Another spin and another chance to choose from my Classics Club list .
Classics Club Spin #40
8
The Diary of a Madman by Guy Maupassant
“He was dead—the head of a high tribunal, the upright magistrate whose irreproachable life was a proverb in all the courts of France.”
In The Diary of a Madman, a renowned and respected judge of the highest order dies at the age of eighty-two. All his life he had dedicated to pursuing the most vicious criminals and to defending the weak and helpless. Defendants trembled because It was as if he could read the minds of those who were to be tried in his court. At his funeral, soldiers carried his coffin and there were many tears as this respected and venerable magistrate was finally laid to rest.
The Maiden Without Hands by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
“A miller fell slowly but surely into poverty, until finally he had nothing more than his mill and a large apple tree which stood behind it.”
(The 1819 Version)
One day a poor miller met a strange old man who promised him that he would make him wealthy if, in three years he would give the dearest thing to him that was standing behind his mill. Thinking the odd man was referring to the apple tree, he quickly concurred.
Love Sonnet XIII by Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda as a young man
~ source Wikipedia
The light that rises from your feet to your hair,
the strength enfolding your delicate form,
are not mother of pearl, not chilly silver:
you are made of bread, a bread the fire adores.
The grain grew high in its harvest of you,
in good time the flour swelled;
as the dough rose, doubling your breasts,
my love was the coal waiting ready in the earth.
Oh, bread your forehead, your legs, your mouth,
bread I devour, born with the morning light,
my love, beacon-flag of the bakeries:
fire taugh you a lesson of the blood;
you learned your holiness from flour,
from bread your language and aroma.
2024 Year In Review
In Gedanken (1894) Friedrich Prölls
~ source Wikimedia Commons
YEAR IN REVIEW
2024 READING STATS
Number of Books Read: 48
Number of Re-Reads: 10
Genre You Read The Most From: Classics / Mystery
2025 Deal Me In Challenge
Here I go again with a 2025 Deal Me In Challenge. I skipped a year but this year I have someone to keep me company and push me to actually accomplish something. So we’ll see how it goes.
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?: “Bobby Jones teed up his ball, gave a short preliminary waggle, took the club back slowly, then brought it down and through with the rapidity of lightning.”
Alternate Title: The Boomerang Clue
Detective: Lady Frances “Frankie” Derwent & Bobby Jones, childhood friends
Published: September 1934
Length: 351 pages
Setting: Wales & Hampshire
A Christmas Supper in the Marais & Other Christmas Stories by Alphonse Daudet
I’ve always wanted to read Alphonse Daudet, Lettres du mon Moulin, but time to plod through it in French hasn’t materialized. However, given the season, and coming across this compilation of Christmas stories in English translation, I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Place Royale, Paris – Augustus Pugin
~ source Wikimedia Commons
I just have to summarize the whole stories as they’re so good, so I’ll give a spoilers warning here.
Reginald’s Christmas Revel by Saki
And now we arrive at the ninth story included in the 20 Christmas Stories volume of Everyman’s Pocket Classics, Reginald’s Christmas Revel.
I’ve always been intrigued with Saki but hadn’t read any of his stories. In fact, I lacked even the cursory knowledge that his real name was Hector Hugh Munro and he was British, not Asian as I had thought. So with a lively curiosity, I began this story with relish.
A Chaparral Christmas Gift by O. Henry
“The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.”
A Chaparral Christmas Gift is the eighth story in the Everyman’s Pocket Classics Christmas compilation of 20 short stories.
The story begins on Christmas Eve with a tale of unrequited love. Rosita McMullen, daughter of the owner of the Sundown Sheep Ranch, was courted by numerous men, however only two held her admiration: Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy who is later called the Frio Kid. Rosita chooses Madison and on their wedding day, McRoy appears, tries to shoot both of them but is prevented, then shoots an innocent man and flees, screaming of his vengeance and hatred. He thus becomes the Frio Kid.