I read these books as part of the Classics Club Challenge – I challenged myself to read fifty classics picked by me in the next three years. To find out more, you can see my list or visit the Classics Club website.
Probably my first novel by a Russian author ever. Easily written, and nicely short, Fathers and Sons has many themes. There is the emancipation of the labourers, the decline of the aristocracy, the discrepancy between generations… Neatly delivered in a package with love triangles, best friends, and eccentric family members.
Poetry has never been very much "my thing", and The Flowers of Evil just aren't interesting or clever enough to catch my attention. For my dirty modern mind his poems just aren't shocking or indecent at all, and most of his ideas fell flat for me. I can imagine the poems were a huge inspiration for his contemporaries, but they don't hold up well over time.
Vaguely interesting and entertaining. Although the book is basically a catalogue of what Des Esseintes has in his house, the descriptions are vivid, and I found it easy to stay engaged. Apart from that, Des Esseintes is a terrible woman-hating person (apparently women all have an innate stupidity) that I didn't give a freckle about what happened to him. Against Nature is more about making a statement than anything else. Just reading a few passages will suffice.