TBR | Modern Classics

I've come to terms with the fact that my TBR's never going to be small, but it's certainly much larger than I'd like it to be; no matter how much I read it never seems to be enough!

When it comes to classics I always felt most at home in the Victorian period. When I was at university I loved learning about 19th century literature most - Victorian Gothic is so much fun, plus it's during the 19th century that we first got children's literature and detective fiction! - but in recent years I've begun to appreciate modern classics much more, and I've become particularly fond of fiction written during the early 20th century and the '50s.

Anyway, here are some modern classics I'd like to cross off my TBR this year!

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She has only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.

The Sundial

by Shirley Jackson

When the Halloran clan gathers at the family home for a funeral, no one is surprised when the somewhat peculiar Aunt Fanny wanders off into the secret garden. But then she returns to report an astonishing vision of an apocalypse from which only the Hallorans and their hangers-on will be spared, and the family finds itself engulfed in growing madness, fear, and violence as they prepare for a terrible new world.

Jamaica Inn

by Daphne du Maurier

Her mother's dying request takes Mary Yellan on a sad journey across the bleak moorland of Cornwall to reach Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. With the coachman's warning echoing in her memory, Mary arrives at a dismal place to find Patience a changed woman, cowering from her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn. 

Affected by the Inn's brooding power, Mary is thwarted in her attention to reform her aunt, and unwillingly drawn into the dark deeds of Joss and his accomplices. And, as she struggles with events beyond her control, Mary is further thrown by her feelings for a man she dare not trust...

The Chrysalids

by John Wyndham

David Storm's father doesn't approve of Angus Morton's unusually large horses, calling them blasphemies against nature. Little does he realise that his own son, and his son's cousin Rosalind and their friends, have their own secret aberration which would label them as mutants. But as David and Rosalind grow older it becomes more difficult to conceal their differences from the village elders. Soon they face a choice: wait for eventual discovery, or flee to the terrifying and mutable Badlands....