2025 Reading Marathon: Jókai Mór, Alexandre Dumas, Fyodor Dostoevsky

"100 Days of Jókai Mór" February 1- April 30, 2025

Before we start our Jókai Mór journey on February 1 - the complete list of 2024-2028 tutorials!!! Join the literary adventure!!!

Dear literature enthusiasts,

Welcome to Anna's Thinking Cap - a place where timeless classics are read, studied, and discussed on the intersection of literature, history, and culture. Since 2020, I offered 15 online tutorials (a total of 27 titles!!!) featuring my daily commentary interspersed with historical, biographical, and literary musings as well as notes on relevant art and music!!! Do you need to commit to reading ALL the books?! Not at all!!! But my commentary will make references to the previous tutorials since quite a few readers will undertake this revelatory journey with me!!! Yes, there will be A LOT of Dostoevsky - we are reading his Great Five (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent, and Brothers Karamazov) - and several of his early but infinitely consequential works, such as White Nights and The Double. AND a lot of Dumas!!! AND an enter year with Tolstoy!!! PLUS a few surprises along the way!!! Join our literary adventure today!!!

Spring 2024 - complete!!!

100 Days of Charming Rotten Scoundrels: Goethe, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev

Commemorating the 250th anniversary of composition of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther

Commemorating of the bicentennial of Lord Byron's death (1788-1824) and three of the most Byron-inspired novels in Russian literature: Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

Summer 2024 - complete!!!

100 Days of Dumas' The Three Musketeers

Commemorating the 180th anniversary of the publications of Alexandre Dumas' (1802-1870) The Three Musketeers (1844)

Fall 2024 - complete!!!

100 Days of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment

Commemorating the 160th anniversary of the publication of Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1821-1881) Notes from Underground (1864)

Spring 2025 - upcoming!!!

2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Hungarian novelist Jókai Mór, referenced outside of Hungary as Jókai Móric (Komárom, today’s Slovakia, February 18, 1825 - Budapest, May 5, 1904). To mark his bicentennial, we will dedicate February 1-April 30 to “100 Days of Jókai Mór” and read two of his novels:

“A Kőszívű Ember Fiai” or “The Sons of the Stony-hearted Man" - often translated into English as “The Baron's Sons” - with the subtitle “A Romance of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848” (1869)

and:

“Erdély aranykora” or “The Golden Age of Transylvania” - sometimes translated as “Midst the Wild Carpathians” (1852)

Please get your translations as soon as possible - my preliminary commentary will start on February 1 - we will start reading “The Baron's Sons” on February 18 - the author's 200th birthday!!!

Summer of 2025

100 Days of Dumas' Twenty Years After

Commemorating the 180th anniversary of the publications of Dumas' (1802-1870) Twenty Years After (1845), the first sequel to The Three Musketeers

Fall 2025

100 Days of Dostoevsky's White Nights and The Idiot

Spring 2026

Surprise!!! Announcement in the fall of 2025!!!

Summer 2026

100 Days of Dumas' The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later (1847-1850), the second sequel to The Three Musketeers The concluding tome of the d'Artagnan Romances, in three parts: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask

Fall 2026

100 Days of Dostoevsky's The Double and Demons

Spring 2027

100 Days of Dostoevsky's Poor Folk and The Adolescent

Summer 2027

Surprise!!! Announcement in the fall of 2026!!!

Fall 2027

100 Days of Dostoevsky' Notes from the Dead House and Brothers Karamazov

2028 Spring, Summer, and Fall

Tolstoy (1828-1910)!!! During his bicentennial year, we will read several of his works, including War and Peace, The Cossacks, Hadji Murat, The Sevastopol Sketches, and other compositions.

Portraits of our 2025 literary marathon authors!!!

Jókai Mór (1825-1904) in 1854, lithograph by Barabás Miklós (1810-1898) - in Hungarian the last name comes first!!! During our Hungarian tutorial which start on February 1 - JUST before Jókai‘s 200th birthday - my name shall be Barker Anna!!!

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) in 1829, lithograph by Achille Devéria (1800-1857).

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) portrait by Vasily Perov (1834-1833), 1872, commissioned by Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898) for his gallery.