I love this series. It's the perfect little bite-size cupcake of a break from real-world stresses, stupid people, and the existential despair and death that dominate my normal literary interests.

I'm using this as my classic written by a woman for the Back to the Classics Challenge. I guess it's about time that I start going back and deciding which of the classics I've read so far this year are going to count for this challenge, and start reviewing them.)

I read this during my great springtime resurgence of interest in Virginia Woolf. I had a passing acquaintance and admiration for her thanks to college, but I had never quite gotten around to revisiting her and reading more than a couple of her books. But after rereading A Room of One's Own, I was desperate to get my hands on anything she wrote.

Other than the aforementioned Room, To the Lighthouse is my favorite of the Woolf books I've read so far. It follows the interior lives of various well-to-do English people enjoying the kind of seaside holidays that Woolf herself experienced in childhood. And by enjoying, of course I mean languishing amid doubts and fears and being profoundly alienated from one another.

Woolf does beautiful and adventurous things with language in this novel, perhaps to the greatest effect in the central interlude. She takes us rapidly through the passing of years, demonstrating their effect on the characters and the house that united them.

I love to read disgruntled reviews of Modern novels that complain about the lack of plot. That, of course, is sort of the point. Woolf isn't writing a fast-paced thriller here; she's interested in the power of language to convey characters' thoughts. It's like one great big, neurotic, Impressionist painting. And one that I, at least, think is pretty great fun to read. I like to see what boldness Woolf will attempt, and what she'll get away with doing.

Now I just want to go read more Virginia Woolf.

Used for my Gothic/horror classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge. The bones of a great story buried in bloated, purple prose. I would have adored this if I had read it in my teens.

Used as my 20th Century classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge. I had meant to read this, and thus chip away at one small corner of what sometimes feels like the infinitely huge marble block of my ignorance (which only grows larger the more I read and learn), for years before I finally got to it. I was somewhat intimidated by it, having heard from many sources that it made no sense. But when I sat down with it, I became completely wrapped up in the flow of Vladimir and Estragon's conversation and in their interminable plight. I read it in two sittings, copied whole sections into my notebook, and had many pessimistic thoughts about how all of us are stuck waiting for our own personal Godot who will never arrive to grant us the salvation we crave. I need to buy a copy so that I can return to it and develop my thinking about it in greater detail. But I can say, definitively, that I loved this play. Read it, surrender yourself to the absurdity, and enjoy.

I'm using this as my book about war for the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, but I primarily read it as research for a short story I'm planning to write. Living Hell is a wonderful piece of historical writing, with a balance between scholarly and literary tone. I wish I could make everyone I've ever heard espouse "the South's gonna rise again" ideology read this book, because I don't know how you could be a rational person and still think that or want that while knowing the facts of what military and civilian life was like during the Civil War. I already knew that the historical education I received in school was flawed and biased, but I didn't realize how much my teachers omitted regarding the Civil War, and I didn't realize how quickly after the conflict that the public' perception of the war began to change and to become romanticized.

Arguably more sickening than reading about the physical effects of grape shot was reading the trajectory of newly-freed black people, of women, and of the poor after the war ended. The next-to-last chapter follows these threads through Jim Crow, Robber Barons, the denial of women's service during the war effort, and more, and it's hard to read without feeling cynical.

I highly recommend this book, with the caveat that it's one of the most disturbing books that I've ever read.