Tag: Classics Club

2026 Classics Club Questionnaire Answers (at least to some)

~ whatmeread ~ 13 Comments

On January 1, the Classics Club posted a questionnaire for members. I decided to answer the questions, and here are my answers. As a moderator, I hope that some of you will choose to answer at least some of the questions.

Cover for The Long Ships
  1. When did you join The Classics Club? How many titles have you read for the club so far? Share a link to your latest classics club list. I joined the Classics Club on February 14, 2014, and have finished two lists. I have read 142 books for the Classics Club. I became a moderator about 2020 or so. Seems like I have been doing it longer. Here’s my current list: Classics Club – What? Me Read?
  2. What classic are you planning to read next? Why? Is there a book first published in 1926 that you plan to read this year? I think my next classic will be The Little Dinner by Christine Terhune Herrick from 1892. It’s not on my list. I don’t really pay much attention ahead of time to the dates of publication except for the Year Club hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings.
  3. Best book you’ve read so far with the club? Why? The best book I’ve read from my current list is The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher about the whole of a woman’s life up to early middle age and her efforts during World War I. It would be difficult to pick a favorite book from all my lists. I have great re-reads, like Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and new discoveries, like Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant.
  4. Classic author who has the most works on your club list? Or, classic author you’ve read the most works by? I haven’t repeated authors on my lists a lot, although there are certain ones for whom I’m trying to put a book on each list: E. Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Alexandre Dumas, Rafael Sabatini, and Margaret Oliphant. This is because I own their complete works in eBook form.
  5. If you could explore one author’s literary career from first publication to last — meaning you have never read this author and want to explore him or her by reading what s/he wrote in order of publication — who would you explore? Obviously this should be an author you haven’t yet read, since you can’t do this experiment on an author you’re already familiar with.  Or, which author’s work you are familiar with might it have been fun to approach this way? Maybe Joseph Conrad. I read two or three books by him long ago, but I’ve been thinking of looking back at his work. I can’t think of anyone offhand who I haven’t read at all and would like to explore from the beginning.
  6. First classic you ever read? I don’t know what my first classic was. My parents bought me books all the time. The first one I remember reading is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, but I may have read Little Women or The Secret Garden first. And I had fairy tales before that.
  7. Favorite children’s classic? My favorite children’s classic is The Secret Garden.
  8. Which classic is your most memorable classic to date? Why? I guess I just love Bleak House. It is so complex and interesting.
  9. Least favorite classic? Why? From my lists, the only one I couldn’t finish was Don Quixote. Not my kind of humor.
  10. Favourite movie or TV adaption of a classic? My favorite movie of a classic. Boy, there are so many good Jane Austen adaptations and the Kenneth Branaugh Shakespeare movies. I think it has to be the Hitchcock adaptation of Rebecca.
  11. Favorite biography about a classic author you’ve read, or the biography of a classic author you most want to read, if any? Although I have read many really good biographies of classic authors, I’ll pick Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley, because she has such a light, humorous touch. However, The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin was a real game-changer for the Dickens world.
  12. Favourite classic author in translation? Do you have a favorite classics translator? What do you look for in a classics translation? My favorite book in translation that I’ve read for Classics Club is The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson, translated by Barrows Mussey. It captured the light humor perfectly.
  13. Do you have a favorite classic poet/poem, playwright/play? Why do you love it? I don’t really have a favorite classic play that I can think of, and I hardly read any poetry. Well, maybe some play by Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest or An Ideal Husband.
  14. Which classic character most reminds you of yourself? Which classic character do you most wish you could be like? I don’t think about characters reminding me of myself or of wanting to be like them.
  15. What is the oldest classic you have read or plan to read? Why? The oldest classic I’ve read for Classics Club is The Aeneid by Virgil.
  16. If a sudden announcement was made that 500 more pages had been discovered after the original “THE END” on a classic title you read and loved, which title would you be happiest to see continued? I don’t know about this one.
  17. Favorite edition (or series) of a classic you own, or wished you owned, if any? I have some nice Folio editions of many classics, but I don’t tend to compare editions unless I get what seems to be a really bad translation. Although I would like some books to continue, the author has carefully planned where they will end, so maybe I would only say that about an unfinished book, like The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
  18. Do you reread classics? Why, or why not? Yes, I often reread classics that I loved or ones that I can’t remember very well, and I sometimes reread books I haven’t read for a long time to see if I like them better the second time.
  19. Has there been a classic title you simply could not finish? I couldn’t finish the second book of Don Quixote, because it just seemed like more of the first book.
  20. Has there been a classic title you expected to dislike and ended up loving? I don’t think I usually start in with the expectation that I’m going to hate a book, although for some of my prize projects, I go in that way for a few of the authors, but they are new books, not classics.
  21. List five fellow Classic Clubbers whose blogs you frequent. What makes you love their blogs? I follow FictionFan, She Reads Novels, Stuck in a Book (who isn’t a CC member but reads lots of classic novels), This Reading Life, and Literary Excursions, because they all write interesting reviews and I pay attention to their recommendations.
  22. If you’ve ever participated in a readalong on a classic, tell us about the experience. If you’ve participated in more than one, what’s the very best experience? the best title you’ve completed? a fond memory? a good friend made? I participated in last year’s Jane Austen event for Classics Club, if that was a Read-Along.
  23. If you could appeal for a readalong with others for any classic title, which title would you name? Why? I’d have to think about that some more.
  24. What are you favourite bits about being a part of The Classics Club? I like interacting with the members and working on the blog.
  25. What would like to see more of (or less of) on The Classics Club? That’s for others to tell us moderators.
  26. Question you wish was on this questionnaire? (Ask and answer it!) Hmmm.

