Classics Club Spin #44

 

Mr. Dickens ponders the possibilities of chance.

Yes! It's time for a Classics Club spin. You know the rules, but what are the books I'm ready to read based on the dictates of chance? Well, it's actually a pretty quiet time for me over the next month and a half, so I'm allowing a few of the longer choices on this list. I also prioritized ones that weren't on my last list. So here we go...

1.) Willa Cather/Lucy Gayheart

2.) Elizabeth Gaskell/Wives and Daughters

3.) Sinclair Lewis/Elmer Gantry

4.) Jack London/The Iron Heel

5.) Edgar Wallace/The Four Just Men

6.) Simone de Beauvoir/The Mandarins

7.) Joachim Machado de Assis/Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

8.) Walter Pater/Imaginary Portraits

9.) Virginia Woolf/The Years

10.) Virginia Woolf/Between the Acts

11.) Andrei Bely/Petersburg

12.) Knut Hamsun/Hunger

13.) Halldor Laxness/Salka Valka

14.) Diogenes Laertius/Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

15.) W. E. B. Du Bois/The Autobiography

16.) Apollonius Rhodius/The Argonautica

17.) Nazami Ganjavi/Layli and Majnun

18.) Lucan/The Civil War

19.) Nikos Kazantzakis/Odyssey: A Modern Sequel

20.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last

 

I'm guessing the Kazantzakis and the Diogenes Laertius are the difficult ones on that list, but that's OK, I should have time. Which look good to you?

 

Sunday, May 17th, will reveal all. 

Classics Club Spin #43

 

Once again it's time for a new Classics Club spin. The rules are here but that's old news & the fun is showing off a list of books, so...straight to that!

1.) Willa Cather/Sapphira and the Slave Girl

2.) George Gissing/New Grub Street

3.) Nella Larsen/Passing

4.) Sinclair Lewis/Elmer Gantry

5.) Jack London/The Iron Heel

6.) Jack London/Martin Eden

7.) Harry Mark Petrakis/A Dream of Kings

8.) Edgar Wallace/The Four Just Men

9.) Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding

10.) Mikhail Bulgakov/Heart of a Dog

11.) Simone de Beauvoir/The Mandarins

12.) Joachim Machado de Assis/Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

13.) Benito Perez Galdos/That Bringas Woman

14.) Robert Walser/Jakob von Gunten

15.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last

16.) R. L. Stevenson/An Inland Voyage

17.) Apollonius Rhodius/The Argonautica

18.) Luis Vaz de Camões/The Lusiads

19.) Nezami Ganjavi/Layli and Majnun

20.) Gotthold Lessing/Nathan The Wise

 

These are all from my current Classics Club list. Which look good to you?    

Classics Club Spin #42

It's time for a spin, and it's time for me to do a spin, since I was haven't managed to sign up for the last couple. The organizing post for spin #42 is here, but you probably know all that so let's go straight to the list of books:

1.) Apollonius Rhodius/Argonautica (3rd century BC)

2.) Lucan/On the Civil War (Pharsalia) (65 AD)

3.) Luiz Vaz de Camões/The Lusiads (1572)

4.) Alexandre Dumas/The Black Tulip (1850)

5.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last (1860)

6.) Charles Darwin/The Voyage of the Beagle (1860)

7.) Robert Louis Stevenson/An Inland Voyage (1878)

8.) Wilkie Collins/The Fallen Leaves (1879)

9.) Gottfried Keller/Green Henry (1879) 

10.) Machado de Assis/Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881)

11.) Knut Hamsun/Hunger (1890)

12.) Andrei Bely/Petersburg (1922)

13.) Mikhail Bulgakov/Heart of a Dog (1925)

14.) Theodore Dreiser/An American Tragedy (1925) 

15.) Sinclair Lewis/Elmer Gantry (1927) 

16.) Katharine Anne Porter/Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939) 

17.) Dawn Powell/A Time to be Born (1942)

18.) Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding (1946)

19.) Harry Mark Petrakis/A Dream of Kings (1966) 

20.) Robert Pirsig/Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

 

It's been since last year I signed up for a spin, and even then, though I read the book--Statius' Thebaid--I never managed to blog about it.

