It's Monday....

...and I'm finally caught up on all my half-finished novels!

I still have a few out-standing non-fiction titles by the bed, but it usually takes me months to read non-fiction anyway (biographies are the exception to this rule).

Perhaps if I could just read one book at once, I would get through more, but my reading is very much mood based. Some days are non-fiction and some days are not.

So what does this, the first week in May hold for me and my groaning bookshelves?

First up is the start of my month-long Wharton Review.

I will be rereading The Age of Innocence this year in the hope of knocking my Classics Club challenge into a higher gear.

Set in old New York, this novel details the thwarted romance between Newland Archer, a young dandy, and the beautiful, unconventional divorceee Countess Ellen Olenska. The cast of characters includes Newland's docile - and calculating - fiancee, May Welland and the lordly Mrs Manson Mingott.

In fact May will be the month of reread's for my Classic Club list.

The Great World by David Malouf is my Classic Club Spin this month. I first read The Great World in 1997, which also marks the beginning of my lifelong love affair with all things Malouf.

Every city, town and village has its memorial to war. Nowhere are these more eloquent than in Australia, generations of whose young men have enlisted to fight other people's battles - from Gallipoli and the Somme to Malaya and Vietnam. In THE GREAT WORLD, his finest novel yet, David Malouf gives a voice to that experience. But THE GREAT WORLD is more than a novel of war. Ranging over seventy years of Australian life, from Sydney's teeming King's Cross to the tranquil backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, it is a remarkable novel of self-knowledge and lost innocence, of survival and witness.

During May & June I also plan to join in Corinne's Gone With the Wind readalong @Pursuit of Happiness.

Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time.

Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives.

In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet.

I first read GWTW during my uni days. I loved how Mitchell picked me up & swept me along in her wake. It was one of those books that made real life seem dull by comparison. I can't wait to see if it has the same effect on 40-something me!

What will you be reading this week?

Are you joining in any of the above readalongs or challenges?

Do you enjoy rereading old favourites?

If you'd like to add your It's Monday URL in your comments during Sheila's absence, I will try to pop by and visit. Or follow on twitter #IMWAYR

PS Can anyone see the column on the RH side of my blog? When I view the whole blog, the column seems to have disappeared from view. But when I open a post...there it is! Are any other blogger uses having weird format glitches?