Today marks the end of our year-long reading of nearly all of George Eliot’s novels. By reading a chapter a day, we finished Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. Looking back over the past year, I have to admit that this year’s challenge was more difficult for me than past years. Eliot is a more challenging writer than I expected, and some of the chapters were a bit too long for a daily reading. Still, now that I have read them all at least once, I feel prepared for a more in depth reading of them in the future. My three favorites were Romola, Silas Marner, and Daniel Deronda. I was disappointed in Middlemarch, mostly because I had looked forward to reading it for so long and I had very high expectations for it. For a book that is so acclaimed, it was a struggle for me to appreciate, and I will definitely have to revisit it in the future at a more leisurely pace.

Thank you to everyone who joined me this past year for one, some, or all of Eliot’s books! I invite you to participate in the Fantasy Classics Read-along that starts tomorrow!