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Remember when I said ‘no more themed readathons’? Yeah. Because I am an idiot (and because I have a bunch of unread Victorian novels I’ve been meaning to pick up anyway), I’ve decided to do a low-key version of Victober in October.

Victober is a reading challenge created by Ange, Katie, Kate and Lucy on YouTube that spotlights British 19th century fiction. Any book published between 1837 and 1901 by a British or Irish author or a writer resident in the UK or Ireland during that period counts, though there are also challenges, a buddy read, and a Goodreads group.

I’m not going to do any of those – I’m still feeling a bit burned out from the N.E.W.T.s Readathon and don’t do too well with very strict TBRs anyway – but I want to use October to prioritise picking up a couple of Victorian books I already own and have been meaning to read for a while anyway. I have a couple of choices, but right now these are the ones that look most appealing to me:

  • Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities (and possibly Oliver Twist)
  • Joseph Conrad – Lord Jim
  • Robert Louis Stevenson – Weir of Hermiston

I think trying to get through these three will already be enough of a challenge, especially since I also have some Dumas and Melville to finish, and some friends on tumblr are starting another Les Miserables-buddy read (= another book I’ve had on my ‘currently reading’ shelf since January).

I have more options, though, in case I change my mind: I also own and haven’t read/finished Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady, George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Oh, and that copy of Wilkie Collins’ The Frozen Deep I got from the library in my polar exploration obsession haze.

That said, I totally wouldn’t be surprised if I decided to chuck this entire TBR out of the window by the middle of the month, and I’ll definitely try not to be cross with myself if I do. After all, this whole reading thing is about fun, isn’t it?