Roof Beam Reader
Adam Burgess
The Classics Club Spin – Let’s Play!
I’m playing The Classics Club Spin!
Directions:
- Go to your blog.
- Pick twenty books that you have left to read from your Classics Club List.
- Try to challenge yourself: list five you are dreading/hesitant to read, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favorite author, rereads, ancients — whatever you choose.)
- Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog by next Monday.
- Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1-20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted, and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce.
- The challenge is to read that book by April 1, even if it’s an icky one you dread reading!
UPDATE: The Lucky# Chosen by Our Spin Was 14 – I ended up with Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (ehhh)
My Book Spin list for the Classics Club:
Five I Am Dreading:
1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
2. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe
3. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
5. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Five I Am Excited About:
6. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
7. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
8. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
9. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
10. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Five I’m Neutral About:
11. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
12. Beloved by Toni Morrison
13. Youth by J.M. Coetzee
14. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
15. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Five Free Choice: Revisiting an Author I’ve Enjoyed Before.
16. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
17. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
19. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
20. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Prize: A fun reading experience!
Roof Beam Reader 
Wow, first Cloud Atlas I’ve seen in the lists. I enjoyed this book beyond words, but you probably have reasons of your own to dread it 🙂 Also enjoyed Madame B very very much. Agree on Moll Flanders though.
I see your #10 is Brothers Karamazov. I have special interest in number 10s since I have War and Peace under there and I really hope and not hope at the same time that it gets picked 🙂
Good luck with the top hat draw 🙂
LikeLike
Boy, Adam, do I ever agree with your “dreading” list. Yikes! I tried all five and bailed on each of ’em, most recently, “Cloud Atlas”. Enjoy Wharton’s “House of Mirth”! It is one of my all-time faves. And how can one not enjoy a periodic reread of Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”? I hope a novel you’d like to read is your selection. Cheers! Chris
LikeLike
Don’t dread Moll Flanders–it’s a good read! And you should definitely move Beloved up the list, as it’s amazing. 🙂
LikeLike
The Mysteries of Udolpho is long but wonderful. The villains are dastardly, and the heroine is so sweet. And Moll Flanders has so many laugh-out-loud moments, it never gets old. Don’t dread these!
LikeLike
Agreed about Moll Flanders. I loved that book!
LikeLike
I read Moll Flanders years ago. I enjoyed it. I also have Rebecca on my list, but in a different spot. This is such fun. I can’t wait to see what everyone has to read. 🙂 Great list!
LikeLike
Tess of the D’Urbervilles is my no. 10 and I’m quite excited to read it mainly because of the nice reviews I’ve read about it. 🙂 Good luck.
LikeLike
Pingback: Classics Club Spin! « No Thanks, I'd Rather Read
Pingback: Classics Spin « Several, Four, Many
Madame B is the only one on your list I would truly dread – tried to read it a few years ago and hated it so much I stopped (there are not many books I give up on !) Good luck with the rest though 🙂
LikeLike
I have Pilgrim’s Progress on my list too, and I’m kind of dreading it but also kind of looking forward to it after rereading the first part of Little Women recently. Whichever number comes up, happy reading!
LikeLike
You have two of my all-time favorites on your list: Rebecca and House of Mirth. Very different, but so wonderful!! I hope you get one of them on the spin. I also loved The Blind Assassin. Madame Bovary is one of the classics that surprised me the most — I thought I’d hate it, but it was excellent. Emma Bovary is a fascinating train wreck.
LikeLike
You had such a great list! I hope you enjoy Rebecca! It was a book I wasn’t looking forward to (I didn’t think it was my cup of tea), but I was sucked in and really ended up loving it!
LikeLike
Good luck with Rebecca! Like you I’ve had it on my list for ages but was never paticularly motivated to actually read it.
And how come The Pilgrim’s Progress is on all our lists?! Really,I blame Little Women…
Anyway, I ended up with Catch-22, which is fine I guess..? It was one of my neutral choices and I know practically nothing about it. We’ll see 🙂
LikeLike
I tried Catch-22 when I was in high school (aaaaaaages ago), but I didn’t get very far. I’m sure I would do better if I read it now. And I do plan to read it sometime in the not too distant future. Next couple years, I hope!
I’ve actually never read Little Women (gasp!). I must blame my desire to read The Pilgrim’s Progress on Jane Austen and so many other early British writers who were influenced by it. And I blame my reluctance on having flipped through the first few pages and thought… UGH.
LikeLike
I am sorry you landed on Rebecca. Many people whose reading taste I respect love the book, but I hated it.
LikeLike
Oh, great – just enhance my dread!
LikeLike