One of my chief aspirations in life has always been to join a book club. When I first moved to New York, I quickly found that an invitation to one was more difficult to scrounge up than an invite to New York Fashion Week. (Trust me, I’ve gotten plenty of the latter and none of the former.) So, I adhered to the old adage: If you build it, they will come. I am now the host of a classics book club, which recently marked its two-year anniversary. What defines a classic? Typically, a publication date of no less than 25 years ago and the deader the author, the better. Exceptions made for contemporary authors riffing on classic works (as you’ll see below). Together, my book club has read 23 books, encompassing all sorts of writers, from Jane Austen and Joan Didion to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, James Baldwin and William Shakespeare. Here are my five favorites.
My Classics Book Club Has Read 23 Books. Here Are My 5 Faves
No dry, stiff prose here
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I had long had Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece on my TBR, but finally got it voted into our book club rotation earlier this year. Because we are a classics book club, the expectation is that prose will often be dry and slow. (Not necessarily in a bad way.) However, The Picture of Dorian Gray was an absolute zinger. The novel focuses on the titular character, whom, upon the first page, we meet as a beautiful, innocent young man. He is quickly corrupted by a wry friend who initates Dorian’s descent into wickedness. Pithy aphorism after pithy aphorism delivered with pugilistic humor, critiquing and commenting on the conundrum of beauty. It’s violent, twisted, tragic—and very much applicable to the world we’re living in today.
2. Persuasion
Of course, Jane Austen had to make it on this list. Shockingly, we have not read Pride & Prejudice yet (though we will this year in honor of her 250th birthday in December). The upside has been reading some of her other work, of which I think Persuasion is highly underrated. The Netflix adaptation did not do it justice.
For those new to the Austen universe, I actually recommend this novel as it is on the shorter side (288 pages to Pride & Prejudice’s 480). Interestingly, the heroine is also the oldest of all those found in her works—Anne Elliot is 27 years old when the reader first meets her. Cue Charlotte Lucas’ most famous line: “I am 27 years old. I've no money and no prospects. I'm already a burden to my parents. And I'm frightened.” This is a will-they-won’t they get back together question, when her former fiancé waltzes back into her life, once poor, and now the owner of a dazzling fortune.
I also think that Persuasion has one of the best, most romantic Jane Austen quotes of all time, spoken by Captain Wentworth, who sadly lives in Mr. Darcy’s shadow: “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.” Do I really need to convince you to pick up a copy?
3. James
While we try to stick to “classic” lit, we make exceptions for riffs on classics, like Percival Everett’s Pulitzer Prize-winning spin on Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Everett takes a minor character in Twain’s book, Jim, and tells his story. The novel is cheeky and filled with humor, tempered by the inevitable injustice and tragedy that befall the titular character, who is enslaved and at risk of losing his family. Impressively, Everett brings the reader to a satisfying ending, and our book club meeting was particularly vibrant with discussion notes.
4. Dracula
While I usually eschew themes and seasons, something I look forward to every year is my book club’s spooky October tome. It’s been incredibly interesting to dive into characters that are omnipresent in pop culture, like Frankenstein and Jekyll & Hyde, and discover that their stories are rich and surprising—rather than flattened, one-dimensional Halloween decorations and costumes. Dracula was a harrowing, thrilling tale that made me feel the creepy-crawlies at night. And if you’re into book-to-movie adaptations, Nosferatu was much better than Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation, though the latter does star a young Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Gary Oldman.
The introduction in my copy of Gustave Flaubert’s novel described the eponymous character as the “original desperate housewife” and that’s all the convincing my book club needed to read it. Despite its setting in a rural French village, this tome about a passionate young woman in a loveless marriage has drama for the ages. Unrequited love. Secret affairs. Wholesome harvest festivals, questionable medical advice, maddening, debt-spiraling shopping sprees and a desperate tailspin into a tragic ending.
