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So here we go again. It took forever for me to finish my last Spin book, but I managed to do it before this one came up, so I’m calling that a win! I was tempted to put some rereads into my list this time, but actually have too many still unread so let’s see what happens. The spin will happen this Sunday and the book needs to be read by 4 October, so I’m looking forward to it! My list…

1	Cautionary Tales	Hilaire Belloc	1939
2	The Naked Island	Russell Braddon	1953
3	Shirley	Charlotte Bronte	1849
4	The Story of the Stone V4 – The Debt of Tears	Cao Xueqin & Gao E	1791
5	Cards on the Table	Agatha Christie	1936
6	Christmas Stories	Charles Dickens	1890
7	Martin Chuzzlewit	Charles Dickens	1844
8	Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge	Alexandre Dumas	1845
9	Mary Barton	Elizabeth Gaskell	1848
10	A Woman in China	Mary Gaunt	1914
11	My Apprenticeship	Maxim Gorky	1916
12	Washington Square	Henry James	1880
13	Hereward the Wake	Charles Kingsley	1865
14	Palace of Desire	Naguib Mahfouz	1957
15	A Breeze of Morning	Charles Morgan	1951
16	Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals	Robert Falcon Scott	1913
17	Rob Roy	Walter Scott	1817
18	The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories	Leo Tolstoy	1886
19	Barchester Towers	Anthony Trollope	1857
20	The Mysterious Stranger	Mark Twain	1916

by Robert Graves

This was my pick for the Classics Club Spin #44. I had been meaning to get to it since reading I, Claudius 3 years ago, so had to look up a summary of the events of that book to remind myself of the various characters and their relationships to one another as I always get very confused about this – the names all seem familiar but they swirl around in my brain. I knew there had been a BBC series so tried to get hold of this in order to give myself a visual of the characters, but could only find an expensive option so carried on without it. I also thought about an audiobook, but discovered that the one available to me was an abridged version of the book, so I abandoned that idea as well.

I did enjoy this book, but it took me a long time to read as some of it was quite tedious, especially the sections about the different rulers of the various countries and provinces. The part dealing with the conquest of Britain was much more interesting, I guess because I could relate more easily to that geography and history.

The personal life of Claudius was quite fascinating and I was motivated to read more about his history because he is very self-deprecating in this story, but actually achieved a remarkable amount in terms of government and administrative reforms as well as expansion of the Empire, despite the machinations and betrayals of so many of his trusted staff and friends, including his adored wife. The vast numbers of executions and forced suicides during that period in history amazed and appalled me – I would not have liked to be part of that society!

Having completed two sets of 50 classics since starting in August 2019, I have created a new list of 50 titles, almost all in my physical TBR. My lists tend to change frequently as I pick books up from free street libraries and charity shops, and I am also wanting to reread some that I have not read for decades.

Here is my new list, as at June 2026.