 

There's a couple of scary chunky numbers on this list: The Voyage of the Beagle, An American Tragedy, Green Henry, but there's two months so that should be OK. I'm particularly keen to read An American Tragedy this year for its hundredth birthday; there are a couple of 1925 challenges on. But it also feels like a political moment in history, and Unto This Last or Elmer Gantry would be fitting.

 

This Sunday will reveal all. Which look good to you? 

Classics Club Spin #39

It's time for another spin! The rules are here. Mine's an all-over-the-map kind of list, and the only organization is chronological:

1.) Apollonius Rhodius/Argonautica (3rd century BC)

2.) Lucan/On the Civil War (Pharsalia) (65 AD)

3.) Statius/Thebaid (90s AD)

4.) Luiz Vaz de Camões/The Lusiads (1572)

5.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last (1860) 

6.) Elizabeth Gaskell/Wives and Daughters (1864-1866)

7.) Robert Louis Stevenson/An Inland Voyage (1878)

8.) Machado de Assis/Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881)

9.) Benito Pérez Galdós/That Bringas Woman (1884)

10.) Knut Hamsun/Hunger (1890)

11.) R. Austin Freeman/The Red Thumb Mark (1907)

12.) E. Philips Oppenheim/The Great Impersonation (1920)

13.) Andrei Bely/Petersburg (1922)

14.) Mikhail Bulgakov/Heart of a Dog (1925)

15.) Dawn Powell/A Time to be Born (1942)

16.) Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding (1946)

17.) Halldor Laxness/The Fish Can Sing (1957)

18.) Harry Mark Petrakis/A Dream of Kings (1966)

19.) Ismail Kadare/The Siege (1970)

20.) Robert Pirsig/Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

 

I'm kind of keen on 1, 4, or 19 at the moment, but really I expect any of them to be a good read--I didn't put anything terribly challenging on the list. (I think?) Next month there's a Norwegian literature event so 10 would work, too.

Which have you read? Which look good to you?

Classics Club Spin #38

 

It's spin time! What you need to do to join in is here, but the main thing is a list of twenty books. I have only one book left on my original Classics Club list (George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara, which I have read & I will blog about it soon! Really!) so these are all for a new, not-yet-drawn-up list.

 

I've organized them from the oldest to the newest:

1.) Apollonius Rhodius/Argonautica (3rd century BC)

2.) Lucan/On the Civil War (Pharsalia) (65 AD)

3.) Statius/Thebaid (90s AD)

4.) Luiz Vaz de Camões/The Lusiads (1572)

5.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last (1860) 

6.) Elizabeth Gaskell/Wives and Daughters (1864-1866)

7.) Robert Louis Stevenson/An Inland Voyage (1878)

8.) Machado de Assis/Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881)

9.) Benito Pérez Galdós/That Bringas Woman (1884)

10.) Knut Hamsun/Hunger (1890)

11.) R. Austin Freeman/The Red Thumb Mark (1907)

12.) E. Philips Oppenheim/The Great Impersonation (1920)

13.) Andrei Bely/Petersburg (1922)

14.) Mikhail Bulgakov/Heart of a Dog (1925)

15.) Dawn Powell/A Time to be Born (1942)

16.) Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding (1946)

17.) Anna Seghers/The Seventh Cross (1942)

18.) Halldor Laxness/The Fish Can Sing (1957)

19.) Harry Mark Petrakis/A Dream of Kings (1966)

20.) Robert Pirsig/Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

 

Are you spinning this time round? 

Which have you read? Which look good to you?

