NUMBER 6 !
Which means that I’ll be reading …….
Classics Club Spin #23 ……. and the Winner is ……
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Category Archives: Classics Club Spin
Classics Club Spin #23
With everything going on of late, instead of targeting specific books to read, I’ve preferred to let my reading tastes wander to what I feel like reading at a particular moment. Which makes me wonder with great puzzlement, why I’m choosing to participate in the recent Classics Club Spin. Perhaps it’s because I’ve hardly focussed at all on my list. But it’s more likely peer pressure from all you other bloggers who have jumped right in. So here I go!
Classics Club Spin #20
It’s been awhile since I’ve participated in a Classics Club spin. I think the last one I participated in was #14 and it was a dismal failure which made me realize that I simply don’t have time to read the way I used to. So I stopped. However, with my new Classics Club list up, I really need to start to focus on some of these books before it’s too late. So here I am again, hoping for success.
Classics Club Spin # 14 ……………. and the Winner Is ……..
Number 1
I must say that I’m rather excited to read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I’ve heard excellent feedback about it and I haven’t read a sci-fi book in awhile. I’ve also been enjoying a Russian-fest lately, finishing off The Death of Ivan Ilyich and am in the middle of The Brothers Karamazov. Both books have touched on issues that have lately been on my mind, and I wonder what insights I’ll gain from reading We.
Now I need to finish off some of my recent reads so I can get started. I hope everyone was as happy with their spin choice as I am with mine!
Classics Club Spin #14
Sigh! I usually get excited about the Classics Club Spin but this time, between my failures to finish my last spins and the load of books I already have on my plate, my enthusiasm is severely compromised. I should pass …..
…….. however, if I can finish up some of my reads, I don’t have much planned after them, AND I’m always trying to concentrate on my Classics Club List. So with these excuses in mind, I’m going to give it a whirl …..
The Rules for the spin are:
- Go to your blog.
- Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club list.
- Post that list, numbered 1 – 20, on your blog by next Monday.
- Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1 – 20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce.
- The challenge is to read that book by December 1st.
I used the random list organizer here to choose the 20 books from my master list. Then I tweaked them, so my list ended up looking like this:
- We (1921) – Yevgeny Zamyatin
- Address to Young Men (363) – Saint Basil
- The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) – Jacob Burckhardt
- The History of Napoleon Buonoparte (1829) – John Gibson Lockhart
- The Well at the World’s End (1896) – William Morris
- The City of God (426) – Augustine
- Ivanhoe (1820) – Sir Walter Scott
- Wives and Daughters (1864/66) – Elizabeth Gaskell
- Dead Souls (1842) – Nikolai Gogol
- If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller (1979) – Italo Calvino
- A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1775) – Johnson & Boswell
- Tartuffe (1669) – Molière
- Twenty Years After (1845) – Alexandre Dumas
- Framley Parsonage (1860-61) – Anthony Trollope
- On the Social Contract (1762) – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) – Ann Radcliffe
- The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) – Sigmund Freud
- The Merchant of Venice (1596 – 1598) – William Shakespeare
- The Histories (450 – 420 B.C.) – Herodotus
- Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) – Jules Verne
Oh, Lord help me. I left some BIGGIES on the list without changing them out. I just hope the spin goes in my favour and misses them. I’m sure I’ll be tense until Monday. 🙂
Best of luck everyone with your spin!
Classics Club Spin #13
I was going to resist the spin this time. I have too many books on the go and too many of them are atrociously difficult, or inordinately huge. But one of my goals for the year was to pare down my Classics Club list, so why on earth wouldn’t I participate in a spin?
With that said, I’m not shy to admit that I absolutely manipulated my list. Well, perhaps not completely, but I did change out about seven books for ones that I’m either currently reading, are shorter novels, or projects that I am struggling with (Shakespeare, that’s YOU!). Surprisingly, one of the manipulations was not The Faerie Queene.
The Rules for the spin are:
- Go to your blog.
- Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club list.
- Post that list, numbered 1 – 20, on your blog by next Monday.
- Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1 – 20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce.
- The challenge is to read that book by August 1st.
