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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:

1	The Well Dressed Explorer (Australian)	Thea Astley	1962
2	Lorna Doone	RD Blackmore	1869
3	The Promise	Pearl S Buck	1944
4	The Story of the Stone V2 – The Crab-Flower Club	Cao Xueqin	1791
5	The Leopard	Tomasi Di Lampedusa	1958
6	Barnaby Rudge	Charles Dickens	1841
7	The Three Musketeers	Alexandre Dumas	1844
8	Mountain Madness	Winifred Fortescue	1943
9	My Apprenticeship	Maxim Gorky	1916
10	I, Claudius	Robert Graves	1934
11	The Art of Seeing	Aldous Huxley	1943
12	The Portrait of a Lady	Henry James	1881
13	The Pea-Pickers (Australian)	Eve Langley	1942
14	Seven Pillars of Wisdom	TE Lawrence	1922
15	Intimate Strangers (Australian)	Katharine Susannah Prichard	1937
16	Old Mortality	Walter Scott	1816
17	The Honey Flow (Australian)	Kylie Tennant	1956
18	Childhood, Boyhood, Youth	Leo Tolstoy	1852
19	The Warden	Anthony Trollope	1855
20	Piccadilly Jim	PG Wodehouse	1916

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…

1	Blackmore, RD	Lorna Doone
2	Cao, Xueqin	The Story of the Stone V2 – The Crab-Flower Club
3	Di Lampedusa, Tomasi	The Leopard
4	Dickens, Charles	Barnaby Rudge
5	Dumas, Alexandre	The Three Musketeers
6	Eliot, George	Adam Bede
7	Fortescue, Winifred	Mountain Madness
8	Gorky, Maxim	My Apprenticeship
9	Graves, Robert	I, Claudius
10	Harrower, Elizabeth	The Watchtower (Australian)
11	Huxley, Aldous	The Art of Seeing
12	James, Henry	The Portrait of a Lady
13	Langley, Eve	The Pea-Pickers (Australian)
14	Lawrence, TE	Seven Pillars of Wisdom
15	Prichard, Katharine Susannah	Intimate Strangers (Australian)
16	Scott, Walter	Old Mortality
17	Tennant, Kylie	The Honey Flow (Australian)
18	Trollope, Anthony	The Warden
19	Trollope, Anthony	Miss Mackenzie
20	Wodehouse, PG	Piccadilly Jim

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:

1	Blackmore, RD	Lorna Doone
2	Bronte, Anne	The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
3	Burns, Robert	The Poetical Works of Robert Burns
4	Cao, Xueqin	The Story of the Stone V2 – The Crab-Flower Club
5	Di Lampedusa, Tomasi	The Leopard
6	Dickens, Charles	Barnaby Rudge
7	Dumas, Alexandre	The Three Musketeers
8	Eliot, George	Adam Bede
9	Fortescue, Winifred	Mountain Madness
10	Gorky, Maxim	My Apprenticeship
11	Harrower, Elizabeth	The Watchtower
12	Huxley, Aldous	The Art of Seeing
13	Langley, Eve	The Pea-Pickers
14	Lawrence, TE	Seven Pillars of Wisdom
15	Prichard, Katharine Susannah	Intimate Strangers
16	Scott, Walter	Old Mortality
17	Tennant, Kylie	The Honey Flow
18	Trollope, Anthony	The Warden
19	Trollope, Anthony	Miss Mackenzie
20	Wyss, Johann David	The Swiss Family Robinson

(#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:

1	Blackmore, RD	Lorna Doone
2	Bronte, Anne	The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
3	Burns, Robert	The Poetical Works of Robert Burns
4	Cao, Xueqin	The Story of the Stone V2 – The Crab-Flower Club
5	Cooper, Fenimore	The Last of the Mohicans
6	Di Lampedusa, Tomasi	The Leopard
7	Dickens, Charles	Barnaby Rudge
8	Dumas, Alexandre	The Three Musketeers
9	Eliot, George	Adam Bede
10	Fortescue, Winifred	Mountain Madness
11	Gaskell, Elizabeth	North and South
12	Graves, Robert	I, Claudius
13	Harrower, Elizabeth	The Watchtower
14	Langley, Eve	The Pea-Pickers
15	Lawrence, TE	Seven Pillars of Wisdom
16	Prichard, Katharine Susannah	Intimate Strangers
17	Prichard, Katharine Susannah	Coonardoo
18	Trollope, Anthony	The Warden
19	Trollope, Anthony	Miss Mackenzie
20	Wyss, Johann David	The Swiss Family Robinson

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.

This will be my 8th Classics Club Spin, and I have been successful with all except the very first. It is a great way to motivate yourself to read some of those classics that have sat on the shelf for far too long.

The idea is to list 20 classics still on the TBR, and then wait – on On Sunday 17th, October, a number from 1 through 20 will be posted, and the challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by the 12th December, 2021. That’s an eight week reading window for this spin. A couple of times I have had to read the very longest book on my list (War & Peace and Tom Jones), so I am leaving the really long ones off this list as I know I will be very busy over the lead-up to the end of the year. Here is my list…

1	Anonymous	Beowulf
2	Blackmore, RD	Lorna Doone
3	Buchan, John	The Thirty-Nine Steps
4	Burns, Robert	The Poetical Works of Robert Burns
5	Di Lampedusa, Tomasi	The Leopard
6	Dickens, Charles	Barnaby Rudge
7	Dumas, Alexandre	The Three Musketeers
8	Eliot, George	Adam Bede
9	Forster, EM	A Passage to India
10	Gaskell, Elizabeth	North and South
11	Graves, Robert	I, Claudius
12	Hardy, Thomas	The Trumpet-Major
13	Harrower, Elizabeth	The Watchtower
14	Hugo, Victor	Notre-Dame of Paris
15	Maugham, W Somerset	Of Human Bondage
16	Stark, Freya	Alexander’s Path
17	Sun Tzu	The Art of War
18	Trollope, Anthony	The Warden
19	Trollope, Anthony	Miss Mackenzie
20	Wyss, Johann David	The Swiss Family Robinson

by Daniel Defoe

This was the book I was challenged to read as a result of the Classics Club Spin #27. I was slightly nervous about it as there are so many bad reviews on Goodreads, and several ‘ho-hum’ reviews in the Classics Club archives. Some complaints are about the archaic language, but as I read lots of classics I quite enjoyed this aspect, and it was originally published in 1719 after all – more than 300 years ago! Though quite slow to start, I did enjoy the book overall. Once Robinson is shipwrecked on the island (which takes quite a while to happen), it is absorbing to read of his inventive and dogged attempts to make a safe home and devise sustainable sources of food, which followed very quickly from his initial despair and hopelessness. I was surprised at the many, many years he stayed alone on the island, and I felt that his paranoia about the possibility of encountering other people was interesting, as most stories about shipwrecked people show them as desperate to attract attention. It was many years before he saw anyone at all, and I did enjoy the section after he first sees a footprint, leading him to further anxiety and manic building of further defences. Once Man Friday becomes part of his life, things move fairly quickly and he moves from being terrified and defensive, to becoming a strong and confident leader. One of the best aspects of the book is Defoe’s ability to demonstrate Crusoe’s character, though this book really only has one character – all the others are very incidental and not really developed at all. As many have mentioned, the end is rather an anticlimax, but overall I enjoyed the book and am glad to have read it.