	Author	Title	Published
1	Belloc, Hilaire	Cautionary Tales	1939
2	Bronte, Charlotte	The Professor	1857
3	Bronte, Charlotte	Shirley	1849
4	Cao, Xueqin & Gao E	The Story of the Stone V4 – The Debt of Tears	1791
5	Cao, Xueqin & Gao E	The Story of the Stone V5 – The Dreamer Wakes	1791
6	Cervantes	Don Quixote	1605
7	Chandler Warner, Gertrude	The Box-Car Children	1924
8	Checkhov, Anton	Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories	1899
9	Christie, Agatha	Cards on the Table	1936
10	Dickens, Charles	Martin Chuzzlewit	1844
11	Dickens, Charles (some collaborations)	Stories and Sketches	1830-55
12	Dickens, Charles (some collaborations)	Christmas Stories	1850-67
13	Dumas, Alexandre	The Count of Monte Cristo	1844
14	Dumas, Alexandre	Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge	1845
15	Durrell, Gerald	Rosy is My Relative 1968	1968
16	Durrell, Gerald	Birds, Beasts and Relatives (Corfu #2) 1969	1969
17	Durrell, Gerald	Fillets of Plaice 1971	1971
18	Durrell, Gerald	The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium	1973
19	Fitzgerald, F Scott	The Great Gatsby	1925
20	Gaskell, Elizabeth	Mary Barton	1848
21	Gaskell, Elizabeth	Wives and Daughters	1866
22	Gaunt, Mary	A Woman in China	1914
23	Gorky, Maxim	My Apprenticeship	1916
24	Graves, Robert	Claudius the God	1934
25	Harrower, Elizabeth	The Catherine Wheel	1960
26	Hugo, Victor	Les Miserables	1862
27	Huxley, Aldous	The Art of Seeing	1943
28	James, Henry	The Portrait of a Lady	1881
29	James, Henry	Washington Square	1880
30	Joyce, James	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	1916
31	Kingsley, Charles	Hereward the Wake	1865
32	Kingsley, Charles	Hypatia	1853
33	Mahfouz, Naguib	Palace of Desire	1957
34	Mahfouz, Naguib	Sugar Street	1957
35	Morgan, Charles	A Breeze of Morning	1951
36	Paterson, Andrew Barton	An Outback Marriage	1906
37	Scott, Robert Falcon	Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals	1913
38	Scott, Walter	Old Mortality	1816
39	Scott, Walter	Rob Roy	1817
40	Scott, Walter	Ivanhoe	1819
41	Stoker, Bram	Dracula	1897
42	Stone, Irving	Immortal Wife	1944
43	Tolstoy, Leo	The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories	1912
44	Trollope, Anthony	Barchester Towers (#2 Barsetshire Chronicles)	1857
45	Trollope, Anthony	The Way We Live Now	1875
46	Trollope, Anthony	The Small House at Allington (#5 Barsetshire Chronicles)	1864
47	Truth, Sojourner	The Narrative of Sojourner Truth	1850
48	Twain, Mark	The Mysterious Stranger	1916
49	Wells, HG	Tono Bungay	1910
50	Wharton, Edith	The Age of Innocence	1920
	Woolf, Virginia	A Room of One’s Own	1929
	Lin Yutang	My Country and My People	1936

I’m travelling, so it’s tricky to be doing this, but I’m determined to continue my run of successful Spin Challenges! All of the books but one on my list are on my physical bookshelf at home, so I won’t be able to start reading my selected book until mid-June. Here’s hoping for a shortish one!

My list for this Spin is:

1	Cautionary Tales	Hilaire Belloc	1939
2	Shirley	Charlotte Bronte	1849
3	The Story of the Stone V4 – The Debt of Tears	Cao Xueqin & Gao E	1791
4	Klee Wyck	Emily Carr	1941
5	Martin Chuzzlewit	Charles Dickens	1844
6	Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge	Alexandre Dumas	1845
7	Mary Barton	Elizabeth Gaskell	1848
8	My Apprenticeship	Maxim Gorky	1916
9	Claudius the God	Robert Graves	1934
10	Washington Square	Henry James	1880
11	Hereward the Wake	Charles Kingsley	1865
12	Palace of Desire	Naguib Mahfouz	1957
13	A Breeze of Morning	Charles Morgan	1951
14	Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals	Robert Falcon Scott	1913
15	Rob Roy	Walter Scott	1817
16	The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories	Leo Tolstoy	1886
17	Barchester Towers	Anthony Trollope	1857
18	The Mysterious Stranger	Mark Twain	1916
19	The Age of Innocence	Edith Wharton	1920
20	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde	1891

by Anne Bronte

This was my pick for Classics Club Spin #43, and I enjoyed it very much. I have really enjoyed both books by Anne Bronte – both have seemed to me to be very relatable to modern day issues. The way Agnes, employed as a governess, was treated by the spoiled and very badly behaved children of the two families she worked for, and also by their arrogant and unfeeling parents, was quite horrifying. Agnes didn’t feel she could complain because she wanted to prove her independence and also needed to support her own family. Neither of her employers gave her credit for her education or intelligence, but were happy to blame her for the bad behaviour and lack of educational progress of their offspring.

