classics book reading

So I got this from here, which in turn got it from here. Since I have time, why not?

It’s time for another Classics Spin for any who are interested. What is the spin?

It’s easy. At your blog, by next Monday, Aug 19, list your choice of any twenty books you’ve left to read from your Classics Club list.

You have to read one of these twenty books in August & September. So, try to challenge yourself. For example, you could list five Classics Club books you are dreading/hesitant to read, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favorite author, rereads, ancients — whatever you choose.)

Next Monday, we’ll post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List, by October 1. We’ll have a check in when October arrives, to see who made it the whole way and finished the spin book.

    Five I’m Dreading

  1. Jane Austen. I have never read a thing by Jane Austen because it always seems so inanely dull. So I don’t know. I should pick something I don’t really know the plot to. Or maybe I should pick something I do know the plot to so that I won’t get annoyed because at least I know what’s coming. I’ll choose later if this is the number picked.
  2. Collected Stories of Anton Chekov by Anton Chekov.
  3. That big Mavis Gallant collection at the library that taunts me whenever I walk past it on the shelf and leave it there for another week.
  4. War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy. Yes Geoff, I know it is your favourite book, but it is long and full of terrors.
  5. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe.
     
  6. Five I’m Neutral About

  7. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Kafka, the copy that Geoff keeps handing over to me to read and that I never do.
  8. Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust. So I did Swann’s Way. On to the next one.
  9. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Supposed to read this in Grade Twelve English, but managed to not have to take Grade Twelve English and go straight to OAC instead. Huzzah!
  10. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
  11. The House of Mirth by Edith Warton.
     
  12. Five Can’t Wait to Read

  13. Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen. I actually read this a long time ago in high school but should probably read again.
  14. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I’ll go for reading it in English though. My French is too rusty.
  15. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
  16. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
  17. Some Hope: Trilogy by Edward St. Aubyn.
     
  18. Free Choice

  19. A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi Wa Thiong’O.
  20. Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa
  21. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
  22. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
  23. Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt.
    1. So check back on Monday to see what I must read.

Comments

  1. Laura

    I’m not a huge Austen fan either. Persuasion is my favourite. I just read Northanger Abbey which is funny but forgettable.

    Too bad about Wuthering. It’s probably best read (for the first time) in high school. I read it in Grade 11 and many times since then!

    The House of Mirth is excellent.

    I haven’t heard of any of your free choices. Obscure or am I living under a rock?

    1. Post
      Author
      reluctantm

      Yay, another non-Austen fan. One of the reasons I know Geoff and I are meant to be is that neither of us has managed to get past the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice without actively deciding to go find something else to do.

      Obscure – Yeah, they aren’t super well known. The Ngugi Wa Thiong’O is one of my friend’s favourites, the Saro-Wiwa one is one I’ve been meaning to read since high school because his son used to write columns for the Globe and Mail. A few years ago, there was a big push to make Bolaño as popular in English as he is supposedly in Spanish, but it failed. I have 2666 from one of my I need to make $25 for free-shipping at Chapters, so what is in the 80% off bin. The other two I picked at random from my TBR list.

      Fingers crossed for Monday that the number chosen is in my Can’t Wait to Read sublist.

      And of course, the mathematician left in me wonders how they’re going to chose the number? What sort of pseudo-random generator are they going to use? 🙂

  2. Karen K.

    Don’t be afraid of Jane Austen, she’s wonderful. Persuasion is my favorite but a lot of people start with Pride & Prejudice, which has some very funny parts. House of Mirth is also excellent (but I hated Wuthering Heights. 84 Charing Cross Road is also wonderful and very short.

    I do not have the nerve to put Les Mis on my CC list. Maybe after I finish all 75. . . .

  3. Post
    Author
    reluctantm

    I read a very very condensed version of Les Mis when I was eleven. I’m hoping that should I be reading the full version, it’ll help me through already knowing some of what is going on 😉

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