Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (1925)

This was not the auspicious start I had in mind for this project.  I chose Mrs. Dalloway to read first because it was one of the few on the list I had never heard of before.  Now I know why.  If I'm being honest, it was hard to get into this novel to start with, and even harder to keep my eyes open while reading it.

I blame this on several factors: First, nothing happens in the book.  The entire story is about Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged wealthy English woman who thinks herself ancient, running around town making arrangements for some party she is throwing that no one seems super excited to attend in the first place. Also, everyone in the story seems to be throwing themselves their own internal pity-parties; hearing about inane "first world" problems for an entire book gets old.

Secondly, the style Woolf uses was distracting to me.  If someone handed this text in today to their English teacher, I feel it would get a poor grade along with demands to "edit, edit, edit."  There were more semicolons in this book than in the sum total of all the books I've read up this point in my life.

Lastly, the titular character (and Woolf, for that matter) drop names like it's going out of style.  It's customary to feel a little out of place and confused at the start of any novel, however, when you're still asking "wait, who?!?" in the middle - that's a problem.

HIGH SCHOOL ME: Adult me was bored to tears; high school me would have had an express pass on the struggle bus with this one.  Maybe the reason I had never heard of this novel before is because it's not commonly taught anymore???  I'm going to go with that and hope, for the kids' sake, it's true.