Top 5 Tuesday: Top 5 classics I’m not interested in reading

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Meeghan Reads — check out the next batch of upcoming topics here.

The theme for September is classics, and the this week’s topic is Top 5 classics I’m not interested in reading. I struggled at first — I have plenty of classics that I do want to read, but I’ve never really thought about identifying books NOT to read!

After some thought, plus random scrolling through my reading history and a bunch of Goodreads lists, I came up with the following five classics that I just can’t see myself ever picking up:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: Never gonna happen! And I actually read Anna Karenina (many years ago), so it’s not like I refuse this author absolutely. I just can’t see myself feeling motivated enough to try this one.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner: On the other hand, I can safely say that I will never read a Faulkner novel, after a truly dismal experience with one of his books way back in my college days.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: Honestly, it’s mainly the length of this book that’s so off-putting for me! Someone from my book group keeps suggesting this book as a group read… and if that actually happens, I may give in. But on my own? Nope.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: Another author I just don’t get along with. I’ve tried!
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: No interest whatsoever!

What classics are on your “never gonna read” list? And are there any of mine that you think I should reconsider?

If you wrote a T5T post, please share your link!

9Sep2025

Top 5 Tuesday: Top 5 classics I want to read (but haven’t gotten around to)

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Meeghan Reads — check out the next batch of upcoming topics here. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these… and she always has such fun prompts, so I’m going to try to be more regular with my T5T posts!

This week’s topic is Top 5 classics I meant to read (but never got around to). I’ve got plenty! I keep a whole spreadsheet (Excel nerd alert!!) of classics I want to read… here are five that are high on my list.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (technically, a reread — but it’s been so long since I first read this book that it feels like it would be practically new to me)
The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor’s Son by Sholem Aleichem

What classics have you been meaning to read?

If you wrote a T5T post, please share your link!

19Nov2024

Top Ten Tuesday: Oldest (aka Earliest Published) Books On My TBR

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Oldest (aka Earliest Published) Books On My TBR.

At first, I went to my Goodreads to-read shelf to sort by publication year and look for the earliest, but then realized that I was missing many of the classics I want to get to. So… I went to my handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet (yes, I’m an Excel nerd!) dedicated to my future classics reading, and then did a little mixing and matching.

The results originally showed a few instances of multiple books by the same author, and I made the executive decision to limit it to one book each. In the end, it was very hard to whittle the list down, so…

Here is my list of 10 12 of the oldest books on my to-read shelf!