I used the random list organizer here to choose the 20 books from my master list. Then I tweaked them, so my list ended up looking like this:
- Ivanhoe (1820) – Sir Walter Scott
- Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) – Thomas Hardy
- Framley Parsonage (1860-61) – Anthony Trollope
- 1984 (1949) – George Orwell
- The Fairie Queene (1590 – 1596) – Edmund Spenser
- Henry V (1599) – Wiliam Shakespeare
- The Histories (450-20 BC) – Herodotus
- Richard III (1592) – William Shakespeare
- Le Rêve (1888) – Emile Zola
- Tom Sawyer (1876) – Mark Twain
- The Good Soldier Svejk (1923) – Jaroslav Hasek
- The Silver Chalice (1952) – Thomas Costain
- A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour
- The Lord of the Flies (1954) – William Golding
- The Red Bade of Courage (1895) – Steven Crane
- The Robe (1942) – Lloyd C. Douglas
- The Twelve Caesars (121) – Suetonius
- The Stranger (1942) – Albert Camus
- Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) – Thomas Hughes
- The Merchant of Venice (1596 – 1598) – William Shakespeare
While my intentions are good, if I don’t finish by August 1st, I won’t be surprised. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? And if I get a book I’m already reading, it will be more of a guarantee for success.
So let the spin begin!
Classics Club Spin # 12 ……….. And The Winner Is ……………
Number 8
Well, this was a very good choice for me. I’ve been trying to read through Anthony Trollope’s The Barsetshire Chronicles for about two years, and am at the halfway point. Number 8 for me is Framley Parsonage, book number 4 in the series.
For some reason, I’ve had a Trollope-block in the last year, and I really needed a push, so perhaps this is it. Now I just need to buckle down and read!
Classics Club Spin #12
I really wasn’t certain whether I wanted to participate in the new Classics Club spin. My last spin was a fail; I read the first essay of God in the Dock and then realized that I wouldn’t do it justice with a quick read and a quicker post, so away it went back onto the list for when I have more time. However, I did read Cirtnecce’s spin book, The Time Machine, so all was not lost. At the moment though, I have so many reads going that adding another book just didn’t appeal to me …………. Until I told myself that I am trying to concentrate on paring down my Classics Club list this year, and gave myself the permission to tweak the spin list a little. I hope something good comes of it. If I don’t succeed with this spin, it will be my third fail, or almost fail, in a row and my self-esteem just couldn’t take it. 😉
The Rules for the spin are:
The Rules for the spin are:
- Go to your blog.
- Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club list.
- Post that list, numbered 1 – 20, on your blog by next Monday.
- Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1 – 20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce.
- The challenge is to read that book by May 2nd.
I used the random list organizer here to choose the 20 books from my master list. Then I tweaked them, so my list ended up looking like this:
- Richard III (1592) – William Shakespeare
- Villette (1853) – Charlotte Brönte
- The Robe (1942) – Lloyd C. Douglas
- Twenty Years After (1845) – Alexandre Dumas
- The Histories (450-420 B.C.) – Herodotus
- Metamorphoses (8) – Ovid
- Dead Souls (1842) – Nikolai Gogol
- Framely Parsonage (1860 – 1861) – Anthony Trollope
- Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532 – 1564) – François Rabelais
- The Faerie Queene (1590-96) – Edmund Spenser
- The Republic (380 B.C.) – Plato
- Huckleberry Finn (1884) – Mark Twain
- Henry V (1599) – William Shakespeare
- A Doll’s House (1879) – Henrik Ibsen
- The Waves (or other) 1931) – Virginia Woolf
- Bondage of the Will (1525) – Martin Luther
- Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor’s Son (1894) – Sholem Aleichem
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) – Victor Hugo
- Fear and Trembling (1843) – Soren Kierkegaard
- The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) – John Bunyan
Since I’ve completely manipulated my list (well, not completely ….. I changed out about 6 books) I don’t really have any that I’m dreading. All the ones I’d dread, such as Metamorphoses, The Faerie Queene and The Histories, I’m already reading or have plans to read, so I’m really fine with anything on the list. I will admit to removing Augustine’s City of God; I’d love to read it but my time is so limited that if it was chosen, I’d be breathing in a paper bag. 😉
As for books that I’m anticipating with eagerness ….. I will say Metamorphoses because I’m already more than half way through! How’s that for manipulation?
As for books that I’m anticipating with eagerness ….. I will say Metamorphoses because I’m already more than half way through! How’s that for manipulation?
Oh Muse, sing of my spin choice ……….
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
“The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.”
