Classics Club Spin and a New Project

Saturday, May 10, 2014

First of all, it's time for another Classics Club Spin! I love this challenge because it gets me reading a book that I want to read and also does it in a short enough period of time that I feel the drive to start early and get finished. The pick for the Classics Club spin will be drawn on Monday, May 12, and the book will need to be finished by July 7.

The admins challenge you to put 5 books you're dreading, 5 books you're excited about and so on, but I just go through my list and keep it consistent with the list I had before, adding new books into the gaps where the old ones fell. Here is my list for this go-round:

1. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
2. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
3. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
4. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
5. A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy
6. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
7. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
8. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
9. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
10. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
11. Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
12. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
13. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
14. Summer by Edith Wharton
15. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
16. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
17. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
18. Silas Marner by George Eliot
19. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
20. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth van Arnim

I am also really excited about a new project that sprang into my mind. I have always loved Madeleine L'Engle. I loved her science fiction that I read as a child, and even more than that I loved discovering her adult fiction. Lately I've been hankering to read her memoirs. I've always loved her interwoven ideas on science and religion, as well as the musical characters she frequently writes. She basically combines every subject I'm interested in -- science, religion, music, and of course, reading and writing. I've decided that I'm actually going to just make a project of it and read her complete works, including a reread of those pieces I've already read. I haven't decided exactly how I will go through everything -- I'm thinking of reading the different series together with smatterings of the standalones in between. My goal is to finish reading them all by September 6, 2017 -- ten years after her death. You can find my list and my progress on the tab above. 

3 comments:

  1. You've got some great titles here :) The Steinbeck AMAZING, I loved that one. Same with Handmaid's Tale and Mill on the Floss.

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  2. Wonderful project idea! 10 years ago I had to do a biography presentation and I chose to do Madeleine L'Engle. I did not by any means everything on your list (especially the poetry and nonfiction) but quite a lot of it. If you haven't yet read the Crosswicks journals, you are in for a treat.

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  3. I so hope you get to read The Handmaid's Tale. It is one of my all time favorites. Love your Madeleine L'Engle idea! Good luck with it :)

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