52 Books in 52 Weeks in 2019

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Cleo

I used to regularly participate in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge. It was one of my favourite challenges and was reasonably easy for me to accomplish. Then life became busy and 52 books now seems almost impossible to read in a year. But 2019 is a new year and I’m determined to make reading more of a priority. So the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge is back on Classical Carousel!

For this challenge, all you have to commit to do is to read 52 books, 1 during each week of the year. The rules are relatively broad and easy to accomplish:

The challenge will run from January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2019.
Our book weeks will begin on Sunday
Week one will begin on Tuesday, January 1st.
Participants may join at any time.
All forms of books are acceptable including e-books, audio books, etc.
Re-reads are acceptable as long as they are read after January 1, 2019.
Book may overlap other challenges
If you have a blog, create an entry post linking to this blog.
Sign up with Mr. Linky in the “I’m participating post” in the sidebar
You don’t have to have a blog to participate. Post your weekly book in the comments section of each weekly post.
Mr. Linky will be added to the bottom of each of the weekly posts for you to link to reviews of your reads.

Already I have some books on my radar to read including Tom Jones, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Moby Dick, David Copperfield, Kidnapped and The Grapes of Wrath.

I’m excited to add the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge to my Back to the Classics, and Newbery Award challenges for 2019! What challenges are you going to participate in in the new year?

Henry V by William Shakespeare

Posted on August 10, 2016 by cleopatra

“From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that shed his blood with me
Shall be my brother.”

Written in the Second Period of Shakespeare’s development, Henry V is the eighth of his dramas, and part of the Henriad, his historical tetralogy which also includes Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2. The play is thought to be composed late in 1598, as it was produced between March 17 and September 28th of 1599.

The earliest known volume is the first Quarto printed in 1600, which was followed by Q2 and Q3, reprints of the first edition, published in 1602 and 1608 respectively. The first Folio edition differs extensively from the Quartos, as it is twice the length of the latter, which omits the first scenes of Acts I and III, the second scene of Act IV, the choruses and the epilogue, as well as some of the characters. Prose is also transformed into metrical form, it can only be supposed to effect an increased length of the play.

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All Rivers Run to the Sea by Elie Wiesel

Posted on May 19, 2016 by cleopatra

“Last night I saw my father in a dream.”

Born in the town of Sighet, Romania in the Carpathian Mountains in 1928, Wiesel’s family of six was part of a thriving Jewish community. During World War II, murmurs of Jewish persecution by the Germans reached the town, but the villagers doubted the rumors and discounted anything they heard. Even with the German occupation of the town on March 19, 1944, the Germans behaved correctly and no one was disturbed. Months before their arrival, a man called “Moshe the Beadle” arrived in town with talk of his escape and stories of atrocities, yet his words fell like a barely noticeable rain:

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The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway

Posted on April 22, 2016 by cleopatra

“The Western Plains of New South Wales are grasslands.”

Imagine a desert, dust from eroded topsoil, heat making images like a blurry glass as it bakes the ground. Succulents dot the landscape like drops of batter on a cookie sheet, while bushes eek out a meagre existence on the landscape. Earth meets sky, the rays of the sun unrelenting, yet there is life, animals and birds, and what’s more, land, where a settler could come to scratch out a modest existence. Into this landscape came the parents of the author, the Kers, her father’s investment in 18,000 acres of drought-stricken land taking their every penny. With no surface water, and only a few clumps of eucalyptus, they began their married life.

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Metamorphoses by Ovid

Posted on April 20, 2016 by cleopatra

“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.

but since, o gods, you were the source of these

bodies becoming other bodies, breathe

your breath into my book of changes: may

the song I sing be seamless as its way

weaves from the world’s beginning to our day.”

Publius Ovidius Naso was born in Sulmo, east of Rome in the year 43 B.C. As a son of an upper middle class family, his father sent him to be educated in Rome to distinguish himself in a career in law or government. Ovid was known as an exemplary rhetorician and worked at minor magisterial posts before quitting his public career to pursue poetry. Immediate success followed his first published elegy and by 8 A.D., the year in which Metamorphoses was published, he was one of the foremost poets of Rome.

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Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Posted on March 26, 2016 by cleopatra

“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.”

While Northanger Abbey was the first novel written by Jane Austen and sold to a publisher by her brother, Henry, in fact it was repurchased by the author and not published until six months after her death in December 1817. Austen’s parody of 17th century Gothic novels is told with a good-natured humour, but a valuable lesson lies beneath the surface of its narrative.

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Spenser’s Images of Life by C.S. Lewis

Posted on March 10, 2016 by cleopatra

Normally, I don’t read introductions or commentaries on books or poetry that I plan to read, until after I’ve finished the work. I prefer to experience the art from a point of innocence (or perhaps, ignorance is a better word!), forming my own opinions without influence, even if I struggle with my first read through. However, this time I threw all my ideals to the winds and called for help.

In April I’m reading The Faerie Queene with O, Cirtnecce, Jean, Ruth, and Consoled Reader, and considering the length and complexity of this poem, I confess that it was wiser to admit my complete ineptitude and look for someone who was very familiar with this type of poem and era to give me a little boost. Since C.S. Lewis’ expertise was in Medieval and Renaissance literature, I suspected that he would be a good place to start. His book, Spenser’s Images of Life is a compilation of lectures notes, put together by Alastair Fowler, to give students a deeper insight into The Faerie Queene.

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Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons

Posted on February 25, 2016 by cleopatra

“It is difficult to make a dull garden, but old Mr. Wither had succeeded.”

Stella Gibbons writes rather odd books. Cold Comfort Farm, her best known and highly acclaimed novel, follows an orphaned, pert young woman to a mucky, rural farm and observes while she neatens and tidies all the morose, lurking, and deranged occupants into their proper places, finding love in the process. Gibbons has a knack for depicting rather unusual and sometimes bizarre characters, and this flair for the unique has continued in her writing of Nightingale Wood. The introduction to the story labels it as a “fairy tale” and it is, although not along the usual lines one would expect from such a tale. Gibbons’ evil creatures often have angelic faces, and her happily-ever-afters can leave the reader uncertain of reality. In playing with her characters, Gibbons appears to play with society and even the reader himself. Her writing is not easily defined.

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Lysistrata by Aristophanes

Posted on February 13, 2016 by cleopatra

“The War shall be women’s business …….”

Staged during the Peloponnesian War and a mere two years after the disastrous defeat of Athens during the Sicilian Expedition, Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata ( Λυσιστραταη), meaning “disbander of the army”, as a protest against the waste of both resources and lives caused by the acts of war.

The play begins in the year 411 B.C., the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian War between the city states of Athens and Sparta, and the women of the participating factions are becoming disaffected by the incessant fighting. Lysistrata, a woman of Athens, gathers neighbouring women from the areas of Sparta, Bœotia, Corinth, Peloponnese, etc. in protest of this gratuitous war.

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Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus

Posted on February 8, 2016 by cleopatra

“You citizens of Cadmus, he must speak home
that in the ship’s prow, watches the event
and guides the rudder, his eyes not drooped in sleep.”

Produced in 467 B.C. and winning first prize in the City Dionysia drama competition, The Seven Against Thebes is assumed to be the last of a trilogy of plays which dealt with the Oedipus cycle, the other two being called Laius, and Oedipus, both lost, as was the concluding satyr play, The Sphinx. Driven mostly by dialogue, this play requires some background history to add some further insight.

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