Classics Club Spin #36

 

It's time for the latest Classics Club spin. You likely know the rules. A list of twenty books and next Sunday reveals the book we should read over the next month and a bit. So let's go straight to the list of twenty books.

I'm even nearer to the end of my list than I was at the last spin, so I'm going to concentrate on the books I need to finish my first Classics Club list. 

The First Quatrain:

1.) James Baldwin/Giovanni's Room

2.) Goethe/Wilhelm Meister

3.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara

4.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

A Second Quatrain:

5.) James Baldwin/Giovanni's Room

6.) Goethe/Wilhelm Meister

7.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara

8.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

Quatrain the Third:

9.) James Baldwin/Giovanni's Room

10.) Goethe/Wilhelm Meister

11.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara

12.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

And now, for the Quatrain of quatrains!

13.) James Baldwin/Giovanni's Room

14.) Goethe/Wilhelm Meister

15.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara

16.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

The pirates say, Just finish the danged books already.

Only one of those is long (the Goethe) and as I've already read two of the others (Giovanni's Room and Major Barbara) but didn't manage to blog about them. (Which I would do if they spin machine chose them.) I really should just finish the stack over the course of the month. 

But as that repetition is looking a little dull, and who doesn't want a bit of danger (?) in a spin, here's a few books from a potential new Classics Club list I've been thinking about:

17.) Luis Vaz de Camões/The Lusiads

18.) Harald Laxness/The Fish Can Sing

19.) Benito Perez Galdos/That Bringas Woman

20.) Konstantin Stanislavsky/My Life in Art

The Stanislavski would be the long one in that last quatrain.

Which look good to you? Are you spinning this time out?

Classics Club Spin #35

It's time for the new Classics Club Spin. The full rules are here, but you know all that, so let's go straight to the list of books!

1.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

2.) Boccaccio/The Decameron

3.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last

4.) Dee Brown/Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

5.) Machado de Assis/The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

6.) Ivan Goncharov/Oblomov

7.) Harry Mark Petrakis/A Dream of Kings

8.) R. L. Stevenson/An Inland Voyage

9.) Emile Gaboriau/The Lerouge Case

10.) E. Philips Oppenheim/The Great Impersonation

11.) R. Austin Freeman/The Red Thumb Mark

12.) W. E. B. Du Bois/Autobiography

13.) Knut Hamsun/Hunger

14.) Camoens/The Lusiads

15.) Benito Pérez Galdós/That Bringas Woman

16.) Isaac Bashevis Singer/The Slave

17.) Apollonius Rhodius/Argonautica

18.) Mikhail Bulgakov/The Heart of a Dog

19.) Halldor Laxness/The Fish Can Sing

20.) Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding

Which look good to you? Sunday reveals all!

What will chance bring? meditates Erechtheum the Owl...

Classics Club Spin #33

How can you not spin for #33? I feel like I should add a 1/3rd to that.

I'm nearing the end of my original list; the last couple of spins I added a few books from a potential new classics club list. But not this time! I'm concentrating on knocking off those remaining books, so there will be some doubling up.

(For full directions on how to do a Classics Club spin, see the organizing post. But you know all that...)

The First Five

1.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge

2.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

3.) Balzac/Cousin Bette

4.) Boccaccio/The Decameron

5.) James Baldwin/Notes of a Native Son

The Second Five

6.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge

7.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

8.) Balzac/Cousin Bette

9.) Boccaccio/The Decameron

10.) James Baldwin/Notes of a Native Son

Hmm...those look a lot like the first five.

The Third Five

11.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge

12.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

13.) Balzac/Cousin Bette

14.) Boccaccio/The Decameron

15.) James Baldwin/Notes of a Native Son

Whoa. I'm picking up on a pattern here...

The Final Five

16.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge

17.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

18.) Balzac/Cousin Bette

19.) Boccaccio/The Decameron

20.) James Baldwin/Notes of a Native Son

Yes, there may have been some copying and pasting going on!

They've all appeared on spin lists before and have failed to be selected. Of those 20 (whoops, I mean 5) books, which do you particularly like? Sunday, the 19th, will reveal all.

Happy spinning!

Classics Club Spin #32

 

I've been a little slack about spins lately, but I'm getting organized for this one.

You likely know the drill: a list of twenty books, a random number generator, and a book to read by the 29th of January, 2023. So...straight to the list:

1.) James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son

2.) James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain

3.) Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales

4.) Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh

5.) Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

6.) Henry James' Wings of the Dove

7.) W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge

8.) Virginia Woolf's The Waves

9.) Balzac's Cousin Bette

10.) Boccaccio's The Decameron

11.) Bulgakov's The Heart of a Dog

12.) Andrei Bely's Petersburg

13.) William Sherman's Memoirs

14.) Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica

15.) Harry Mark Petrakis' A Dream of Kings

16.) Dawn Powell's Turn, Magic Wheel

17.) Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding

18.) Nella Larsen's Quicksand

19.) Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters

20.) George Gissing's New Grub Street

I'm fairly determined to read Wessex Tales in the near future as well as Notes of a Native Son. I'm currently halfway through Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

Are you doing the spin this time? Which look good to you? Which should I be sure not to miss?

Classics Club Spin #29

 

It's time for another Classics Club spin--this one is #29! You likely know the rules. One of these books will need to be read by April 30th.

I'm breaking up my list into two categories.

Remaining books from my Classics Club List:

1.) James Baldwin/Go Tell It On The Mountain
2.) Samuel Butler/The Way of All Flesh

3.) Willa Cather/A Lost Lady

4.) William Faulkner/A Light in August

5.) Oliver Goldsmith/The Vicar of Wakefield

6.) Thomas Hardy/Wessex Tales

7.) Henry James/Wings of the Dove

8.) Sir Walter Scott/Count Robert of Paris

9.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves

10.) Goethe/Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

And...books I've downloaded from Project Gutenberg (but haven't read yet):

11.) Élizabeth Vigée Le Brun/Memoirs

12.) Goncharov/Oblomov

13.) G. K. Chesterton/The Man Who Was Thursday

14.) Thomas Peacock/Crotchet Castle

15.) Herbert Croly/The Promise of American Life

16.) Francis Parkman/Vassall Morton

17.) Israel Zangwill/The Big Bow Mystery

18.) Emile Gaboriau/The Larouge Case

19.) E. Philips Oppenheim/The Great Impersonation

20.) R. Austin Freeman/The Red Thumb Mark

I recently read Michael Dirda's Classics for Pleasure; Oblomov, Crotchet Castle & The Man Who Was Thursday were all praised there. Mudpuddle read the memoirs of Vigée Le Brun not so long ago & it got downloaded then. I've read all of Francis Parkman's non-fiction, so why not his novel? I used to subscribe to The New Republic and have thought about reading The Promise of American Life for years. (Croly was the founder of The New Republic.) I downloaded it on to my Kindle; when the battery on the Kindle died and I bought a Kobo, I downloaded on to the Kobo. It would fit in with my recent Edmund Wilson reading. And the last four are classic early mysteries for free! Why not?

I've been a pretty sluggish blogger lately (though reading lots). Maybe this will get me my off my duff...

Which look good to you?

Classics Club Spin #28

 

It's time for another Classics Club Spin...you know the rules. Here's my list of twenty books:

Some books that would also work for Karen's Back To The Classics challenge...

1.) George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara

2.) James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room

3.) James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son

4.) Sir Walter Scott's Count Robert of Paris

5.) Henry James' Wings of the Dove

Some books from my Classics Club list...

