Classics Club Spin #11!

By -
Hooray, it's time for another Spin!  If you don't know about the Classic Spin, you can find all the information at the link.


I am starting to run pretty low on titles!  This is good news, but it does mean that there are really gigantic books on my list that I cannot realistically expect to finish by February 1.  However, here we go, sometimes with comments:
  1. William Faulkner,  Light in August. (what was I thinking, putting Faulkner on my CC list?)
  2. Pensees, Pascal
  3. Mario Benedetti, The Truce  
  4. On the Origin of Species, Darwin 
  5. Unknown, Japan, 630. The Kojiki
  6. Thomas Mann, Germany, 1924. The Magic Mountain.
  7. Mario Vargas Llosa, The War at the End of the World.
  8. “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder.  (I have never read or seen this play!)
  9. Cesar Vallejo, Los Heraldos Negros.
  10. Murasaki Shikubu, Japan, ca. 990.The Tale of Genji
  11. Picnic At Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay
  12. Rilke, Malte Laurids Brigge. 
  13. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  14. Cesar Vallejo, Poemas Humanos.
  15. Augusto Roa Bastos, I the Supreme or another work.
  16. The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams  (another classic American play I've never read)
  17. Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum
  18.  Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks
  19. Grimmelhausen, Simplicissimus (this is cheating a leetle bit because I started this title recently, but it's so scary I think I can get away with it)
  20. “Why We Can’t Wait,” Martin Luther King Jr.
 

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 4, 2015 at 6:11 AM

    I hope you get Picnic at Hanging Rock. I've wanted to read this since I saw someone group it with Shirley Jackson. I'm reading some Thornton Wilder plays at the moment, and I like what I've read so far. But The Magic Mountain was a book that was painful for me to read. The main character frustrated me to no end. If the Spin is #6, then I hope you like it much better than I did!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lois TinúvielDecember 4, 2015 at 7:04 AM

    I read my first Faulkner this year and I'm with you... what were you thinking putting Faulkner on your list? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. CleoDecember 4, 2015 at 9:08 AM

    I vote for Gregory of Tours! The Magic Mountain is looooong and Origin of Species would be painful. I've read the first and got halfway through the second before having to be awakened from my coma ..... ha, ha! ;-) Oh, and Pascal might be good, but deep. Well, all I can say is good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  4. KatrinaDecember 4, 2015 at 11:56 AM

    I haven't read anything on your list, but I have been meaning to get around to The Magic Mountain for years.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousDecember 4, 2015 at 12:33 PM

    Wow, this is a great list. What a variety!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousDecember 4, 2015 at 2:05 PM

    I also have a Faulkner on my master list, though it's not on my Spin List this time. Also procrastinating . . .
    I read several books by Faulkner in college and I think Light in August was the one I liked best, but that was ages ago, so that's not exactly a solid endorsement.

    ReplyDelete
  7. BronaDecember 4, 2015 at 4:07 PM

    Yes you do have some rather heavy books on that list....so I wish you Picnic at Hanging Rock - a slimmer Australian classic to warm you over the winter months (it's set in the height of a blazing Australian summer).

    Happy 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 source of 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 defeats or avoids th
Read more