Turn of the Century Salon - a literary event

Hosted by Katherine at November's Autumn.  My participation may be sporadic, but I'm going to try to fit this challenge into my schedule.  :)

Here's my answers to the questionnaire/prompts for January (Introduction):

• What draws you to read the Classics?

Classics are works of art, unlike most contemporary fiction.  I love reading, and though I also love the era I live in, I cannot relate to it in the same way that I relate to classic lit and classic authors.  On the other hand, classics have taught me a lot about the modern world (some things never change).  I hope for there to be great authors in the 21st century, but it is looking doubtful - the books of today tend to display "quantity over quality" characteristics.

• What era have you mainly read? Georgian? Victorian? Which authors?

19th century British lit.  It's great, but right now I'm eager to read more world literature (and non-fic)!

• What Classics have you read from the 1880s-1930s? What did you think of them?

Sherlock Holmes, H. G. Wells, some later Jules Verne works - all fabulous stuff!  Recently I read Shackleton's South, which was extremely interesting, and within the last few years Conrad and Kafka have become two of my favorite authors.  Forster's A Passage to India was not my cup of tea; on the other hand, I loved Rebecca (1938) and Agatha Christie.  So far, I prefer Victorian works from this era, but that may very well change.

• Name some books you're looking forward to read for the salon.

It's not set in stone, but these are on my list:

• Verne: Paris in the Twentieth Century (not sure if it counts, but it is futuristic and Verne is very much associated with the turn of the century)
• Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
• Abbott: Flatland (1884)
• Melville: Billy Budd (1888–1891)
• Kafka (1883–1924): Complete Short Stories, The Castle, Diaries (maybe)
• Hesse: Beneath the Wheel (1906)
• Conrad: The Inheritors (1901, co-authored by Ford Madox Ford), Lord Jim (1899–1900), etc.
• Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (1929) 
• Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

• Which literary characters are you most akin to?

Marian Halcombe (The Woman in White), Tatyana Larina (Eugene Onegin), and Charlotte Bronte heroines.  Also, Sherlock Holmes and (to a certain degree) Razumov (Under Western Eyes).

• Is your preference prose? poetry? both?

Thanks to Tolkien, I now love both.  Good poetry, however, is harder to find than good prose.