6.) Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

7.) Virginia Woolf's The Waves

8.) Willa Cather's One of Ours

9.) Willa Cather's A Lost Lady

10.) Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh

Some books I've been meaning to read since I recently read other books... 😉

11.) W.E.B. Du Bois' Autobiography (Wagnerism)

12.) Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark

13.) Eça de Queirós' The Maias (The City and the Mountains)

14.) R. L. Stevenson's An Inland Voyage (Travels With a Donkey)

15.) R. L. Stevenson's Across the Plains

16.) John Ruskin's Stones of Venice (various Richard Howards)

17.) John Ruskin's Unto This Last

18.) Tacitus' The History (Annals)

19.) Henryk Sienkiewicz' With Fire and Sword (Quo Vadis)

20.) Ezra Pound's Literary Essays (Propertius)

Some of these would be rereads. Which would you wish for me?

Charles contemplating the operations of chance...

Classics Club Spin #27

Squeezing in just under the wire...

It's time for another Classics Club spin. I was off-grid for a few days there, and now I need to hurry up and figure out some spin possibilities. It's also a relatively quick turn-around spin, so I'm concentrating on short to medium-length books.

From my original Classics Club list:

I'm nearing the end of my first list and I won't pick the super long ones, but here are a few from my first Classics Club list:

1.) Willa Cather/The Lost Lady

2.) Willa Cather/One of Ours

3.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge

4.) Sir Walter Scott/Count Robert of Paris

5.) Honoré de Balzac/Cousin Bette

6.) Henryk Sienkewicz/Quo Vadis

7.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara

Numbers 5, 6, 7 are already on my twenty books of summer list, so I'm expecting to read them soon anyway.

From a potential new Classics Club list:

I haven't made up a new list yet in earnest, but I've been thinking about things I might put on it. And anyway I'm tired of putting the same books THAT NEVER GET PICKED on spin lists. (I'm looking at you, Willa Cather.) So here are some new choices I've been considering. Some of these come from the list that Deb assembled after a discussion of classic non-fiction at the home blog a few months ago.

8.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last

9.) Thomas de Quincey/Recollections of the Lake Poets

10.) Dee Brown/Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

11.) Robert Pirsig/Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

12.) Konstantin Stanislavsky/My Life in Art

13.) Barbara Tuchman/A Distant Mirror

14.) Ernest Hemingway/A Moveable Feast

Some Other Oddballs...

Is Austen in August happening? A couple for that. (The Austen I most want to reread is Persuasion.) Since reading Alex Ross' Wagnerism, I've also been wanting to reread Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark. Mudpuddle lately has made want to read some classic American sea tales.

15.) J. E. Austen-Leigh/A Memoir of Jane Austen

16.) Jane Austen/Persuasion

17.) Willa Cather/The Song of the Lark

18.) Sholom Aleichem/In The Storm

19.) James Fenimore Cooper/Red Rover

20.) James Fenimore Cooper/The Pilot

Which look good to you? Which should I be sure not to miss?

#CCSpin: And the Winner is...

 

Which means R. L. Stevenson's Travels With A Donkey for me. That was probably the most fun thing that I put on my list. Woo-hoo! And it will do convenient double duty with Karen's Back To The Classics challenge.

Did you get something good?

Classics Club Spin #26

 

It's time for the latest Classics Club spin, Numero 26! You probably know the rules. I'm running low on books from my original list, (and skipping a couple for a spin) but I have started assembling a second list so I'll pick a few of those and then there will be some doubling up. 

Let's go straight to the list of books:

From my first Classics Club list:

1.) Samuel Butler/The Way of All Flesh

2.) Willa Cather/A Lost Lady

3.) Willa Cather/One of Ours

4.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge

5.) Sir Walter Scott/Count Robert of Paris

6.) R. L. Stevenson/The Black Arrow

7.) Honoré de Balzac/Cousin Bette

8.) Johann von Goethe/Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

9.) Henryk Sienkewicz/Quo Vadis

10.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara

From that new Classics Club list:

11.) R. L. Stevenson/Travels With A Donkey

12.) Barbara Tuchman/A Distant Mirror

13.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last

14.) Thomas de Quincey/Lake Poets

15.) Dee Brown/Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

And some stacking the deck:

16.) Willa Cather/One of Ours

17.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge

18.) R. L. Stevenson/The Black Arrow

19.) Johann von Goethe/Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

20.) Henryk Sienkewicz/Quo Vadis

I think that chapter-a-day readalong of Quo Vadis (which I didn't originally commit to) may be going on now so that would timely, but other than that I don't have any strong preferences.

