Tag: #ccspin

Classics Club Spin #29!

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

It looks like the Classics Club is having another spin. Members can participate by making a numbered list of 20 of the books on their Classics Club lists and posting it by Sunday. On March 20, the Classics Club will pick a number, and that determines which of the books on your list to read by Saturday, April 30.

So, here’s my list for the spin:

  1. The Aenied by Virgil
  2. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
  3. The Mayor’s Wife by Anna Katherine Green
  4. Much Dithering by Dorothy Lambert
  5. Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp
  6. Music in the Hills by D. E. Stevenson
  7. We by Yevgeny Zemyatin
  8. Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
  9. Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
  10. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  11. The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins
  12. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
  13. Merkland, A Story of Scottish Life by Margaret Oliphant
  14. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  15. The Moorland Cottage by Elizabeth Gaskell
  16. The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
  17. Isa’s Ballad by Magda Szabo
  18. A Double Life by Karolina Pavlova
  19. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  20. The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof

If you choose to participate, good look on getting a book you enjoy!

Classics Club Spin #23

~ whatmeread ~ 13 Comments

It’s time for another Classic Club Spin, in which we club members select 20 books from our lists, and the club picks a number, determining which book we read next.

So, with no more further ado, here is my list for this spin:

  1. The Prince by Machievelli
  2. I Go by Land, I Go by Sea by P. L. Travers
  3. Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
  4. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
  5. Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
  6. Challenge by Vita Sackville-West
  7. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
  8. The Sea Hawk by Raphael Sabatini
  9. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
  10. The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
  11. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  12. Mary Lavalle by Kate O’Brien
  13. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
  14. Coromandel Sea Change by Rumer Godden
  15. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  16. Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn
  17. The Viscount de Braggelone by Alexandre Duma
  18. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
  19. Kennilworth by Sir Walter Scott
  20. The Winged Horse by Pamela Frankau

Another Classics Club Spin

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

The Classics Club is having another spin. For that, we post a list of twenty of the books from our Classics Club lists, and then Classics Club picks a number, and that’s the book we read next. The goal is to read the book by October 31st.

So, here is my list for Spin #21:

  1. I Go by Land, I Go by Sea by P. L. Travers
  2. The Old Man’s Birthday by Richmal Crompton
  3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
  4. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
  5. The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf
  6. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
  7. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  8. The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
  9. Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
  10. The Viscounte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas
  11. The Winged Horse by Pamela Frankau
  12. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
  13. Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott
  14. Evelina by Frances Burney
  15. The Prince by Machievelli
  16. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  17. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  18. Challenge by Vita Sackville-West
  19. The Sea Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
  20. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

 

Review 1310: Classics Club Spin Review! To the Lighthouse

~ whatmeread ~ 17 Comments

Cover from To the LighthouseWhen the Classics Club Spin chose To the Lighthouse for me from my list, I wasn’t sure how pleased I was. I first read it in college and remembered very little of it except that it wasn’t my favorite. On the other hand, our tastes change as we grow, and I had enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway.

The novel is divided into three sections. The first is about a day in the life of the Ramsey family, as they vacation on the Isle of Skye with their friends. The second is about the house and the passage of time. The third takes place there again ten or eleven years later.

Young James Ramsey has been begging for a trip the next day to the lighthouse, and both he and Mrs. Ramsey are irritated with Mr. Ramsey for so assuredly stating that the weather will be too stormy. The novel revolves around the presence of Mrs. Ramsey, a beautiful, quiet, assured mother of eight. Although we briefly see things from other characters’ points of view, the most prevalent are those of Mrs. Ramsey and of Lily Briscoe, a painter.

Nothing much happens in this part of the novel. The family doesn’t go to the lighthouse; Lily has difficulty with her painting, and although she has insight during dinner, she doesn’t finish it; Minta loses her brooch on the beach and accepts a proposal from Paul; Lily resists Mrs. Ramsey’s old-fashioned idea that she must marry and her attempts to pair her off with William Bankes. The action of the novel isn’t really the point, though, it’s the complex relationships between friends and family.

At times the narrative is a little hard to follow, because Woolf switches time and pronouns so that you don’t always know whether something takes place in the novel’s present or past or who is being referred to. The novel is impressionistic in its approach, both in its descriptions of characters’ thoughts and of the settings. Over everything is the strong presence of Mrs. Ramsey.

Time passes, the war intervenes, and the family does not return for more than 10 years. When it does, things have changed.

I enjoyed reading this novel, although I’m sure I missed a lot. I think it could be food for study and contemplation, but I did not have time to do so.

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Day 1187: Edgar & Lucy

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for Edgar & LucyBefore I start my review, I realized I forgot to check the spin number on Friday morning. It seems as if Classics Club always picks the number for the most obscure book on my list. This time, I get to read Le Morte D’Arthur.

* * *

Best of Five!
Eight-year-old Edgar has no idea about the terrible events that took place when he was a baby. He lives with his mother, Lucy, and his grandmother Florence, who tells him innocuous lies about Frank, his father and her son.

Lucy and Florence have not been getting along lately. Lucy, still traumatized by her husband’s death, has been drinking too much and seeing men, when old-fashioned Florence would like her to be a perpetual widow. But Florence dies, and a series of misunderstandings and accidents at the time of her death place Edgar in danger.

Although I wouldn’t describe Edgar & Lucy as a thriller, it kept me pinned to the page much like a good thriller would, and the novel has some thriller-like plot characteristics. But really, it is a thorough examination of several characters under trying circumstances. And one of them is a ghost.

This novel is highly unusual. At times, it is almost meditative while at other times it reveals its characters’ minds as almost hallucinogenically original. If you decide to read it, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

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Time for Another Classics Club Spin

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

Classics Club announced its 17th spin on Thursday. If you want to participate, you must post a list of 20 books from your Classics Club list by March 9. The spin will select a number corresponding to one of those books, which they challenge you to read and post a review by the end of April. Here is my list of 20 books:

  1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
  2. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
  3. La Morte D’arthur by Thomas Malory
  4. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
  5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  6. I Go by Land, I Go by Sea by P. L. Travers
  7. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
  8. Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
  9. Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott
  10. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
  11. Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame
  12. The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins
  13. Mary Lavelle by Kate O’Brien
  14. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollet
  15. Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn
  16. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  17. Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton
  18. My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather
  19. The Viscounte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas
  20. The Heir of Redclyff by Charlotte M. Yonge

There are lots of books on this list that I know nothing about, and only three that I have read before, so it should be an exciting spin.