I read this book for the Classics Club Spin #11. Was it my spin book? No, it was Mockingbirds, Looking Glasses, and Prejudices spin book but I decided to read along with her. Why? Well, her book was much shorter than my Spin book, and I couldn’t imagine getting through God in the Dock in the allotted time frame. Yes, I’m breaking the rules, but it’s on my Classics Club list, AND at least I read something!
The unidentified Time Traveller has built a machine that he believes will transport him through time. After he explains to his dinner guests the concept of his invention, he puts it into practice, returning the next week to regal them with the fantastic details of his adventure.
Having sent himself to 802,701 A.D., he encounters a race called the Eloi, a diminutive race that behaves in the manner of small, wide-eyed children, even though they are of adult growth. They live an uncomplicated life of leisure, simply eating and resting, and having no initiative or curiosity to speak of. Expecting some sort of greatly evolved being living in the future, the Time Traveller experiences disappointment and puzzlement at their almost backward evolution, wondering how their lackadaisical way of life is supported. But the Traveller’s perplexity turns to dread as his machine mysteriously disappears. Pursing the theft using reason and action, he eventually discovers another race, living in the depths of the earth; the Morlocks, hideous, pale, savage, troglodyte-like creatures who are in possession of his time machine. Unlike the Eloi land dwellers, these cavernous people exhibit an industry and an ability to reason, but in a primitive way that is only based on their survival. The Traveller discovers that they are providing the means for the Eloi’s rather vacuous paradisical existence using underground tools and machinery, yet they are also the predators of their parasitical neighbours, catching them for food during the night. Eventually, he concocts a plan to retrieve his machine, his only link with human society, his only means of returning to a civilized world.
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| Source Wikipedia |
Trained as a biologist, Wells developed an interest in Darwinism, and the significance of evolution is apparent in this work. The Eloi and the Morlocks, descendents of the human race, are presented as two species that have evolved on completely different tracks, separated by social oppression and elitism. The Traveller observes:
“Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people —- due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor —- is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land …….. And this same widening gulf — which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich —- will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along line of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour ….”
The Traveller had expected unprecedented progress, but instead found a degeneration on each side, of intelligence, empathy, mercy, discipline, respect, etc., in fact most qualities which make us human.
Wells, a commited socialist, was extrapolating some of the problems faced in his own time, such as the widening gulf between the rich and the poor, and hatred or disdain along the same class lines. But instead of the poor simply being oppressed by the rich, Wells takes it a step further; the rich, in their mindless indulgence, become the prey. Wells intended to communicate not only these innate problems in society but the lack of success of the solutions that communism and utopian socialism offered for the betterment of society. It’s a very bleak picture of the future.
C.S. Lewis loved Wells’ fiction as a boy, but as he matured and his tastes became more discerning, he began to see cracks in their veneer. While he praised Wells for his original thought, and his desire to tackle the bigger questions, he found the works “thin” and “lacking the roughness and density of life.” I’m by no means a Wells expert, but so far I’d agree with that assessment. The book’s plot is entertaining but rather simple, lacking any subtleties or true character development. His characters often work on an elementary level, to illustrate the questions, but without being imbued with a life of their own. The questions themselves, while compelling, are treated quite swiftly, with the narrator often chronicling the issues instead of the reader becoming intimate with the characters and absorbing dilemma through their actions. While the pace might be useful for a movie, it doesn’t really give the reader time to process, so the ideas thump around in our heads a little but there is no true contemplating of them that leads to a greater understanding, or development that leads to possible solutions.
Ruth from A Great Book Study was also reading The Time Machine at the same time as Cirtnecce and I, so I’m including both of their insightful reviews below.
Further Reading:
Classics Club Spin #11 ………… And the Winner Is ………
Number 19 !!
Oh, my! This means that I’ll be reading C.S. Lewis’ God in the Dock.
Yikes. On one hand, I was really wanting to avoid this book because I know that it’s going to take quite a bit of brain power, but on the other, I’m anticipating it because I know that it will be rich with ideas and meaning. Even donning his scholar’s hat, Lewis is so immensely practical and gracious to others. I’ve read the first essay and right away he is lauding the positive aspects of a philosophy that he disagrees with. I really love the guy.
Yet realistically, I’m not going to finish this by February 1st. I don’t want to rush through it and miss the gems that Lewis has to offer, and I’d like to journal as I go to better understand what I’m reading. All of this will take time, so if I don’t finish on February 1st, I’ll be still plugging away. That’s my prediction although stranger things have happened.
Enjoy your spin books, fellow Bloggers!