This book is apparently quite autobiographical – what an awful state of affairs when this was one of the very few occupations open to educated single women at that time. The book is very easy to read and really enjoyable. The ending was very predictable but satisfying – the protagonist ended with a much happier outcome than Anne Bronte did.

I have now read 45 books from my second set of classics – I generally only blog the ones that come up for the Spin, because writing takes too much time from reading! I also keep adding to my lists because I keep finding excellent classics in street libraries and charity shops.

by William Makepeace Thackeray

This book was my pick for Classics Club Spin #42 – an 844 page novel in two volumes. It has sat unread in my bookcase for many years since gifted to me by a great-aunt who was thrilled to discover that I enjoyed classics! I loved reading Vanity Fair at school and have always thought of Thackeray as one of my favourites, but somehow this version, with very thin pages and tiny print, put me off, even when I still had very good eyesight! Anyway, it was a slog, but I persevered. The novel was originally published in serial form, but the first volume was extremely slow-moving, and the characters hard to get to grips with because there are so many. Luckily I read a few other reviews once I was half-way through the book and feeling somewhat despairing, and one in particular commented on how hard it was to get through volume 1, but that volume 2 was a treat! I agree with that reviewer! Only very few of the characters were likable, and a major theme of the book is the problem of marrying for money/progress/anything other than love, so it often felt frustrating. Thackeray seems to have had very good insight into people’s behaviours and the ways they managed (or didn’t manage) social expectations. He also had a great sense of humour and wonderful way with words.

This book is not recommended as a first foray into Thackeray – Vanity Fair is definitely a much more engaging read – but otherwise this one is well worth reading.

Oh dear, it seems I forgot to blog my last spin book, which I did read but took a looooong time because it was a very long book! However, I am still keen to continue my unbroken run of Spin classics, so here is my list for this time:

1	Cautionary Tales	Hilaire Belloc	1939
2	Agnes Grey	Anne Bronte	1847
3	Shirley	Charlotte Bronte	1849
4	The Story of the Stone V4 – The Debt of Tears	Cao Xueqin & Gao E	1791
5	The Big Sleep	Raymond Chandler	1939
6	Christmas Stories	Charles Dickens	1890
7	Martin Chuzzlewit	Charles Dickens	1844
8	Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge	Alexandre Dumas	1845
9	Careful, He Might Hear You (Aussie)	Sumner Locke Elliott	1963
10	Mary Barton	Elizabeth Gaskell	1848
11	My Apprenticeship	Maxim Gorky	1916
12	Claudius the God	Robert Graves	1934
13	Washington Square	Henry James	1880
14	Hereward the Wake	Charles Kingsley	1865
15	Palace of Desire	Naguib Mahfouz	1957
16	A Breeze of Morning	Charles Morgan	1951
17	Rob Roy	Walter Scott	1817
18	Barchester Towers	Anthony Trollope	1857
19	The Age of Innocence	Edith Wharton	1920
20	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde	1891

These books range in length from 160 pages to 808, so I’m hoping for a shorter one this time – fingers crossed!

Here we go again! On Sunday 19th October a number will be posted from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by the 21st December, 2025. Here is my list, some of which are fairly new to my list, and others have been languishing unread on my shelves for years, which is why I love this challenge!

