What Book Should I Read and Review for April?

Hey everyone! It’s that time of month again! In April, I’d like to read some classics since most of the ones I’ve read are good (just don’t read the unabridged version of Ivanhoe, I plead with you…). I’ve read none of these before but would like to at some time or another, so let me know which one you think I should! (And just a side note, anyone can participate in these polls, you don’t have to have a WordPress account or anything!)

Choice #1: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.

But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?

I’ve been wanting to read this book for awhile since I heard it has a lot of good Christian principles in it, and either last year or the year before I finally got my hands on a copy of it!

Choice #2: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hailed by Henry James as “the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation’s historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth.

With The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity’s unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.

This is another one I’ve wanted to read for a long while, and I believe I found this book right around the same time as I found Jane Eyre.

Choice #3: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it. “To Kill A Mockingbird” became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, “To Kill A Mockingbird” takes readers to the roots of human behavior – to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

This is one I never really heard too much about until I got into high school. I’ve heard mixed reviews on the historical things in it before, but I still want to read it someday.

Choice #4: Beowulf

One of the most universally studied of the English classics, Beowulf is considered the finest heroic poem in Old English. Written around ten centuries ago, it celebrates the character and exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of the Geats, a people of southern Sweden.
Beowulf first rescues the royal house of Denmark from two marauding monsters, then returns to rule his people for 50 years, ultimately losing life in a battle to defend the Geats from a dragon’s rampage. The poem combines mythical elements, Christian and pagan sensibilities, and actual historical figures and events in a narrative that ranges from vivid descriptions of fierce fighting and detailed portrayals of court life to earnest considerations of social and moral dilemmas.

I’m actually shocked that I haven’t read this yet. I LOVE the Legend of King Arthur, and most any book set in the medieval time, so the fact that I haven’t read this yet is surprising. But I want to change that very soon here, so that’s why this is on my list!

Choice #5: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and when Spade’s partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby’s trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?

I’ve heard this is one of the must-reads for mystery lovers, which is why this has intrigued me. However, I have seen a couple curse words in a sample of it, which is concerning, so whenever I read this one, if there are too many, I may have to mark it as a “did not finish”. But hopefully it won’t be too bad!

The day of the deadline, I’ll write the winning book in the comments!

Have you read any of these books? Which one is your favorite? Do you want to read one of these? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for voting! ~ Kay Adelin