw all right number three the top three classics of the year we have the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde i can't believe um this is my first time reading it ever in my life it was incredible i cried i cried reading this book because it was that beautiful it was too beautiful and i cried this was just so incredible i think it deserves all the hype it's ever received and continues to receive it's just like on a whole other level on a whole other planet and i just i really want to read this book like once a year i think i know right now on my discord uh i think they've started january 1st a whole bunch of you guys are reading it together on the discord server in the description if you would like to join along with them there's quite a number of people doing it so that should be really really fun i can't wait to see what you guys think about it because it's just i read it in february and it's remained in my top three books all year so i think that speaks enough for itself one of the most beautiful things i've ever laid my eyes on i still can't believe this actually exists in the world of literature that's how good it was and uh yeah i think number two that of course is phantom of the opera by gaston who shocker that it's not number one um i do have to say i think a lot of the classics i've mentioned previous to phantom of the opera they are not that they have more literary value because what is literary value but i just think there's a lot more important books than phantom of the opera out there is what i'm trying to say but it's just been a childhood favorites it is one of my favorite stories i just have so much bias to this book that can't be ignored i don't speak about this book or think about this book with any kind of objectivity at all just to get that out there um this book has always been a huge part of my life and i can't ignore that um it's just it's just always been there for me and it's one of my favorite stories of all time uh even knowing that like a lot of these books i've mentioned are much more i guess important works of literature a lot of people would argue but it doesn't really matter to me so this has to be up here because i just absolutely love it with my whole soul and uh yeah however there is one book that did top it um and is like leagues above it in my opinion one of the best books probably be the best book i've ever read in my life let's be honest if it tops phantom and that is 100 years of solitude by gabrielle garcia marquez i just wow this is a book i've thought about almost every single day since finishing it this is just outstanding one of the most brilliant the most brilliant book i've ever read um i'm so excited to read it again and like properly annotate it because i was just so overwhelmed reading it for the first time that i didn't even know it was happening to me it was like a wholly transformative experience i would really really recommend this book there's so much in it like every single sentence and it is quite a lengthy book is so jammed full of so much i finished it and i just kind of sat there like i think almost in tears like what had just happened to me what had i just read um haven't had quite the momentous experience that i've had with 100 years in a long time and there's so few books that like really really do that to you and like really feel like they've ripped your whole world apart and built it back up but this book really managed to do that the writing was so beautiful the plot was so beautiful there's a lot of history that's worked into here there's a lot of really beautiful language um i just don't have anything bad to say about this book this is probably my favorite book of all time not my favorite book the best book i've ever read it's definitely my top i can't even pick a favorite so anyway i think a book that everyone should read before they die um and i know i'm gonna read it many more times so yeah this is number one this is also my favorite book of the year spoilers but here we are and yeah so thank you so much for coming along with me on this classic literature journey that i took this year let me know what your favorite classic of the year was um i'm really excited for next year because of course we do have some plans and we're going to be reading some more classics and if you would like to join us i know the dark academics book club will of course be reading a lot of classics next year our first one will be julius caesar in february and of course carolyn and i and our secret project we will be reading a classic every single month or every two months our first one will be childhood boyhood youth by leo tolstoy and then after that in february we will be reading the pickwick papers by charles dickens if you would like to join us and yeah i'm really excited to see what more classics i can pick off my bookshelf for this year this new year and yeah i'm really happy with what i read honestly i found a ton of new favorites this year and i'm just so thankful that yeah i got to read and listen to a lot of really great books so thank you so much for watching i hope this was fun and i shall see you very soon in my next video if there's any videos you would like to see from me particularly about classics maybe a specific one book reviews or talking about certain author or just a reading vlog on any classic please um don't hesitate because i'm always open to suggestions so thank you so much for watching and i will see you very soon ciao [Music]

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Length: 29min 24sec (1764 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021