Victorian Quarterly Check-In

• What books for this challenge have you read (or reviewed) recently?
• What are you currently reading?
• Are there any quotes you'd like to share?
• Who would you recommend? Anyone you would NOT recommend?
• Favorite book you've read so far...

My answers:

✔ 1. A book under 200 pages
The Europeans. Henry James. 1878. 192 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 2. A book over 400 pages
The Adolescent. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
✔ 4. A book you REALLY want to reread
Barchester Towers. Anthony Trollope. 1857. 418 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 5. A new-to-you book by a FAVORITE author
La Vendee. Anthony Trollope. 1850. 512 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 7. A book that was originally published serially
The American. Henry James. 1877. 400 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 8. A book published between 1837-1849
The Macdermots of Ballycloran. Anthony Trollope. 1847. 636 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 11. A book published between 1871-1880
Confidence. Henry James. 1879. 224 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 14. A book published between 1902-1999 with a Victorian setting

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. 1990. 787 pages. [Source: Library]
✔ 21. A book by a new-to-you male author
Watch and Ward. Henry James. 1871. 128 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 23. A book translated into English
The Karamazov Brothers. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Translated by Ignat Avsey. 1880/2008. 1054 pages. [Source: Library]
✔ 24. A fiction or nonfiction book about Queen Victoria
Victoria. Daisy Goodwin. 2016. 404 pages. [Source: Library] 
✔ 25. A book that has been filmed as movie, miniseries, or television show
The Warden. Anthony Trollope. 1855. Oxford World's Classics. 294 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 26. A play OR a collection of short stories OR a collection of poems
The Best Short Stories. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Translated by David Magarshack. 2001. 320 pages. [Source: Library]
✔ 28. Genre or Subgenre of your choice (mystery, suspense, romance, gothic, adventure, western, science fiction, fantasy)
The Time Machine. H.G. Wells. 1895. Penguin. 128 pages. [Source: Bought] 
✔ 29. Book with a name as the title
Roderick Hudson. Henry James. 1875. 398 pages. [Source: Bought]
✔ 30. Book You've Started but Never Finished
The Kellys and the O'Kellys. Anthony Trollope. 1848. 537 pages. [Source: Bought]

 Currently reading:

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Three Clerks by Anthony Trollope

Quotes to Share:

• “If pride is a source of information, you must be a prodigy of knowledge!”  Henry James
• What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee? Anthony Trollope
• "There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily." Anthony Trollope
• "There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel." Anthony Trollope
• "Let us suppose, gentlemen, that man is not stupid. But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful." Fyodor Dostoyevesky
• "A great thought is most often a feeling that sometimes goes without a definition for too long." Fyodor Dostoyevesky
• "There are a thousand different ways of being good company." Henry James
• "She got tired of thinking aright; but there was no serious harm in it, as she got equally tired of thinking wrong." Henry James
• "You will experience much grief, and in grief you will find happiness. Here is my commandment to you: seek happiness in grief." Fyodor Dostoyevesky
• "I think that everyone should, above all else on this earth, love life." Fyodor Dostoyevesky
• "The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one’s ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners of a room, and take boarders." Henry James
• “But the great trial in this world is to behave well and becomingly in spite of oppressive thoughts: and it always takes a struggle to do that, and that struggle you’ve made. I hope it may lead you to feel that you may be contented and in comfort without having everything which you think necessary to your happiness. I’m sure I looked forward to this week as one of unmixed trouble and torment; but I was very wrong to do so. It has given me a great deal of unmixed satisfaction.” Anthony Trollope
• "Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all. " H.G. Wells
• "When I read a novel my imagination starts off at a gallop and leaves the narrator hidden in a cloud of dust; I have to come jogging twenty miles back to the denouement." Henry James
• "When once the gate is opened to self-torture, the whole army of fiends files in." Henry James
• “Nonsense, man; — how can you say you are not going to lie, when you know you’ve a lie in your mouth at the moment.”  Anthony Trollope
•  “Nobody and everybody are always very kind, but unfortunately are generally very wrong.” Anthony Trollope
• The public is defrauded when it is purposely misled. Poor public! how often is it misled! against what a world of fraud has it to contend! Anthony Trollope

Recommendations...

I am really enjoying alternating Anthony Trollope and Henry James. Anthony Trollope has long been a favorite. Henry James is a new-to-me this year author. I haven't loved all of James' novels equally.
But I generally only read British classics. So it's been very interesting to read an American author too.

Another new-to-me author is Fyodor Dostoevsky. I've read three books so far!!!

 Favorite book I've read so far...

New to me:
The Karamazov Brothers. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Translated by Ignat Avsey. 1880/2008. 1054 pages. [Source: Library]

Favorite reread:
Barchester Towers. Anthony Trollope. 1857. 418 pages. [Source: Bought]

© 2016 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews