I’m not going to finish my Classics Club list, within the 5-year time period but nevertheless I continue on and these spins help out so much. And by including four lists I’m at least making my way through some of my reading goals. So I’ve been waiting for this spin!
Author Archives: Cleo
Classics Club Spin #34
Another spin and another attempt. Since incorporating not only my Classics Club list, but some of my other project lists, I’ve managed to read one book for each spin, so I’m going to continue! From my last spin, I’m finishing up The Amazing Adventures of Father Brown.
Classics Club Spin #33
Oh, heavens! I haven’t accomplished much on the spins. I did manage to find my copy of Revelations of Divine Love, so that’s promising. Otherwise I :
- am reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations but haven’t finished it
- have begun Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs on my Kindle (the children’s version) and also started one volume of the original. I’m planning to finish the Kindle version, which is all I committed to; the original is both too long and too difficult to find for me to commit to it now
- I began Aristotle’s Ethics as a course quite awhile ago. I plan to finish … but ….
- I finished Journey from Peppermint Street by Meindert de Jong. Woo hoo!
Not the results I wanted but, oh well!
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Unfinished Portrait by Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie)
“Do you know the feeling you have when you know something quite well and yet for the life of you can’t recollect it?”
Oh, wow! After my first Westmacott novel, Giant’s Bread, I was really dreading Unfinished Portrait, but what a masterpiece of human psychology, human frailty and the unexpected journey that life has in store for all of us!
The novel begins on an island where a successful portrait painter meets a young woman who is ready to take her own life. Through speaking with her, he learns of her childhood and marriage and both the humorous and tragic circumstances that slowly led her to where she is that day.
2022 Year In Review
YEAR IN REVIEW
2022 READING STATS
Number of Books Read: 32
Number of Re-Reads: 9
Genre You Read The Most From: Classics / Mystery
Deal Me In Challenge 2023
Deal Me in Challenge 2023 and again, I stubbornly continue to participate, even though I finish less and less of the selections each year. Last year, I think I finished one selection (shame!) but even so, I was encouraged by my amount of reading in 2022. In 2021, I managed to finish 12 books but in 2022 I finished 32. I think I can keep up that pace and even improve it, so with that in mind, if I concentrate some of my energy on this challenge I should be able to read ….. well, at least more than one!
I kept the same list as last year to save time; better to spend the time saved reading, I think.
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Murder on the Orient Express: “It was five o’clock on a winter’s morning in Syria.”
Also Published as: Murder in the Calais Coach
Detective: Hercule Poirot
Published: January 1934
Length: 265 pages
Setting: Aleppo, Syria; Stamboul (Istanbul), Turkey; somewhere in Yugoslavia
In Murder on the Orient Express, after travelling from Aleppo to Istanbul, Hercule Poirot receives a telegram to return home and he books passage on The Orient Express, a well-known passenger train. Also onboard are:
Classics Club Spin #32
I don’t know why I’m doing this but here goes ….. from all four lists.
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The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
“A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.”
In The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot takes the reader into a lazy, peaceful part of England, where life is lived in a slow reverie with the river ebbing and flowing and yet hard work and struggles can be at the forefront of existence. Yet within the scenery and the everyday monotony, there are people who live their lives with hopes and cares, frustrations and joys, dreams and tragedies.
The Hound of Death and Other Stories by Agatha Christie
The Hound of Death: “It was from William P. Ryan, American newspaper correspondent, that I first heard of the affair.”
Detective: None, as these are tales of the supernatural
Published: October 1933
Length: 218 pages
Setting: various:
A compilation of 12 short stories, The Hound of Death and Other Stories are not mysteries, but instead are tales of the macabre, tales of the supernatural, tales that are linked to the scary unknown. The tales were as follows: