Category: Reading Challenges

Reading Challenge: Classics Club Spin #40

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time again. Time for a new spin challenge from the team at The Classics Club. A list of twenty titles, numbered, and in a few days, The Classics Club will send me the number of the title I’m to read.

I would be happy with pretty much any of the books listed. I’m keen to continue my reading of Anthony Burgess, or revisit old favourites like the Austen. I read a lot of Iris Murdoch many years ago, so it would be interesting to see how she reads for me today. Though many here are books I’ve never read, so they’ll be interesting and fresh. Anyway, here’s the list:

1. A Buyer’s Market by Anthony Burgess
2. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
3. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
4. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
5. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. The Forsyth Saga by John Galsworthy
7. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
8. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
9. The Razor’s Edge by W Somerset Maugham
10. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Sigfried Sassoon
11. Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim
12. The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
13. Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
14. The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold
15. A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
16. The Group by Mary McCarthy
17. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
18. Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
19. The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
20. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Delving into the Classics – the Return of the Spin

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

Just when I’ve been revisiting the life of Katherine Mansfield the Classics Club are rolling out another Spin Challenge. This is the perfect challenge if you feel like a change from reading the latest thing everyone’s talking about. Or if you want to escape into another era or ease into a writing style that has a slower more considered pace. Or maybe you just want to ditch the quandary of what to read next. I can probably say yes to all of that.

So I’ll be reading a book from the following list that corresponds to a number chosen by the Classics Club.

1 Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930)
2 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
3 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (1938)
4 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957)
5 The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (1950)
6 A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute (1950)
7 The Garden Party and other stories by Katherine Mansfield (1922)
8 A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell (1951)
9 The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Buchan (1938)
10 Vittoria Cottage by D E Stevenson (1949)
11 Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon (1928)
12 Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence (1913)
13 The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855
14 Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (1953)
15 To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
16  A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor (1951)
17 Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann (1939)
18 The River by Rumer Golden (1946)
19 The End of the Affair by Graham Green (1951)
20 Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (1929)

Time to Go for Another Spin with the Classics Club – and for me two reading challenges in one

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I always look forward to each spin of the wheel at the Classics Club. As you may recall, with each Classics Club Spin, you write a list of twenty numbered classic titles, post it on your blog, and read the one that corresponds with the number that pops into your inbox the following week.

This time the challenge coincides with my library winter reading challenge (Turn Up the Heat) – a bingo card of varied tasks and the opportunity to win prizes. One task is to read a book that is older than you. This has had a few people scratching their heads, but not me! So every book on my list this time around is older than me – to be honest, most of them were to begin with. And here they are:

1 Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930)
2 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
3 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (1938)
4 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957)
5 The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing (1950)
6 A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute (1950)
7 The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855)
8 A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell (1951)
9 The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Buchan (1938)
10 Vittoria Cottage by D E Stevenson (1949)
11 Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon (1928)
12 Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence (1913)
13 South Riding by Winifred Hotly (1936)
14 Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (1953)
15 To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
16  A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor (1951)
17 Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann (1939)
18 The River by Rumer Golden (1946)
19 The End of the Affair by Graham Green (1951)
20 Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (1929)

Classic Club Spin Time Again

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I love a reading challenge from time to time, and even though I struggled with Rudyard Kipling’s Kim last round of Classics Club Spin, here I am back for more. This time I’ve done a bit of fine-tuning of the list and I think I am bound to get a book I will look forward to reading in the cool March evenings to come. It’s a good mixture of old and not-so-old classics across a variety of genres. You can find out more about the challenge over at The Classics Club.

My Classics Club Spin List for March 2023

1 Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield
2 Sanditon by Jane Austen
3 Harriet Said by Beryl Bainbridge
4 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
5 The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
6 A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute
7 The Group by Mary McCarthy
8 A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
9 The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Buchan
10 Victoria Cottage by D E Stevenson
11 Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon
12 Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence
13 South Riding by Winifred Hotly
14 the House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
15 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
16  A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
17 Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann
18 The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning
19 The End of the Affair by Graham Green
20 Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves