As a college senior, I took a highly coveted course on the Victorian novelists. For so long, I have wanted to revisit Middlemarch, one of the great reads of that class, and this summer I am traveling there. Middlemarch reminds me of why books become classics; it is not because they are stuffy or difficult. It is because they are books to be savored. The canvas of Middlemarch is filled with memorable characters, many of whom lack self-understanding. Meet Dorothea, Casaubon, Lydgate, Mary, Rosamund and Fred, to name just a few. Witness them trying to make meaning in their lives against the backdrop of a changing society. This one is truly a title to deserve five stars.