Well, I have been rather slow lately – I did complete the last spin, but a couple of weeks after I was supposed to, and am still to write my review. The book assigned was the longest on my list: The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling – 877 pages long. It was an effort but I did enjoy it. Now to the next spin, which will be posted on Sunday 18 July, and the book selected will need to be read by August 22.
Classic Club spins are a great incentive to continue reading the classics, especially the ones that are rather long and/or intimidating. I made my first list of 50 books back in August 2019, with a commitment to read them all within 5 years, however I have kept adding to my list as I collect more and more classics from my charity shop habit. Here is my list of 20 books for this spin – whichever number comes up from the spin on Sunday will be the book I read.
This collection of stories with a rather off-putting cover was my chosen classic for Classic Club Spin #25. Ion L. Idriess was purportedly Australia’s most popular author at the time this book was published in 1934. My 6th edition (with the pictured cover) was published in 1944. He was certainly prolific, with more than 50 books published between 1927 and 1969. His travelling life was the basis of all of his books, and the back of the dust cover gives the following description: (He) “obtained honours in chemistry and a certificate in assaying at the Broken Hill School of Mines. He has worked in the Assay Office of the Broken Hill Pty Mine; has been an adventurer, seaman, station hand, drover, track finder, wharf labourer, opal miner, and has served in the Great War (Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine) with the 5th Australian Light Horse. Has wandered in Northern Queensland, Western Austalia, North Australia, the Gulf Country and the Centre, the Torres Strait islands, the Kimberleys, and Papua. Has cruised the Barrier Reef seeking trochus shell, and with a mate was abandoned for seven months on barren Howick Island. Has wandered with native tribes in Cape York Peninsula studying the people, prospecting for gold, tin, and wolfram, seeking sandalwood and collecting material for books.”
In his Author’s Note to this book, Idriess tells us that “The stories in this volume record happenings or incidents in men’s lives which interested me during years of wandering among the bushmen and natives of Cape York Peninsula; the pearlers, trochus and beche-de-mer getters of the Coral Sea; the native islanders of Torres Strait; the ‘beachcombers’ of the Great Barrier Reef; and along the Arafura Sea towards the west. With two exceptions, all are transcripts of fact or largely based on fact, unusual though an occasional one may seem”.
This is useful information, because most of the 28 stories read as fictional short stories and are hardly believable. They give a fascinating insight into life (and death) in remote places in tropical northern Australia around 100 years ago. Idriess is a great writer, using vivid description and humour to reflect an experience of the brutality, tragedy, hilarity and general adventurousness of life off the beaten track. The language/vocabulary used to describe indigenous people in Australia, the Torres Strait Islands and New Guinea would not be acceptable today, but it is clear that Idriess respected and enjoyed his interactions with these characters, so although reading these descriptions is very off-putting, they need to be considered as acceptable for that time.
Overall, this is a highly entertaining and fascinating collection of stories.
Time for the Spin again – last time I got the longest book on my list – War and Peace (and I did finish it!) – so although I have several very long books on this current list, I hope to jag a shorter one this time. The luck is in the spin! The idea is to make a list of 20 books from my Classics TBR by this Sunday 22 November, after which a number will be announced, and I need to read the book next to that number by 30 January 2021.
I finished reading this 1350 page tome for my Classics Club Spin. I had begun it on January 1 and was attempting to read one chapter a day with an online group, but although I was mostly keeping up, it was driving me crazy. When the spin challenge came up I decided to add this book in the hope it would give me the excuse to just keep reading and finish it, and it came up! At the time I was also half-way through Dr Zhivago, so I have had a really good dose of Russian history over the past few weeks!
I know lots of people have struggled with the names in this novel, but one thing that really helped me get to know the characters was watching the sumptuous BBC series – 6 hour-long episodes. (I waited until after finishing the book before watching the final episode!) The visual characteristics and mannerisms of the major players helped enormously, and I especially loved Pierre – so apparently hopeless and ineffectual and yet so fundamentally caring and good. The actor was perfect for this demanding role, as were all of the others!
There are so many themes in this novel – the futility of war, parental neglect, sibling love, romantic love. Then there is the history of the war with Napoleon, and lots of philosophising about all sorts of things. I read every word, including all the descriptions of battle, but gave up during the final epilogue where Tolstoy is lecturing us about his beliefs. This novel really could have been at least three separate books – a history, an essay (or several), and then the narrative about Andrei, Nikolai, Natasha, Marya, Pierre and the rest. I do love Tolstoy’s writing, with his keen insights into human behaviour of all kinds, but I did wish he would be a bit more concise sometimes. The chapters are generally very short (most between 2 and 5 pages) so that also helps when reading such a long and dense novel.
My version of the book had a list of characters at the front, with all of their various nicknames, as well as translations of the French as footnotes – both of these things helped enormously. I chose this version after reading reviews of the various translations, and was very pleased with it.
Highly recommended, but do also watch the BBC series.
