Author: Sue

In August 2019 I signed up with the Classics Club to read 50 classic books of my choice within 5 years, and I achieved this in May 2023. I haven’t blogged about all the books because I find that writing about the books takes up too much time that could otherwise be spent reading, and I average three books per week, so I am just not prepared to spend the required amount of time blogging. I do usually blog about the books I read for the quarterly Classics Club Spin events as that is part of the challenge, but otherwise it’s pretty random! The 50 books I read for my “first 50” challenge, in order of reading, are as follows:

This was my pick for Classics Club Spin #33 – the 13th I have participated in. I had assumed this book was an autobiography, but it is actually a novel, written when Tolstoy was a young man. Despite this, it is written in the first person and is clearly closely based on his own life and upbringing. I found the book really interesting in terms of the lifestyle of wealthy families in 19th century Russia, often moving between homes in Moscow and country farms, and always involving lavish parties. Characteristic of Tolstoy and especially relevant and moving in this book are the many instances detailing the main character’s inner life. There is lots of description of feelings of guilt, grief and general confusion, and lack of understanding even of his own behaviour when in situations involving some sort of social, family, academic or religious pressure – all of which are easy to relate to as universal experiences.

I hadn’t read any Tolstoy until a few years ago when I finally read Anna Karenina, followed a couple of years later by War and Peace. He writes very descriptively and I have enjoyed everything I’ve read of his, so am keen to get into the short stories, still languishing on my TBR shelf.

Time for another spin. I am coming to the end of my first Classics Club challenge (read 50 classics within 5 years – only need 4 more to complete my first 50!), so am looking forward to this spin. I have chosen 20 books from my ever expanding list of owned but unread classics, and when the magic number is spun on Sunday 19 March, I will have until the end of April to read the relevant book. I have four of the following books already planned for reading for other challenges over the next few weeks, so am hoping for one of those!

Here is my list:

by George Eliot

This was my most recent Classics Club Spin pick. I always enjoy George Eliot – such a gifted writer and so skilled at providing character and setting. It’s now a couple of weeks since I finished it – I wanted to let it stew a while to see what aspects remained with me after reading several other books. Unusually for me, I still recall quite a lot. I have pictures in my head of several characters (though I have forgotten most of their names), and have a strong sense of the countryside and the general village life, including that of the farmers, the tradesmen, and the gentry, all of which I found quite fascinating. This is George Eliot’s genius I think. There are aspects of the book that I can see would be difficult for some readers – there is some discussion of politics and religious discord that were apparently happening at that time, and lots of dialogue spelled in a way to represent characters’ accents, which was somewhat tedious, but also interesting to me as a linguist and Speech Pathologist. The storyline is somewhat predictable, but the characters so well-drawn, with behaviours unbelievably shocking in our context, though representative of the times. Even so, all the characters can be recognised as types we would see today – the beautiful young airhead who attracts all the men but has little understanding of who would suit her, the naive but solid and caring tradesman who only sees the pretty girl and not her frivolous nature, the privileged playboy, the salt-of-the-earth farmers, etc, etc. It is good to be reminded of how far we have come socially – the lives of women in those times were especially powerless and this is made abundantly clear in this story.

A very worth-while read.

Here we go again with the latest dive into my classics TBR list. With some weeks of freedom coming up I’m not too worried about which book comes up in the spin, but knowing my luck it will be a short one just when I’ve got time for one of the doorstops! I only have a few books to go to complete my first Classics Club list of 50 books, and then I will be ready to move onto another 50. For the spin, the requirement is to list 20 books before Sunday, when a random number between 1 and 20 will be posted, and I then have until the end of January to read the book listed under that number. Easy!

The titles listed here are all physical books I have on my shelves at home, some of which I have picked up fairly recently at charity shops or swap shelves, and others that have been languishing here unread for years. It’s always a nice surprise to read and enjoy a classic I’ve been putting off for a long time…

by Anne Bronte

This was the book chosen for me by the most recent Classics Club Spin. I was not especially looking forward to it, but was very pleasantly surprised. I found it a very enjoyable read, and was particularly impressed by the heartfelt and devastating descriptions of dealing with a loved one suffering a self-destructive addiction. Having read much about the Brontes over the years, it was clear that Anne was writing about the experiences her family had dealing with their brother Branwell’s alcoholism. It felt like a very modern story to me, with the oafish male friendship group, and the one deciding to grow up and behave like an adult, and his subsequent bullying by the rest of the group. Anne clearly had very good insight into social pressures on both men and women of her time, and was also very angry about it!

The book is written as a series of letters and diary entries, a construction I didn’t really like, but overall I really enjoyed this book and wondered why Anne is not as well known as her sisters. I read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in my teens and at least twice more over the years, as well as Villette, but had never read anything by Anne until I picked this one up at a charity shop. It was a great pick.

There are plenty of excellent reviews of this book, which is why I don’t bother to do more than give a brief description of my impressions of it – look them up on the Classics Club page!

So, here we go again. I was unable to blog for the last spin (#30) because I was away and out of internet and/or phone range most of the time, but I did participate, and did finish my book, which was The Last of the Mohicans by J Fenimore Cooper. I had attempted this book previously but got bogged down and gave up, so this time was determined to finish it, and I did. It was very bloodthirsty but I did learn quite a lot, and am glad to have read it.

Anyway, on to this one. I have made my list of 20 books, and look forward to the spin happening on Sunday (tomorrow!), when I will find out which of my books I need to read by 30 October. Here is my list:

(#9 for me)

Gosh these spins seem to come around quickly, but I always enjoy them. Since the last spin I have read two more from my Classics Club list, but never seem to get around to blogging about them. Anyway, for this spin I have chosen 20 books from my list, and when the random number spin happens on Sunday 20 March (tomorrow), I find that number on my list and will need to read that book by April 30. There are some very long ones on this list, so I post it with some trepidation! Here is my list:

by Thomas Hardy

This was the book chosen for me to read for the Classics Club Spin #28, and I really enjoyed it. I read all the best-known Thomas Hardy books in my teens, and it is many years since I have reread any, so I was delighted to find this one at a charity shop, and to add it to my Classics Club list. I have managed to read quite a few from my list this year, and this book represents #32 of the 50 I have pledged to read before August 2024, so I am well on track!

The Trumpet-Major is one of several main characters in this novel, set during the Napoleonic period, when the locals of a small coastal village are worried about invasion. The story revolves around a young woman who is the love interest of 3 young men, only one of whom actually deserves her, but of course she falls for the charmer. One of the men is completely odious, but the girl’s mother prefers him because he is likely to come into money, whereas the other two (brothers) are poor miller’s sons. As always with classics, it is interesting (though depressing) to read about social behaviour that was apparently acceptable at that time – in this case stalking and assault that the man apparently thought would win him the love of a girl who was clearly unwilling.

The thing that I really enjoyed about this book was the humour – Hardy is such a clever writer and his descriptions of the characters and their behaviours were so relatable to people we might know today, despite the very different social climate, and I often found myself smiling. Hardy is not known for his humour – in fact I think of his books as generally depressing – so I am keen to reread some as I am sure I was not as aware of the quality of his writing when I read the books many years ago. This was a good find.