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| These are some of my top vintage classics that I've been collecting over the years. |
Rainy, summer days.
The kind of mornings that were made for staying in bed a few extra minutes and listening to the sound of the raindrops pitter-pattering on the outside world and for sitting on porches and
holding hands with your significant other (or cat!).
The kind of evenings that were made for staring out the window and watching the lightning
light up the sky or listening to the thunder roll over the hills.
The kind of days that were made for curling up on the couch with a warm mug of tea and a good book.
A few minutes to escape to another world.
I suppose you may think I'm romanticizing the weather a little bit, but I'm an optimist.
While I do miss the sun, I think a rainy day is a great time to reflect and renew.
What better way to do this than by delving into another time and place by reading.
There are a ton of great books out there, but today I'm sharing my list of favourite classics with you. You've probably read a few in an English class - or even seen movie adaptions ;)
Reading List: Vintage Edition
1) The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
(Pictured - I found this 1954 copy at City Lights Bookstore in London, ON for $6)
Bullfights, love triangles and 1920s European culture. What more could you want?
I find Hemingway's writing style to be very direct. He doesn't use too much embellishment but his stories are very good and his descriptions make me feel like I'm right on a Parisian street (no complaining about that one).
I'd love to read A Moveable Feast once I find the right (vintage) copy!
NOTE: I also recommend reading this to yourself in the voice of Hemingway from Woody Allen's
Midnight in Paris (amazing film). I sort of have the hots for his character - no judgement!
2) Tender is the Night, Scott Fitzgerald
(Pictured - I found this 1962 copy at Value Village for about $5)
Fitzgerald's books are fantastic reads. His writing style is just beautiful - poetic but not too heavy. This book in particular is a romanticized yet realistic portrayal of a young girls first love and all the after effects from her affair with a married man. I remember reading this last year during my complicated relationship (See previous post) and reading and re-reading lines from this book that seemed to really understand how I felt and were said in such a lovely way.
“They were still in the happier stage of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents had driven them together, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine.”
Beautiful, right??
3) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
(Pictured - I found this 1944 copy at Thrift & Gift in Elmira, ON for about $5)
This book really makes me think of rainy days. I think of fog rolling over the English countryside, sitting by fireplaces and of course the melancholy tone adds to this perfect rainy day tale.
Jane Eyre is a beautiful story about a woman trying to achieve equality, find love
and overcome suppression in a Victorian world. One could even argue for the time it was written,
that is has some feminist undertones - which I love!
“Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
4) The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
This novel is about art and morality - two things that I spend a lot of time contemplating over.
It is highly philosophical and over the years has received great criticism for its lack of morality and homosexual undertones (the scandal!). The recent film version with Colin Firth is a pretty accurate and enjoyable capture of the story - if you'd prefer that route ;)
“There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”
5) Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
I'm going to come clean on this one. I read this one several years ago because of...Twilight.
It was written as Bella's favourite book and so I watched the 1939 film version (great accompaniment to the book) and read the book and voila! This one's a real heart jerker.
Just the fact alone that Heathcliff asks his lost love to haunt him until he's dead so she can remain with him in some way...already balling my eyes out.
“Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”
6) As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
This novel can be a little hard to keep up with as it is narrated by many different characters but it's an interesting book to read. I can remember reading this one back in high school for a book report and it's always stuck in my mind. The characters are strange and realistically portrayed and the plot varies from emotional to dark comedy. The teen version of me also found the idea of carrying a corpse across the town rather
morbidly entertaining (yeah, I was once that kid).
“The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulfurous, smelling of lightning.”
7) The Wordsworth Reader
(Pictured - 1933 copy, received as a gift)
A friend introduced me to Wordsworth when she gave me this book. It's a collection of poems and a great travelling companion due to its size. Because Wordsworth uses older English, it can require some re-reading in order to understand but it's a pleasant collection to read out-and-about!
This one's a favourite of mine before bed:
To Sleep
"A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by, One after one; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky; I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie Sleepless! and soon the small birds' melodies Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees; And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay, And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth; So do not let me wear tonight away; Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!"
8) Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
This is an easy enough read for even classic literature beginners and there are many enjoyable movie adaptions out there as well! (My favourite being the one with Robert De Niro).
It's full of madness, death and murder with themes of religion vs. science and nature vs. nurture
- a true classic horror story. What I love about Frankenstein is that it doesn't lay out good and evil in white and black like some novels - there are times when you pity the scientist and other times where you pity the monster. It's all shades of gray which I think makes it more believable.
"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred."
Like I said, there are a ton of great books out there but these are just a few of my favourite classics. Do you have a favourite classic novel or author that you've read lately? Comment below!
xoxo
Brittany
P.S. Please keep an eye out for a pre-1950s copy of A Moveable Feast (Hemingway) and The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) for me ;) Happy rainy day reading!
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