I failed with my first Classics Club Spin, but have been successful with the three since then, so here’s hoping I can succeed again. The task is to choose 20 books from my list of classics still to be read, and then wait for next Sunday when a number will be spun – I will need to read the book corresponding to that number by 30 September. This will help with my overall classics goal, to read 50 within 5 years. I read 11 in my first year (joined exactly 1 year ago today!), so am well on track at this stage. Those I have chosen for this spin are all books I already own but have never read.
The Chauvels were well-known film-makers in Australia in the first half of the 20th century – their last project was a series of tv programmes for the BBC, and this book was published in 1959 to accompany it. I know it is a fairly rare book because it didn’t exist on Goodreads until I added it! The couple spent some months travelling mostly by road, but also occasionally by train, small plane and helicopter, from Sydney across to South Australia and up north to Darwin. They visited many large properties, interviewing various station managers, workers, aboriginal communities and families living in the outback , including opal miners at Coober Pedy. They took part in the School of the Air, both in the head office in Alice Springs, and also while visiting families, and accompanied the Royal Flying Doctor Service on several trips. They often stayed at the stations, but also often camped. The book is written in the first person by both authors – Charles mostly describing the lives of the men (he worked as a jackeroo in early life) and Elsa more involved with the lives of women and children. They were both very interested and sympathetic towards indigenous people – they cast aboriginal actors in starring roles in their most famous film, Jedda (1955), and filming was done under difficult conditions on location in the Northern Territory. In this book they were admiring of those who still lived a traditional life, but quite derogatory about “half-castes” who they saw as giving the “full-blood abos” a bad name. The language is very dated – often cringe-worthy, but overall this is a very interesting record of life and travels in the outback during the 1950s.
I read this book as the 11th in my Classics Club Challenge, and also for the Goodreads Around the Year Challenge (#29 – an underrated book, a hidden gem or lesser-known book), and for the Goodreads Classics Challenge (#11 – non-fiction).
Tiburon is an Australian classic, published in 1935, about life in a small country town in NSW during the Depression. It was a book bought by my Grandfather and with a dedication to my Great-Grandfather for Christmas 1935. I acquired it after my uncle died a couple of years ago and we were clearing out. I also read Tennant’s autobiography last year, so knew of her interest in social disadvantage and the efforts she went to in researching her books. She travelled and lived in country areas during the Depression as the itinerants did, and even spent some time in gaol for research. Her writing in this novel is very evocative of the lives of families and the ways they are affected by not only their poverty, and often the alcoholism of the father figure, but also their social position. Tiburon was Kylie Tennant’s first published novel, and is well worth reading, as are her later works.
I read this book as the 10th in my Classic Club Challenge, but also for the Goodreads Around the Year Challenge (#28 – book by an Australian, Canadian or NZ author), and the Goodreads Classics Challenge (#9 – written by a woman).
I finished this back in April, but as usual have fallen very behind with my blogging. As blogging takes up too much time in writing when I could be reading, I am only going to record the classics here for the time being.
I read Northanger Abbey for several challenges – the 8th in my 5 year long Classics Club Challenge (read 50 classics in 5 years), my Goodreads 2020 Around the Year Challenge (#14 – a book by an author on the Abe List of 100 Essential Female Writers), Goodreads Classics Challenge (#3 – takes place in a country other than where you live), and Goodreads Reading Women Challenge (#11 – read & watch a book to movie adaptation). I read most of Jane Austen’s books as a teenager, and never enjoyed her as much as George Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray, or the Brontes – Austen’s books always struck me as rather insipid. However, when I came across a second-hand copy of Northanger Abbey, which I don’t think I had read before, I leapt in, and really enjoyed it! It is a short, amusing, and satisfying story, with some laugh out loud moments. Soon after finishing the book I watched the movie, and enjoyed that as well. The characters are all rather stereotypical, but that’s not really a problem, and the settings are well-described and interesting, especially the episodes in Bath, which I visited years ago. Entertaining, and heartily recommended!
The tales told by Scheherazade over a thousand and one nights to delay her execution by the vengeful King Shahryar have become among the most popular in both Eastern and Western literature. From the epic adventures of ‘Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp’ to the farcical ‘Young Woman and her Five Lovers’ and the social criticism of ‘The Tale of the Hunchback’, the stories depict a fabulous world of all-powerful sorcerers, jinns imprisoned in bottles and enchanting princesses. But despite their imaginative extravagance, the Tales are also anchored to everyday life by their bawdiness and realism, providing a full and intimate record of medieval Eastern world.
In this selection, N.J. Dawood presents the reader with an unexpurgated translation of the finest and best-known tales, preserving their spirited narrative style in lively modern English. In his introduction, he discusses their origins in the East and their differences from Classical Arabic literature, and examines English translations of the tales since the eighteenth century.
I really loved reading these stories, and the way each one led to the next – I had no idea really despite hearing some of the stories over the years. It was fun to dip into, though I read it quite quickly, over the space of about two weeks, with a couple of other books in between. Highly recommended.
I read this at the end of 2019 for the Popsugar Challenge topic ‘a book inspired by mythology, legend or folklore’, and it was also one from my Classics Club list.
Me, My Shelf and I 