Have you read any of these? Which look good to you?

And happy spinning to all!

And the winner is... (Classics Club Spin #25)

 

...John Stuart Mill's Autobiography. Now I get to discover why starting Latin at age 13 was too late, too late! But I am looking forward to it.

Nowadays I probably would have just read this from Project Gutenberg, especially since this Kessinger reprint doesn't have any notes or anything, but since I have this print copy...

Time to put all those other books back on the shelf so I can find them in the future:

Did you get something good?

Classics Club Spin #25

It's time for a Classics Club spin again, number 25. I decided I didn't want to shuffle around those remaining books from my first Classics Club list one more time. In a moment of idleness a while back, I started assembling some categories of books that I might put on a second Classics Club list, and I made my list mostly from that.

After being unable to find Mary Wollstonecraft for the last spin, I decided I'd better have all the books in hand:

The Categories and the Books

Women Authors from the Library of America

I've read parts of all these books, but there's still good reading in them!

1.) Dawn Powell/Turn, Magic Wheel
2.) Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding
3.) Katharine Anne Porter/Pale Horse, Pale Rider
4.) Nella Larsen/Quicksand
5.) Willa Cather/One of Ours

One of Ours is actually from my current Classics Club list.

Chicago Classics

My home town has produced some classic literature. Most of the good Toronto books are perhaps not quite old enough to be considered classics yet.

6.) James T. Farrell/A World I Never Made
7.) Theodore Dreiser/Sister Carrie
8.) Richard Wright/Native Son
9.) Harry Mark Petrakis/A Dream of Kings
10.) Nelson Algren/The Man With The Golden Arm

James T. Farrell is better known for Studs Lonigan, which got the Library of America treatment, but that's grim and I didn't feel like rereading it just now. A World I Never Made is the first of the Danny O'Neill series. In my first list, I didn't allow rereads, but I've decided this time I will. If I haven't read a book since my 20s, well, it's like it's new all over again...Except for the Petrakis, these are all rereads.

Nineteenth Century Non-Fiction

11.) John Ruskin/Unto This Last
12.) Thomas Carlyle/Heroes and Hero-Worship
13.) Thomas de Quincey/The Lake Poets
14.) J. S. Mill/Autobiography
15.) James Austin-Leigh/A Memoir of Jane Austen

Non-Fiction from Deb's List

Clearly I was already thinking of adding some non-fiction to the new list, but then Deb assembled a list of non-fiction classics with help from the community. Why, I have some of those!

16.) Dee Brown/Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
17.) Truman Capote/In Cold Blood
18.) Rene Descartes/Meditations and Discourse on Method
19.) R. L. Stevenson/Travels With A Donkey
20.) Barbara Tuchman/A Distant Mirror

Other potential categories that didn't show up this time were Russians, plays, and Trollope. Yet to come!

Which look good to you?

Classics Club Spin #24

It's time for a new Classics Club spin. Oh, dear. I have neither finished my last one, nor given up on it--well, it was Plutarch's Lives and it was 1300 pages. I figured I could allow myself a bit of time. I've made more progress and I really should blog about it some more, but I couldn't see posting for every pair of lives or anything like that. It invites reading in bursts.

So I'm both prepared but also cautious about a new spin. Here's twenty remaining from my Classics Club list. There will be no super-long choices in this...