Review 2670: Doorstoppers in December! The Deepening Stream (and Holiday Greetings!)

~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

Merry Christmas, everyone! This isn’t exactly a festive entry, but I have a real treat here in my one contribution to Doorstoppers in December. Although I had already read one book by Dorothy Canfield Fisher and thought it was far ahead of its time, The Deepening Stream was captivating.

This novel follows the life of its protagonist Matey from her first memories of childhood to the end of World War I. Apparently, the novel parallels Canfield Fisher’s own life, with the difference that Matey is a more ordinary person, according to the Introduction, than Canfield Fisher was, an everywoman.

Matey Gilbert and her sister Priscilla and brother Francis grow up affected by the state of their parents’ marriage, in which there is a continual state of one-upmanship. Matey’s father is a Midwestern college professor whose “company manners” are entertaining and charismatic and, Matey believes, false. But whatever his wife’s current interests are, he trivializes them, and his moods rule the household.

As a young teenager, Matey lives a year in Paris with the Vinets while her father is on sabbatical. (They always go to France because of her father’s field of study, where her mother cannot speak the language. A painful memory is the trip they took to the Netherlands, where her mother could speak but her father could not, and the fuss he made about it.) There she learns about a different kind of home life and a different way of conducting her own life. Used to running wild with little supervision, she sees that she is behind the Vinet children, who are younger, and begins taking her schoolwork and piano lessons seriously. She also feels at home.

Priscilla, whom Matey as a child believes is fearless, eventually copes with their home situation by making herself too busy to notice things, and this becomes a habit that continues to adulthood and keeps her from developing. Francis copes by treating everything as unimportant. Matey takes much longer to process her parents’ relationship, and it affects her throughout her life. However, when her father dies unexpectedly of an untreated wound, she is the only one to see that there was more to their parents’ relationship than they understood.

After her parents’ deaths, Matey learns that she has relatives on her mothers’ side that she has never heard of, because her parents never returned to her mother’s home after they were married and never talked about them. Matey has received a small bequest from her Cousin Constance, and when she goes to Rustdorf to inquire about it, she remembers her cousin’s home from when she stayed there as a child. At the bank, she meets Adrian Fort, a young distant cousin brought up as a Quaker who has just returned from Paris, where he has had to admit he’s failed as an artist and will join his father at the savings bank. He will become her husband, their relationship a close one. But she first has to learn how to be close to anyone.

With the advent of World War I, despite the U. S. neutrality, she and Adrian decide they want to go to Europe—Adrian to be an ambulance driver and Matey to use her legacy to help the Vinets and others who need it. Their friends and family are incredulous when they decide to take their two young children. Most of the rest of the book is about the struggles and conditions of World War I.