1	Persuasion	Jane Austen	1817
2	Cautionary Tales	Hilaire Belloc	1939
3	Shirley	Charlotte Bronte	1849
4	The Story of the Stone V4 – The Debt of Tears	Cao Xueqin & Gao E	1791
5	Christmas Stories	Charles Dickens	1890
6	Martin Chuzzlewit	Charles Dickens	1844
7	Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge	Alexandre Dumas	1845
8	Careful, He Might Hear You (Aussie)	Sumner Locke Elliott	1963
9	Mary Barton	Elizabeth Gaskell	1848
10	My Apprenticeship	Maxim Gorky	1916
11	Claudius the God	Robert Graves	1934
12	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Ken Kesey	1962
13	Hereward the Wake	Charles Kingsley	1865
14	Palace of Desire	Naguib Mahfouz	1957
15	A Breeze of Morning	Charles Morgan	1951
16	Rob Roy	Walter Scott	1817
17	The Newcomes	William Makepeace Thackeray	1855
18	Barchester Towers	Anthony Trollope	1857
19	The Age of Innocence	Edith Wharton	1920
20	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde	1891

by H Rider Haggard

This was a book I picked up at a local street library, and it was the one selected for me in the Classics Club Spin #41.

This book was first published in 1885, and it shows! I had heard of Rider Haggard and knew he wrote rip-roaring adventure books, but had never read any. I did persevere with this through to the end despite many winces and shakings of the head, mainly because it was my pick for the Classics Club Spin. Actually it’s one of the things I love about reading classics – they provide such a window into life and attitudes of the time they were written. This book is an adventure narrated by one of the British protagonists, whose money is made by big game hunting, and much of the adventure involves hunting of big game in Africa, lots of description of African tribal wars/torture/indiscriminate murder, and fundamental racism. I had to look up several words, including ‘quogga’ which turns out to be an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra that was endemic to southern Africa until it was hunted to extinction in the late 19th century. There are descriptions of huge piles of elephant tusks, and the shooting and eating of a giraffe – at that time there was clearly no thought given to the possible extinction of any of these species. There is some reference to the negative effects of white man’s desire for money and riches from ivory, diamonds and gold as opposed to the tribal African’s lack of interest in those things, but the stereotypes of the British adventurers, the superstitious natives, the warring tribal kings (one evil, one noble), and the beautiful young native women, were pretty sickening. The travels through the desert and mountains where the adventurers were on the point of death several times were well described, though there were far too many improbable coincidences. Luckily for them there was a full lunar eclipse at exactly the time they needed to convince the evil king of their magical powers by “turning off” the moon!

I can see why young boys found these stories exciting more than 100 years ago, but I won’t be giving them to my grandchildren to read, and I certainly won’t be reading any more myself!

In the last spin I read The Leopard by Tomasi Di Lampedusa – a classic that is often on “best books” lists, but I had tried and failed to get into it previously. This time I persevered and really enjoyed it. I learned lots about the social and historical events of that time (Sicily in the 1860s) and found parts of it very funny – unfortunately I forgot to blog about it though!

So, here is my list of 20 books for the current spin. My list of classic books is constantly being added to as I find books from street libraries and charity shops. This Sunday a number will be drawn and I will read the book corresponding to that number.

1	Emma	Jane Austen	1815
2	Cautionary Tales	Hilaire Belloc	1939
3	Shirley	Charlotte Bronte	1849
4	The Story of the Stone V4 – The Debt of Tears	Cao Xueqin & Gao E	1791
5	Stories and Sketches	Charles Dickens	1910
6	Barnaby Rudge	Charles Dickens	1841
7	Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge	Alexandre Dumas	1845
8	Mary Barton	Elizabeth Gaskell	1848
9	My Apprenticeship	Maxim Gorky	1916
10	Claudius the God	Robert Graves	1934
11	King Solomon’s Mines	H Rider Haggard	1885
12	Hereward the Wake	Charles Kingsley	1865
13	Palace of Desire	Naguib Mahfouz	1957
14	A Breeze of Morning	Charles Morgan	1951
15	Rob Roy	Walter Scott	1817
16	Barchester Towers	Anthony Trollope	1857
17	The Maker of Heavenly Trousers	Daniele Vare	1935
18	The Enchanted April	Elizabeth Von Arnim	1922
19	The Age of Innocence	Edith Wharton	1920
20	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde	1891