Classics Spin #9!

By -
Hooray, it's time for another Classics Spin!  Head on over and take a look at the rules.  The goal is to read the chosen title by May 15.  And...this time I decided to stuff my list with the giant scary chunksters.  Not all of them are giant and scary, but really quite a lot of them are. This does mean that there's a good chance I won't be able to finish my title by the deadline, but what is life without a little danger?
  1. Henry James, 1902, The Wings of the Dove.
  2.  Chaim Potok, 1972, My Name is Asher Lev.
  3. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made.  
  4. Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
  5. On the Origin of Species, Darwin (1859)
  6. Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth.  
  7. Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks
  8. Thomas Mann, Germany, 1924. The Magic Mountain.
  9. Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum
  10. Grimmelhausen, Simplicissimus
  11. Feodor Dostoevsky, Russia, Brothers Karamazov
  12. Junichio Tanizaki, Japan, 1943. The Makioka Sisters
  13. VS Naipul, Trinidad, 1979. A Bend in the River.  
  14. Mario Vargas Llosa, The Time of the Hero
  15. Ibn Khaldun, Tunis, 1375. Muqaddimah.
  16. Murasaki Shikubu, Japan, ca. 990.The Tale of Genji (abridged). 
  17. Thomas Mokopu Mofolo, Chaka
  18. Solzhenitsyn, 1974, The Gulag Archipelago. (abridged)
  19. Anthony Trollope, 1865, Can You Forgive Her?
  20. “Why We Can’t Wait,” Martin Luther King Jr.       
Some of these are also on my TBR 2015 list.  Some are just sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read, without an official TBR challenge status.  And with one or two, I'm not quite sure yet how I'll get them....

Roll those dice!
 

Comments

  1. CleoMarch 31, 2015 at 9:31 PM

    Well, this may be a record. There are only 4 books on your list that I don't recognize. ;-)

    Origin of Species ...... ugh! I was able to get through half of it and my eyes glazed over almost immediately. I do want to eventually read it complete but I think I'll have to take another tact; instead of reading it like a book, I'll have to break it into chunks and read it that way.

    I've read Asher Lev and LOVED it. But if I had to pick, I'd choose Can You Forgive Her? or Ruth. Ruth is one of my favourite Gaskells although I haven't read Wives and Daughter yet.

    Good luck with your spin!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 1, 2015 at 5:32 AM

    Nice list. Very ambitious!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lynn @ Smoke & MirrorsApril 1, 2015 at 9:29 AM

    Solzhenitsyn! You're the second person I've seen include one of his works. Read him and loved it all when I was a teenager. Hope you enjoy as much as I did then! (Should re-read to see how I feel 40+ years later!) You have included quite a few that are new to me--must check them out! Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 1, 2015 at 11:44 AM

    I've got The Gulag Archipelago on my (not-yet-published) list, too. I've never read Solzhenitsyn, but my daughter's studying the Russian Revolution, and I found myself re-intrigued by his story.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Karen K.April 1, 2015 at 9:07 PM

    Asher Lev is WONDERFUL. I also loved The Makioka Sisters -- long, but not a difficult read. It's a great story. Trollope is also wonderful, but then I am completely biased in his favor. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousApril 3, 2015 at 7:31 AM

    I must admit that I haven't read anything on your list so I cannot offer any words of wisdom. But I will say that I hope you enjoy the book you end up with! There are many books on here I'd love to read.

    ReplyDelete
  7. BronaApril 4, 2015 at 6:07 PM

    I know what you mean about chunksters & deadlines. I spun The Brothers K 2 spins ago & I'm still going.....although I also got stalled by the religious rant in the middle.

    Maybe if you get 11 in the spin it will help me to finish if I have someone to share it with :-/

    Good luck tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  8. amanda @ simplerpastimesApril 5, 2015 at 4:13 PM

    Your list is a bit intimidating! Hopefully the spin picks something manageable. The only book I've read on your list is My Name is Asher Love, which I loved. Good luck and happy reading!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anne@HeadFullofBooksApril 5, 2015 at 8:34 PM

    Your list is REALLY for a person not afraid of scarey sounding books. Good luck on the spin tomorrow. Anne's 20 Classics for spin

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more