Friday, March 4, 2016

Spin Me Right Round, Baby

Every so often the Classics Club does a 'spin' challenge, in which players post a list of twenty books from their classics-to-be-read pile, number it, and wait. After we've had a few days to post the list, the folks at the Classics Club blog issue a number. Whatever number they draw, that's the book to be read next.   So, here's twenty items from my list, and I await Monday with anticipation!


  1. The Aenid, Virgil
  2. The Histories, Herodotus
  3. The Conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar
  4. One Thousand and One Nights, trans. Husain Haddawy
  5. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
  6. Inferno, Dante
  7. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
  8. The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
  9. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
  10. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
  11. The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams
  12. Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain 
  13. Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington
  14. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
  15. O Pioneers!  Willa Cather
  16. White Fang, Jack London
  17. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
  18. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
  19. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
  20. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy

8 comments:

  1. Read 2: 7 & 16. Got 5: 2, 3, 10, 17 & 19.

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  2. Egads! You are ambitious! I will sit back and watch (with envy) as you read and discuss the titles on your list. If I weren't so damned old -- knock, knock, knocking at Heaven's door -- I'd sign on to a similar challenge; however, the rule against buying green bananas is a metaphor for not joining reading challenges.

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  3. @CyberKitten: I imagine Moby consitutes a TBR pile all by itself!

    @R.T. Hopefully not too much so -- I'll wince if the spin gives me a Thousand and One Nights or Moby Dick, but it's only a 1 in 10 shot for either of those.

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    1. My copy of Moby Dick (conveniently located as it has been ready to be added to my TBR database for over 6 months sitting right next to me) is a mere 583 pages. Last weekend I finished a 688 page history of Prussia and yesterday polished off a 466 page history of mankind. Moby Dick is probably a 2 week read - tops.

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  4. Are you taking it on this year?

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  5. I know it's only March (already!) but I think I've pretty much got my fiction reading planned for the rest of the year... in a moment of weakness I started piling books into sections and there it was - a years worth. So Moby Dick will be 2017 at the earliest. I am, however, planning a series of 10 books made into movies later (say around the summer) and am playing with the idea of reading a few non-fiction that have also made it to the silver screen including 'Bridge of Spies' and 'In the Heart of the Sea' which were two of my favourite films for quite some time. So I'll kind of be reading Moby Dick - almost!

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  6. My moods change too swiftly for that much planning! I'm pretty sure I'll read Moby this year, though. If I want to go forward in American lit at all, but follow a roughly chronological pattern, it's unavoidable.

    Have you seen the Patrick Stewart version of Moby-Dick?

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    Replies
    1. Well, that wasn't my original intention. I was just stacking books and all of a sudden there it was! I am trying to be more structured though. But I do need room to be creative, so although I know my next two non-fiction (one I started yesterday) and probably know the two after that... I'm not sure about the two after that... [grin]. Keeps things a bit more... open.

      Think I saw the Patrick Stewart MD ages ago.... probably. Seen several versions over the years. It's an iconic story after all.

      Oh, and a rather significant book (by H G Wells no less) dropped onto my mat a few days ago. Until very recently I had no idea of its existence. Don't you love it when that happens?

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