This is an absolutely fascinating novel. There were a few pages toward the beginning of the novel when Canfield Fisher was writing about the importance of play to children (childhood development being one of her interests) when I got a little bored, but after that, I was completely captured by the novel. It explores the intricacies of marital and other personal relationships, the influence of upbringing on children, the effects of war on humans, our responsibilities to others, and other issues that Matey thinks through, and it does all this without seeming weighty.

This is a terrific and thoughtful novel. It also is on my Classics Club list, so it serves two purposes. Three, really, because it is so, so good.

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Classics Club Spin #42

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin. To participate, post a numbered list of 20 books from your Classics Club list (here’s mine) before Sunday, October 19. Classics Club will announce a number on that day, and that determines the book to read before the 21st of December.

I no longer have 20 books left on my list, although I have neglected it shamefully, so I have to repeat titles. In fact, I have exactly 10 books left to read. Here’s my list for this spin:

  1. The Tavern Knight by Raphael Sabatini
  2. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  3. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  4. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  5. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  6. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
  7. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  8. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  9. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  10. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  11. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  12. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  13. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  14. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  15. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
  16. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  17. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  18. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  19. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  20. The Tavern Knight by Raphael Sabatini

Good luck to everyone! I hope you get a book you enjoy.

Classics Club Spin Result! Review 2595: The Passenger

~ whatmeread ~ 16 Comments

I know I’m early in reviewing my Classics Club Spin book, but it just so happens that when it was picked for the spin, I had just read it but not reviewed it yet. Lucky for me, because so many of the books remaining on my list are really long!

I am not sure how The Passenger made it onto my Classics Club list, but its origins are certainly interesting. Boschwitz, who had already escaped Germany with his mother, was so affected by the events of Kristallnacht that he wrote this novel in a great hurry. It was published in England in 1939 and in the U. S. in 1940, but then it just vanished. Revisions he mailed to his mother never arrived. Then, in 1942, he and his manuscript were on a passenger ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat, and they were lost. Nearly 80 years later, a correspondence with Reuella Shachaf, Boschwitz’s niece, mentioned to Peter Graf that the manuscript for the book was held in an archive of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. So Graf looked it up and helped edit it and get it republished. It came back out in 2018.

The book opens with wealthy Jewish businessman Otto Silbermann handing over 51% of his business to a friend, Becker, to save it from being taken. As Becker points out, there is nothing Silbermann can do about it because he’s Jewish. Jewish men are being rounded up, but Silbermann has an advantage of not looking Jewish.

Back at home with his Christian wife, he tries to sell his house to another friend, Findler, who cheats him. Again, there is nothing he can do about it. Then thugs begin pounding on the front door, so Findler sends him out the back, saying he’ll protect Elfrieda.

Silbermann begins a journey lasting days, traveling by train from one city to another to find a way to escape Germany. His goal is to go to his son Eduardo in Paris. But Eduardo has been unable to get him the papers he needs. In the meantime, he lives in a state of paranoia, listening to constant insults to Jews, fearing strangers, and thinking he’ll be arrested any minute.

This is a tense novel that seems very realistic, although Silbermann occasionally becomes incandescent with anger about the injustice, thereby risking his own life. It’s a compelling novel.

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It’s Time for Another Classics Club Spin!

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

The Classics Club is beginning its 41st spin event this week. If you are a member and want to participate, just post a choice of 20 books from your Classics Club list in a numbered list before Sunday, June 15. You can duplicate some, especially if you don’t have 20 books left to read, like me.

The Classics Club will announce a number on Sunday, and that’s the number of the book you should read from your list. The idea is to try to read that book before the 24th of August and post a review.

If you are not yet a Classics Club member and would like to participate, all you need to do is post a list of books you want to read, most people post 50-100 books, and a deadline by which you would like to have them read. Submit that list to the Classics Club, and you’re signed up! Then post your list of 20 for the spin.

