The Everything Old Is New Again Challenge

So!  Remember when I asked you to help me with Victorian/Neo-Victorian novels for my 490 Directed Reading course in preparation for my thesis next semester, and then my prof and I compiled a list, and it was awesome and I said to myself (in my mind) that this would be a great reading challenge, and then dismissed that thought because my homework does not an interesting challenge make, but then Tikabelle admitted that she kind of wanted to read along, and offered to help with the administrative jumbo if I wanted to host a challenge?

Here we are, lovers.  Welcome to my Everything Old Is New Again challenge (seriously, if someone will make me a button I will totally use that button.  I will pay you in love).  The suspicions of my directed reading is that there is a Reason behind this recent resurgence in Victoriany novels.  That Reason needn't concern you because you are not taking this course.  It might be FUN for you, though, to read Jane Eyre along with Rebecca and see how they compare.  Nerdily fun, but fun.

It is a helluvalotta reading.  I'm doing it for the delicious carrot of Class Credit, and even I feel like it's a lot of reading.  So there are several levels of participation, as follows:

The PhD:  Read it all.  All of it.  And then feel smart.

The Masters:  Read exactly half (plus or minus one, as it is odd-numbered).  The Victorian half, the neo-Victorian half, or half of the pairs, but at least eight.

The Bachelors:  Read a quarter (again, plus or minus one), so...four total books.

The Audit:  Read some.  Any amount of some.

The list (along with dates I will have read them by, for scholastic reasons) follows:

September 16
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

September 23 (these are both Jane Eyre-y but four books in a week are you mad?)
The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

September 30
Ruth - Elizabeth Gaskell

October 7
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles

October 14
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

October 21
Jack Maggs - Peter Carey

October 28
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

November 4
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

November 11 (ok fine four books in a week.  But at least two of them are plenty short)
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Stevenson
Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Dorian - Will Self

November 18
(selections of) The Origin of the Species - Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species - Nino Ricci

November 25
Possession - A S Byatt


Most of the pairings are directly analogous (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dorian, e.g.) but some are stylistically similar (Collins + Waters = SENSATIONALISM!!) and then Possession stands alone because it's rull long.

You can review the books individually, or review them against each other.  I have grand, delicious plans of doing a write-up every two books (i.e. two weeks) with What I Lurned vis a vis how the novels interact, and I will probably put a Linky on those write-ups so you can leave reviews there.  If I can figure out how Linkys work.

This is my first ever challenge, guys.  The HDC is less of a challenge and more of a lark in which sometimes other people join.  If you want to play along, let me know in the comments.  I would love to have you.  If you have any challenge-running tips, slew them at me. 

I will post this list somewhere handy in a post all its own, and have a something somewhere here with what books are up next.

Classes start tomorrow, so the challenge starts today!  And ends on, I guess, December 3.  Or whenever.

(PS Challenge cross-over totally allowed.  You could, por ejemplo, read The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and complete Heather and Jill's  Dueling Monster's challenge, as well as half a Bachelors!  Work smarter, not harder.)