And the lucky Spin number is:

NUMBER XVIII !

Which means that I’ll be reading …….

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We have another Spin in the works from the Classics Club and I’m joining in right under the wire!  I’m happy to report that I did finish my book for the last spin, Lord of the Flies in spite of not reviewing it yet.  Hopefully I can repeat that performance!

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NUMBER 6 !

Which means that I’ll be reading …….

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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!

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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.

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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!

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 …..

1. Go to your blog.
2. Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club list.
3. Post that list, numbered 1 – 20, on your blog by next Monday.
4. 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.
5. The challenge is to read that book by December 1st.

1. We (1921) – Yevgeny Zamyatin
2. Address to Young Men (363) – Saint Basil 
3. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) – Jacob Burckhardt
4. The History of Napoleon Buonoparte (1829) – John Gibson Lockhart
5. The Well at the World’s End (1896) – William Morris
6. The City of God (426) – Augustine 
7. Ivanhoe (1820) – Sir Walter Scott
8. Wives and Daughters (1864/66) – Elizabeth Gaskell 
9. Dead Souls (1842) – Nikolai Gogol 
10. If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller (1979) – Italo Calvino
11. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1775) – Johnson & Boswell
12. Tartuffe (1669) – Molière
13. Twenty Years After (1845) – Alexandre Dumas
14. Framley Parsonage (1860-61) – Anthony Trollope
15. On the Social Contract (1762) – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
16. The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) – Ann Radcliffe
17. The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) – Sigmund Freud 
18. The Merchant of Venice (1596 – 1598) – William Shakespeare
19. The Histories (450 – 420 B.C.) – Herodotus 
20. 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!

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.

1. Go to your blog.
2. Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club list.
3. Post that list, numbered 1 – 20, on your blog by next Monday.
4. 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.
5. The challenge is to read that book by August 1st.

1. Ivanhoe (1820) – Sir Walter Scott
2. Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) – Thomas Hardy
3. Framley Parsonage (1860-61) – Anthony Trollope
4. 1984 (1949) – George Orwell
5. The Fairie Queene (1590 – 1596) – Edmund Spenser
6. Henry V (1599) – Wiliam Shakespeare
7. The Histories (450-20 BC) – Herodotus
8. Richard III (1592) – William Shakespeare 
9. Le Rêve (1888) – Emile Zola
10. Tom Sawyer (1876) – Mark Twain
11. The Good Soldier Svejk (1923) – Jaroslav Hasek
12. The Silver Chalice (1952) – Thomas Costain 
13. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour
14. The Lord of the Flies (1954) – William Golding
15. The Red Bade of Courage (1895) – Steven Crane
16. The Robe (1942) – Lloyd C. Douglas 
17. The Twelve Caesars (121) – Suetonius 
18. The Stranger (1942) – Albert Camus
19. Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) – Thomas Hughes 
20. 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!

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!

1. Go to your blog.
2. Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club list.
3. Post that list, numbered 1 – 20, on your blog by next Monday.
4. 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.
5. The challenge is to read that book by May 2nd.

1. Richard III (1592) – William Shakespeare
2. Villette (1853) – Charlotte Brönte 
3. The Robe (1942) – Lloyd C. Douglas 
4. Twenty Years After (1845) – Alexandre Dumas
5. The Histories (450-420 B.C.) – Herodotus
6. Metamorphoses (8) – Ovid
7. Dead Souls (1842) – Nikolai Gogol 
8. Framely Parsonage (1860 – 1861) – Anthony Trollope
9. Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532 – 1564) – François Rabelais 
10. The Faerie Queene (1590-96) – Edmund Spenser
11. The Republic (380 B.C.) – Plato 
12. Huckleberry Finn (1884) – Mark Twain
13. Henry V (1599) – William Shakespeare
14. A Doll’s House (1879) – Henrik Ibsen
15. The Waves (or other) 1931) – Virginia Woolf 
16. Bondage of the Will (1525) – Martin Luther
17. Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor’s Son (1894) – Sholem Aleichem
18. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) – Victor Hugo 
19. Fear and Trembling (1843) – Soren Kierkegaard
20. The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) – John Bunyan