Well, Victober is over now, but KZbin just suggested this video. I'm familiar with some of the authors here. But not these particular books. I read Wilkie Collins Woman in White. I try to read Dickens Christmas Trilogy each year. And I did read Carmilla again last month. Not so much for it being Victorian, but I'd watched a film adaptation and decided since it had been a few years, and it's spooky season, I'd give it another read.

As a teacher of Latin, always great to see someone learning the language. Good luck! And nice book haul.

I read Moby Dick for the first time this year and did not like it. It's interesting, and I liked the writing, but the big story point everyone has heard of and seen it made use of in various media is just a tiny portion of the book. But hell, this book has endured for a long time now, so perhaps it'll be for you.

Gems in here! Love those Scott and Hardy editions 😍

Omg so jealous of the Thomas hardy set ! If you want something more cosy/less tragic, then I’d start with the woodlanders ! If not then the mayor of casterbridge. Far from the madding crowd is my favorite !!!

I remember watching the Black Beauty tv show when I was a kid and enjoyed it. So last year I thought I’d read it for the first time and I hated it. It’s more of a commentary on how absolutely awful people are. I think if you have kids that like riding horses and maybe own one, then definitely make them read this and hopefully they’ll treat their animals with kindness and compassion. 😊

Thomas hardy book… which one did do you read?

9:20, omg they're available in my country as well but i went with the other maroon editions.

I really like Tom. Hardy.

Such a wonderful novel 😊

With reference to Michael Paterson's (A Brief History of) _Life in Victorian Britain._ Interestingly enough there is no reference to empire in the index but there is to Engels. There is no chapter devoted to empire either. There is a chapter called Arms & the World - especially pages 296-300 which perhaps reveals your attitude? Perhaps you are saying Paterson has the urge to present the period in the best possible light because he does not conform to a "fashionable hatred of colonialism", and instead simply tells us about it including some of the problems. I can see how you think it might be understood as wrong to present a mainly positive impression of the British Commonwealth during this era but it is plainly and obviously implied that there was indeed much that was positive but that there is plenty of discourse that focuses on a negative interpretation, that no doubt leaves out far too much of the positive. One point may suffice for now: what is the point of taking over a territory (British West Africa, Tanzania etc for example), but not allow your own countrymen to buy and own any of the land? This hardly equates to invading Poland... mm?

I love reading Classics...I watched the 2018 film Lizzie about Lizzie Borden and Chloe Sevigne played Lizzie Borden and Kristen Stewart played Bridget Sullivan great film.

Hi Celine! The Norton Anthology of Medieval Literature is excellent. The Beowulf included there should be the Seamus Heaney translation, which is wonderful. Also, I highly recommend the Anglo-Saxon poem, “Judith,” which should be in the collection. It’s a bit violent, but it’s great to see a female hero from that period. Also, there’s a wonderful translation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” which is great! Really, the entire collection is full of good stuff! Hope you enjoy it!

Awesome book haul!

You're going to love Fraser's Marie Antoinette book. I read it earlier this year and was in the same spot of knowing a little bit about Marie's death, and absolutely nothing else about her life; needless to say, I was not prepared for how exciting that book becomes, especially in the last third.

I've found that when a used book I've ordered on line is of substandard quality, especially if it does not fit the description that was advertised, I can get a replacement if I write an email to the seller. They don't even ask for the original copy to be sent back.

Oh I’m jealous, I’ve been looking for a copy of A Month in the Country for a while. If you’re interested there’s a great (UK based) lit podcast called Backlisted that has an episode about it. Worth a listen!

Hello Celine! I hope you are doing well. Wow! Those Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Hardy books looked fantastic! And what a steal! That was a great purchase! I look forward to your next video. Have a great day!

Such a lovely books!!! Love it!📚💕😍😍😍

Ken (Cuckoo's Nest) Kesey once said that..."in a thousand years time when the rest of us have been long forgotten people will still be reading Richard Brautigan." A name that I find sadly neglected on booktube nowadays.

In 1966 Ken (Cuckoo's Nest) Kesey along with a group of cohorts called The Merry Pranksters took a trip across America in a converted school bus handing out samples of LSD along the way! One of the drivers of the bus was none other than Neal Cassady, close friend of Jack Kerouac and inspiration for the character of Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's classic novel On The Road.

Kesey pronounced Kee-zee. In my humble opinion the book is soooo much better than the film!

James Hogg's " Confessions Of A Justfied Sinner " was indeed hugely controversial at the time of publication and was later a big influence on Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. A future comparison video perhaps?

The cover of your copy of De Quincy's Opium Eater is in fact an image of the tragic romantic poet Thomas Chatterton who committed suicide by arsenic poisoning at the age of 17. The painting is by the Victorian artist Henry Wallis and - somewhat spookily - was modelled by the young George Meredith who went on to become an eminent poet and novelist in his own right.

