Classics Club Spin #21

October is Spin Month. This will be my fifth spin. The idea is make up a list of twenty books remaining from your original Classics Club list, and by the awesome power vested in the random number generator, one of them gets read in that spin period.

So going back over the old spin lists, a couple of categories...

Ever The Bridesmaid

There were four books that had been on three (out of four) spin lists without being picked. Maybe this is their turn!

1.) Henry James/The American
2.) James Baldwin/Giovanni's Room
3.) James Baldwin/Notes of a Native Son
4.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara

Neglected

But there were six books that never made it to any spin list. That wasn't very fair to them, so on the list they go! (Except one...)

5.) Edith Wharton/The Custom of the Country
6.) James Baldwin/Go Tell It On The Mountain
7.) Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge
8.) Jules Verne/20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
9.) Thomas Hardy/Wessex Tales

Thomas Hardy's Collected Poems has never been on a spin list either: I've been dipping into it, and they're great, but reading a lot of short poems on a forced march doesn't seem like fun.

Third Time's The Charm

Six longish ones that I've dangerously put on the list twice before, but have slipped by.

10.) Sir Walter Scott/Count Robert of Paris
11.) Plutarch/Lives
12.) John Galsworthy/The Forsyte Saga
13.) Willa Cather/One Of Ours
14.) Boccaccio/Decameron
15.) Balzac/Cousin Bette

And...

A few shortish ones, because I've run out of category ideas!

16.) Sylvia Plath/The Bell Jar (previously appeared twice)
17.) Yasunari Kawabata/Snow Country (once)
18.) Mary Wollstonecraft/Vindication of the Rights of Women (twice)
19.) Virginia Woolf/A Room of One's Own (once)
20.) Robert Louis Stevenson/Black Arrow (twice)

Plutarch would be the challenging one on that list. It's that old Modern Library Giant, but I have been reading some other classical stuff lately (well, yes, The Death of Virgil, but other posts to come!) so it would be timely. Otherwise I've really been meaning to read more Baldwin (#2, #3, and #6.)

Which look good to you?

And the winner is...#5! Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country. (Previously neglected--all it wanted was to be given a chance!)