[syn= 9780763608040]
[syn= 9780140317824]
[syn= 9780307405784]
This fall, I returned to San Francisco State University to finish a master's degree in English literature, and one of my classes is on Victorian Era literature. An interesting aspect about the primary texts for this class is that these are stories that I'd read as a youth or that I knew so well, through popular culture, that even though I hadn't actually read the texts, I felt like I knew the stories and the characters. For this month's Featured Collection, I thought I'd share what I had been reading because revisiting these classic stories may be as fun for you as it has been for me.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
I thought I had read this in my childhood but, as I read it, I realized that I had actually read Through the Looking Glass, and had watched Disney's animated adaptation more times than I can count.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Sure, you know the story and, if you're like me, have been exposed to it or an adaptation nearly every December for most of your life, but when was the last time you read it? When I first read it over 20 years ago, most of the social commentary was lost on me.
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
I grew up reading the Sherlock Holmes short stories that originally appeared in The Strand, but somehow managed to avoid the novels. A Study in Scarlet marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, tells the backstory of how they came to live together, and includes a flashback not narrated by Watson that, at first, made me think my book had been misprinted.
Bram Stoker's Dracula
I had read Dracula a few times as a child, but the frequent adaptations have blurred my memory of what was actually in the book and what was in a film adaptation. Whenever I read it, I am reminded of how much I love the epistolary format of this novel.
Other titles that you might want to check out are:
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford
Nosferatu (DVD)
