Book Club for One!
A Fable book club for me and for you... but mostly for me (I really need it)
It’s been a while, folks! Sorry about the absence, but I’ve been incredibly caught up with the first semester of my masters program. I have so much reading to get done that I’ve barely had time to do any reading for fun, much less post over here on Substack. I’m sure y’all haven’t missed me too much.
Anyways, I’ve basically accepted I won’t be capable of reading my for-fun books fast enough to keep up with my buying books habit, and boy is it straining the wallet. So, for the foreseeable future I’m putting myself on a serious book-buying ban (and by serious I mean I will probably still be thrifting books when I find them, because who doesn’t love a deal?). My solution for this too-many-books-for-my-shelf problem is—you guessed it!—a book club in which I force myself to read a classic or modern classic. The rules? I have to already own the book and I have to read it within a reasonable amount of time.
Here's a link to my book club on Fable!
Each time I finish a book, movie, or even just sit on TikTok and scroll for five minutes, I end up with a classic or two that I want to add to my TBR. I’ve bought or thrifted many of these books out of sheer excitement, so I’ve got a lot of options sitting on my bookshelf. Unfortunately, I also have so many books that I want to read that I have no idea what I want to read next. This is where you come in! I’ll choose ten books that I already own and list them below, and if you’re interested in helping me choose what to read next, then you can let me know in the comments what your vote is. We’ll be reading whichever book gets the most votes, and post updates here and on Fable as we go.
Without further ado (and in no particular order), here are the options:
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Brontë
2. Northanger Abbey (1817) by Jane Austen
3. Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
5. Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu
6. De Profundis (1905) by Oscar Wilde
7. The Count of Monte Cristo (1846) by Alexander Dumas
8. Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce
9. 1984 (1949) by George Orwell
10. Fall of the House of Usher (1839) by Edgar Allen Poe
I’m selfishly hoping some of you choose to join this book club, because it’s much more fun to share my thoughts with you all than it is to share my thoughts with the paper in my book journal. If you’re interested in classic novels, then this book club will certainly be for you.
And stay tuned, because I’ll also be posting some reading guides for different classics that I already love! If you have any requests for reading guides, feel free to also throw those down in the comments.
Currently reading:
Frankenstein (1831) by Mary Shelley
Recently finished reading:
The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells
The Romance of a Shop (1888) by Amy Levy
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde
I will have to throw in my own book 'War of the Words.'