Back to the Classics Challenge 2022 Wrapup

 

This is not the first year I read books for all the prompts, but it is the first year I managed to blog about a book for all the prompts. Woo-hoo! Here's the list:

19th Century Classic

Sir Walter Scott's Count Robert of Paris

20th Century Classic

Thomas Pynchon's V

A Classic by a Woman Author

Willa Cather's A Lost Lady

A Classic in Translation

Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun's Memoirs

A Classic by a BIPOC Author

James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain

Mystery/Detective/Crime Classic

S. S. Van Dine's The Garden Murder Case

A Short Story Collection

Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales

Pre-1800 Classic

Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield

Non-Fiction Classic

Edmund Wilson's The Shores of Light

Classic on your TBR the longest

Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle

Classic Set in a Place You'd Like to Visit

Kate O'Brien's Farewell Spain

Wild Card

William Faulkner's Light in August

Chuck displays The Stack (minus the Van Dine, which I also read on the Kobo): 

As for that original set of predictions of what I might read for each category, I got three (!) correct, plus one by the same author I originally planned (James Baldwin) and one that I planned but switched categories (Willa Cather's A Lost Lady). Predicting three in advance is pretty standard for my abilities as a prognosticator...

Thanks to Karen for hosting this challenge again! I'm reachable at reese (at) reesewarner (dot) com.

Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 Wrapup

It's time to wrap up for the Back to the Classics Challenge for the year. As is becoming a motif,... I read books for more prompts than I managed to write about. (Read all twelve, blogged about nine.) Here are the ones I blogged:

20th Century Classic

Ivo Andrić' The Bridge on the Drina

Classic by a Woman Author

Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

A Classic in Translation

Halldór Laxness' Independent People

A Classic by a New-to-you Author

Henryk Sienkiewicz' Quo Vadis

New-to-you Classic by a Favorite Author

R. L. Stevenson's The Black Arrow

A Children's Classic

Howard Pyle's Men of Iron

A Humorous Classic

Jose Maria Eça de Queirós' The City and the Mountains

A Classic with an Animal in the Title

Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark

A Travel Classic

R. L. Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

The Eça de Queirós and Wollstonecraft were library books and so missed their photo op. That's nine of the twelve categories of which I predicted...3 (!) in the original post. Even for me that's a particularly poor rate of followthrough.

Then there were the three that got away...

I've had half a post for Major Barbara in the queue for a while, but it probably won't get published now. The Maias is the book I finished most recently and I might yet write about it, (Very good! Though tricky to write about with its couple of surprise twists...) but I won't by the end of the year.

In any case All Hail! to Karen for hosting this great challenge again. 😉 And Happy New Year to all!

Back To The Classics 2020 Challenge Wrapup

 

Time for a wrapup post for the 2020 edition of Karen's Back To The Classics Challenge. This is the first year I managed to read a book for all twelve categories; I only managed to write blog posts for ten of them, though. Here are this year's categories and what I matched up against them: (Matched up in the end. Not in the beginning...)

19th Century Classic

--Henry James' The American

20th Century Classic

--Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

Classic by a Woman Author

--Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own

Classic in Translation

--Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt

Classic By A Person of Color

--James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room

A Genre Classic

--Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea

Classic With A Person's Name in the Tile

--Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

Classic With A Place in the Title

--Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra

Classic With Nature in the Title

--Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country

Classic About A Family

--John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga

Abandoned Classic

--Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

Classic With An Adaptation

--Charles Dickens' David Copperfield

I thought they were all really very good--no lemons in the bunch--well, they're classics, ya know? David Copperfield and Peer Gynt were rereads for me. I was a little surprised how much I enjoyed Tales of the Alhambra.

Reading a book for all twelve categories is the best I've ever done at this challenge, so, even though I didn't write about two of them--I'm still counting that very much as a success. I finished Carlyle only a couple of days ago; I'm likely to write about it soon and have half a post finished. I finished Giovanni's Room a couple of months ago now; I'll probably need to reread it before I do write about it. That only counts as ten books though for the draw. Should it be necessary I can be reached at reese (chiocciola) reesewarner (punto) com.

Thanks to Karen for hosting! Looking forward to the new version (for which I need to write a signup post...)

This is the third year I've done the challenge and I find I piled up all the books on the dining room table and took a picture with the Christmas tree in the background the first two times. Since one must keep up traditions...

Back To The Classics Wrapup 2019

So once again I completed ten (well, nine and a half-ish) categories this year for Karen's Back to the Classics Challenge. Here's the list:

Classic in Translation:

Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso

Classic Play:

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion

Classic From Africa:

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between

Classic From The Americas:

Malcolm Lowry's Under The Volcano

Twentieth Century Classic:

Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil

Very Long Classic:

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Classic by a Female Author:

George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life

Classic Tragedy:

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth

Classic Comedy:

Henry Fielding's Tom Jones

(though I've only just finished the last one & haven't blogged about it yet.)

Thanks to Karen for hosting! I guess that's two entries. Should it come up I can be reached by email at reese (at) reesewarner (dot) com.

Back To The Classics 2018 Wrapup

Well, I'm 2/3rd of the way through Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad and I'm likely to finish it before the new year, but that isn't really going to change the overall picture. I will have read nine (and maybe ten) of the dozen classics for my first try at the Back To The Classics challenge. Since six was the minimum, I guess that's OK...

Here's the list of categories and the books matched against them:

19th Century Classic

Silas Marner by George Eliot

20th Century Classic

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

A Classic by A Woman Author

Adam Bede by George Eliot

A Classic in Translation

Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland

A Crime Classic

Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley

A Classic With a Single Word Title

Romola by George Eliot

A Classic by an Author New To Me

The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

A Classic that Scares Me

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Reread a Favorite Classic

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

and (maybe) A Travel Classic

A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

The categories I definitely missed were a children's classic, and a classic with a color in the title.

The new to me favorites were The Leopard and Silas Marner, both completely amazing.

Thanks to Karen at Books and Chocolate for hosting!