Because I finished reading my first book for the #Classicscommunity Reading Challenge, I thought I’d share a mini review of the classic I read in audio format as well as the books remaining on my TBR list for the challenge.

Mini Review: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

I stumbled upon the audiobook when I was looking for something new to listen to in Libby, and since I finished it yesterday, it counts for the #Classicscommunity 2020 Reading Challenge. (One book down, eleven more to go!)

If you’re on the fence about trying Murder on the Orient Express for fear that you might find it monotonous or boring, consider trying the audiobook. Dan Stevens, the voice actor who narrates, has such skill with accents I was nearly spellbound by each conversation Poirot has with the various characters in the novel. Having read a couple other Hercule Poirot novels by Christie, I felt that the narrator’s performance/delivery of Poirot’s character was spot on.

This is basically a radio drama performed by one actor. I can’t ask for anything more from an audiobook.

#Classicscommunity 2020 Reading Challenge TBR

In no particular order:

• Villette by Charlotte Brontë
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
• Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Edit: I plan to read Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers instead. It’s the first in Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins Edit: I’m replacing The Woman in White with The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I remembered that more than one reader has recommended it to me multiple times, and I want the majority of classics I read this year to have female authors.
• Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

My list is comprised of many of the classics I’ve never gotten around to reading but have wanted to try for a long time. It’s heavy on the Gothic literature. I’ve also included some Victorian literature and a few modern classics.

I’m still deciding the order in which I’m going to read them. For example, I might read The Mysteries of Udolpho and Northanger Abbey back to back in order to compare the two. Radcliffe’s novel is held up as elevating “the Gothic romance to a new level,” and Austen’s novel is satirical of the Gothic novel, so reading them one after the other–or even at the same time–may prove interesting. We shall see.

What about you? Do you have a TBR list planned for your reading challenge(s)?

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