1.) James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room
2.) James Baldwin's Go Tell It On The Mountain
3.) Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh
4.) Willa Cather's A Lost Lady
5.) Willa Cather's One of Ours
6.) Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield
7.) Thomas Hardy's Wessex Tales
8.) W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge
9.) Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar
10.) Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow
11.) Virginia Woolf's The Waves
12.) Balzac's Cousin Bette
13.) Henry James' The Wings of the Dove
14.) Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
15.) Henryk Sienkewicz' Quo Vadis
16.) Jules Verne's Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
17.) James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son
18.) Mary Wollstonecraft's The Vindication of the Rights of Women
19.) George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara
20.) Sir Walter Scott's Count Robert of Paris

I suspect The Wings of the Dove would be the challenging one in there and is long enough! Which look good to you?

And the winner is...#18! Mary Wollstonecraft's The Vindication of the Rights of Women. It's short!

Classics Club Spin #23

May is spin month again at the Classics Club so it's time to put together a list of twenty books from your Classics Club list and see this Sunday which of them the random number generator suggests I read.

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." 

-John von Neumann. 

Somebody is doing just that!

I'm currently two thirds through The Forsyte Saga, so I feel like it would be cheating to put that on the list. I have ruled out a few of the very long ones, but then correspondingly I left off a couple of the very short ones. Here's my list:

1.) Edmund Spenser/The Faerie Queene
2.) George Bernard Shaw/Major Barbara
3.) Mary Wollstonecraft/Vindication of the Rights of Women
4.) Edmund Wilson/Axel's Castle
5.) Edmund Wilson/Patriotic Gore
6.) Plutarch/Lives
7.) Jules Verne/20000 Leagues Under The Sea
8.) Willa Cather/One of Ours
9.) Henryk Sienkowicz/Quo Vadis
10.) Goethe/Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice
11.) Boccaccio/Decameron
12.) Balzac/Cousin Bette
13.) Virginia Woolf/The Waves
14.) Sylvia Plath/Bell Jar
15.) Sir Walter Scott/Count Robert of Paris
16.) Robert Louis Stevenson/Black Arrow
17.) W. Somerset Maugham/The Razor's Edge
18.) Thomas Hardy/Wessex Tales
19.) Oliver Goldsmith/The Vicar of Wakefield
20.) Willa Cather/The Lost Lady

With social distancing measures extended here for at least another four weeks, I could read one of the long ones. Which look good to you?

And the winner is...#6. Plutarch's Lives! The longest one on that list...

Classics Club Spin #22

It's spin time at the Classics Club again. This is the Classics Club challenge where we pick twenty unread books from our Classics Club list and wait for the power of the random number generator to tell us which one we're going to read in the near future.

Between the holidays and the fact that I'm going to be in California for half of January I'm not sure how much reading and blogging time I will have, so I'm not putting any of the dangerously long ones on this list. The last chunkster challenge, the spin machine picked the shortest book on my list, but I'm not going to rely on that happening again.

A couple of these would be effectively read-alongs, and two would be the same author as other bloggers (Brona - though not the same book.) Feel free to do further matchups if you like.

1.) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
2.) The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
3.) The Waves by Virginia Woolf (Same author with Brona)
4.) The American by Henry James
5.) Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
6.) Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (Faith at Household Diary)
7.) A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
8.) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
9.) The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
10.) Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac
11.) 20000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne
12.) The Black Arrow by R. L. Stevenson (Helen at She Reads Novels)
13.) A Room Of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
14.) The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham (DebNance at Readerbuzz)
15.) One of Ours by Willa Cather (Same author with Brona)
16.) Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
17.) The Forsyte Sage by John Galsworthy
18.) Lives by Plutarch
19.) Count Robert of Paris by Sir Walter Scott
20.) Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy

Plutarch's Lives would be the challenging one on that list. I'm not really sure which one overall I prefer. Which look good to you?

And the winner is...#13! A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.

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!)