I’ve heard great things about those translations of Homer! Yay! For Moby!! I think many people don’t enjoy the whaling facts in the story but I loved finding out the history and the danger. And Melville’s writing was fantastic! (I liked Bartleby also!) Beowulf was part of a class syllabus for me and I enjoyed the discussion, but I don’t think I would have read/ liked it otherwise! If you aren’t a “battles” in history lover you aren’t probably going to enjoy The Iliad. Though Homer, at least, isn’t as gory details oriented as Virgil in the Aeneid! Still, it’s almost all fighting.

Yes, I do recall a strange excitement amongst my betters about that long biography of the man who wrote the dictionary and thought Shakespeare too racy. Much more exciting to me is Ken Kesey's classic novel, which as a film featured Jack Nicholson as Randall P. McMurphy. The co-star, Louise Fletcher, won an Oscar for her interpretation of head Nurse Ratched. Now you've read it do yourself a big favor and enjoy Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which is a biography more or less of the author, including the time he spent mopping the floors of a mental institution where the doctors happened to be testing Lysergic Acid Dimethalate (sp?). btw, I confess to falling in love with those gorgeous leather bound Hardy novels - Enjoy!

I am also very interested in daily life when it comes to history. I have loved watching the farm documentary series: Victorian Farm, Tudor Monastery Farm, Edwardian Farm, etc...They are so cozy! All on youtube.

Just saw an Oxford don on KZbin pronounce Martial as Marshall. And a tv interviewer addressed Kesey as Keezee. I've been pronouncing the latter incorrectly I guess. Fun haul!

I've read a bit of the ancient Greeks - Plato, Aristophanes, Aeschylus. Euripides and Herodotus are on my to-read list. My favorite has been Sophocles. I'm about 50% through the Iliad and like it even though most of it is just, "And Damentris was killed by Klaxius. And Findel was slain by Murion. Gadalacus killed Pintos and Raymeon, before being himself slain by Hetos of Crete. It's just like.... Okay... No clue who any of those guys are, but okay, sure. I tried Sons and Lovers by Hardy and couldn't get into it. I could see that maybe it had some value, but would've required far more patience and thought than it was worth. I'm unlikely to re-try it or anything else by him. Not my cuppa tea. And I greatly enjoyed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Pretty much everything by Kesey is on my to-read list because of it. I've got Sometimes a Great Notion, as well as a signed copy of Sailor Song. Haunting of Hill House I rage-quit after about 20 pages because of repetition of something. I forget what. Maybe it was "she thought". The second or third chapter had like four per page. Drove me crazy.

Great review. I love North and South.

I love this and your channel 😊❤

I loved the review! I do love North and South and it is one of my favorite books but I did like Mary Barton more and I'm curious what you will think of that book.

"The interpretation may be ongoing...". How can I put this... The chapter about Anthony Everett's _Augustus_ is... what it is... is really quite shoddy scholarship in the final analysis. She might have said I don't like Mr Everett's apparent world view. And left it at that.

Would appreciate a video about _The Fall_ by Albert Camus.

Loved the review!

Great review! I'd be interested in reading that. Thanks!

It's interesting how your vlog mimics the published instalments of serials. Life imitates art🎨

It isn't something I've thought about recently but I seem to recall a general prejudice against the picaresque tendencies of single young men.

I now need to read Orlando!!

Excellent... I'm reading "The Lord of the Rings" right now, bought "King Lear" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet" planned next, "Merchant of Venice" - already read. I would supplement your list with books by Romain Gary, for example, "Air Serpents" and some other historical books. Thanks for the interesting video and greetings from Ukraine!

Good selection! Whenever someone asks me to make a desert island list like that I always include a dictionary so that when I’ve read and re read the other books I start writing my own.

Don't forget your sun block!

You didn't introduce yourself at the start! Thought I suppose if you're alone on a deserted island it doesn't matter 😁In the lead up revealing Orlando I thought you were going to say Proust! One of my picks would be Swann's Way since I want to read it but haven't yet.

Great list; for me surely there's Shakespeare and the Bible but after that who can guess?

I have those same editions of The Lord of the Rings and Shakespeare and I'd definitely take them with me as well. Robinson Crusoe - great thinking! I liked it when I first read it as a kid, but I realised later it was an abridged version. When I read the complete book, I didn't like it at all. I also didn't enjoy Moll Flanders by Defoe, which makes me wonder if he's just not the author for me and whether I should try A Journal of the Plague Year.

what a nice list! totally agree with it 🤩

A top 10 spooky/creepy/scary books to celebrate Halloween perhaps?

I'm currently re-reading Emma in preparation for next year's 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth and once again I've been delighted with the likes of the endlessly verbose Miss Bates and the hypochondriac Mr. Woodhouse ("sitting outside is always a mistake"...!) Perhaps a trifle premature but an entire vlog devoted to her novels would certainly be of interest.

Splendid top 10 (we'll forgive the minor cheating in choosing the entire works of Shakespeare AND the whole of Oscar Wilde, so long as you read The Tempest first on your desert island!)

Frodo, Sam and Tree Beard for all I know could be whispering in your ears to persuade you to bask in The Shire, with is rolling hills, green fields and little rivers