Here’s my list of 20 for the spin:

  1. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakepeare
  2. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  3. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  4. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  5. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  6. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  7. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  8. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  9. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  10. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  11. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  12. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakepeare
  13. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  14. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  15. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  16. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  17. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  18. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  19. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  20. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Review 2565: Classics Club Spin Result! Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

~ whatmeread ~ 19 Comments

I pulled this book for the Classics Club spin, and I’m very happy to have done so. Because of the state of my reading right now, I was hoping for a short one, and this book is only 144 pages (albeit of very small type). It’s one of the few short works left on my Classics Club list.

The autobiography was written in the 1850s about events earlier than that and published in 1861. Although by then Jacobs was free, she wrote it under the pseudonym of Linda Brent, probably to protect others.

Linda had a fairly cheerful childhood, because she was owned by a kind woman who had promised to set her grandmother free. However, on the woman’s death, her slaves were seized as assets because she owed money, and Linda and her brother William ended up in the home of Dr. Flint, a relative. Linda’s grandmother was not freed and was also owed $300 by her mistress but never got it.

Jacobs recounts many instances of brutality on the part of slave owners, but her own troubles began when she reached puberty and Dr. Flint began relentlessly pressing her, trying to get her to have sex. Essentially out of desperation, she succumbed to another white man who she liked better and had two children by him. He, Mr. Sands, tried to buy her and her children several times, but Dr. Flint refused to sell them.

Eventually, Jacobs tried to escape, and the events of her escape, which took years, are the most harrowing in the book. Even after she escaped, she was in danger of being snatched back because of the Fugitive Slave Act, and Dr. Flint didn’t stop trying to find her until he died.

I thought this book was interesting, although at times it had very religious overtones, applied to events that she thought would make her look bad. But, after all, part of her purpose was to educate people against slavery, and she didn’t want her audience to turn against her. Frankly, she does little to deserve that (mostly, she feels she sinned by sleeping with Mr. Sands), but I can see why in that time she would worry about it.

For some reason, although I had sympathy for Linda’s really horrible troubles, I didn’t get as involved with this book as I might have expected. I’m not sure why.

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Review 2513: Classics Club Spin Result! Hero and Leander: Not!

~ whatmeread ~ 15 Comments

I made a mistake when I put Hero and Leander on my Classics Club list. I wanted to add a play by Marlowe, and I picked it out from a list of his works without realizing it was a long poem. Why I didn’t pick one of his plays from a volume of four that I already had, I don’t know. What I know is that long poems and I don’t get along, especially ones laden with classical illusions.

But I tried. Leander, a beautiful virginal youth, sees Hero, a nymph who has vowed to Venus to keep her virginity. They fall in love. He woos her but she is reluctant. She finally gives in. He leaves but decides to marry her.

The poem is divided into six “sestiads.” I got about halfway through the fourth one—about halfway through the poem—when I realized I had stopped knowing what was going on. I tried several times but Marlowe just seemed to be babbling on about various deities. I finally stopped.

Reading this made me remember a college paper I wrote about whether Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare. The assumption made by people who thought he didn’t was the classist idea that he wasn’t educated enough to have such a vocabulary, but this idea reflected a lack of knowledge of Elizabethan society. He was the son of the mayor of Stratford, which didn’t put him in the first ranks of society but made his family provincial but important. True, he had no university education, but he was clearly an autodidact who was fascinated with words. And he was educated enough to be a tutor when young to a prominent family. There are contemporary references to him, and he suffered some flak for not having been at Eton or Oxford.

But just reading the various contenders’ work (of which Marlowe was one despite having died well before the end of Shakespeare’s career) told me that there was no resemblance between his style and others’. His was much more sophisticated and flowing. It’s that iambic pentameter and that word play. And all I have to say is, Roland Emmerich may know a lot about film, but he knows nothing about literature.

My apologies if I made any mistakes. This is all from my memory.

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Review 2491: The Book of Lamentations

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

When I put this novel on my Classics Club list, I was looking for a few classics written originally in a foreign language. So, I chose this novel without knowing much about it.

It is set in Chiapas, a remote state in the far south of Mexico. At first, you might think it is set in the 19th century, but it is actually set in the 1930s, at a time when Mexico began to exact reforms that would return portions of the wealthy ranches to the native population.

One of the first images that indicates the treatment of the native population is that of travelers sitting in chairs that are strapped to Indians, who carry the people through the mountains. (I’m using the term “Indian” because the book does.) The Introduction says that Castellanos experienced this as a child.

I was confused at first, because the novel starts out with one group of people only to switch to another and another before bringing their stories together.

Although other characters are introduced first, the action starts with Marcela, a young native girl, traveling into the city of Cuidad Real to sell pots. She is told by a Ladina woman to bring the pots to her house. What she doesn’t know is that Doña Mercedes is a procuratress, and Mercela ends up being raped by Don Leonardo Cifuentes, who likes them young.

Returning home, she is rebuffed by her parents until she is taken under the wing of Catalina Díaz Puilgir, an ilol (sort of a sorceress) and her husband Pedro González Winiktón. She is made to marry Catalina’s brother Lorenzo, a man of limited intellect, and eventually has a child. And that’s all we see of her until much later.

Suddenly we switch to Cuidad Real and the lives of the Ladino characters. Leonardo Cifuentes, a wealthy rancher, is married to Isabel and probably murdered her first husband. Her daughter, Idolina, has taken to her bed since her father’s death. Leonardo has been courting a newcomer to town, Julia Acevedo, the supposed wife of Fernando Ulloa, the engineer who has been sent by the government to survey the ranches in preparation for the land reforms.

So far, Julia has avoided Cifuentes’s advances and made friends with his daughter. Her attempts, however, to be accepted by the rest of the Ladinas in the upper classes are unsuccessful. Instead of staying properly at home, she walks around town with her red hair flowing, earning her the nickname “La Alazana.”

The real issue in the novel is the land reform, which the ranchers oppose. However, an excuse for violent action comes when Catalina finds a cave with ancient stone figures in it. She gains a large following among the Indians by falling into trances in the cave and making utterances. The ranchers use the excuse of the large gatherings to claim that the Indians are planning a revolt. And violence eventually follows.

The novel is acerbically written, with no totally likable characters but with sympathy for the Mayan outcasts, who don’t really understand what is going on most of the time. They don’t understand the language or the mode of thought of the Ladinos, and when questioned later by authorities, since they don’t understand the questions, they just answer yes or no at random.

This novel was difficult to read. It wasn’t just the subject matter but more how the novel would jump to a new set of characters and tell a lot about them only to have them vanish for many pages. I may have also had problems because I was on vacation and then sick while trying to read it. But I was determined to finish it, and did. Although the novel is sympathetic to the native peoples of the area, to the modern eye it is also patronizing.

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Another Classics Club Spin! #39

~ whatmeread ~ 13 Comments

It seems like we just had a Classics Club Spin, and now it’s time for another one. How does it work? If you have posted a Classics Club list, select 20 books from it and post a numbered list of those books before Sunday, October 20. On that day, the club will announce a number, which determines which book from the list you will read first. The challenge is to read that book by December 18.

So, here is my list:

  1. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  2. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
  3. Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe
  4. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  5. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  6. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  7. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  8. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  9. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  10. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  11. The Book of Lamentations by Rosario Castellanos
  12. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford
  13. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  14. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  15. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
  16. Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe
  17. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  18. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  19. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  20. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I only have 13 books left on my list, so I had to repeat some. I am really slammed for November, what with Novellas in November and Nonfiction November, so I am hoping for one of the shorter books on the list. Wish me luck!

Classics Club Spin #38

~ whatmeread ~ 13 Comments

It’s time to participate in another Classics Club spin. If you want to participate, post a numbered list of 20 books from your Classics Club list by Sunday, July 21. On that date, the club will announce a number, which determines which book you read for the spin. Then you try to read the book and post a review by September 22.

So, here’s my list for the spin:

  1. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  2. Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe
  3. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
  4. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  5. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini
  6. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  7. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  8. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  9. Merkland, A Story of Scottish Life by Margaret Oliphant
  10. The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  11. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
  12. Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford 
  13. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  14. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
  15. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  16. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  17. Merkland, A Story of Scottish Life by Margaret Oliphant
  18. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  19. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  20. The Tavern Knight by Rafael Sabatini