Classics Club Spin #39

Posted on by Fictitiously Yours, Gail

It has come round again! What is it, you may ask?

The Classics Club is a voluntary commitment to read 50 classics of your choice in 5 years from the time you join. Every so often, the Classics Club site hosts a “spin” to motivate participants to keep at their list, and maybe relieve some of the choice paralysis that can slow you down, by choosing a random book for you to read within a certain time period. Essentially, every spin you compile a list of twenty of the books you still haven’t read from your list, post it, and then the Classics Club will post a random number from 1-20. The book corresponding to the number is the one you read next, or before a certain date.

My method of compiling the twenty this time is simply all the non-novel titles left on my list (like last time–still trying to get them selected!), as well as six novels that have been on my “to read someday” for the longest–since before I joined the Classics Club.

  1. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger
  2. Pygmalion (1913) by George Bernard Shaw
  3. The Gambler (1887) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  4. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  5. Ethan Frome (1911) by Edith Wharton
  6. The Iliad by Homer
  7. The Aeneid by Virgil
  8. The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) by Ursula K. Le Guin
  9. The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka
  10. The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400) by Geoffrey Chaucer
  11. Leaves of Grass (1855) by Walt Whitman
  12. The Stone Angel (1964) by Margaret Lawrence
  13. The Waste Land (1922) by T.S. Eliot
  14. The Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce
  15. Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton
  16. This Side of Paradise (1920) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  17. On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
  18. Indiana (1832) by George Sand
  19. The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx
  20. Beowulf, Unknown

The spin number for this round will be posted this upcoming Sunday, October 20, and afterward everyone has until December 18 to read their selected title.

This has been my sixth Classics Club Spin! Check out my whole book list here.

I think after this spin, I will have to seriously consider reworking some of my main list to incorporate classics I’ve accumulated over the past year and am more interested in reading now than some on the list. Books I pull off this list will always have an opportunity to go onto the next list of 50.

8 thoughts on “Classics Club Spin #39”

  1. I rearrange my lists all the time, it’s the only way to keep this thing fresh/current for me. I like to engage in reading projects and readalongs, so I simply swap books from my CC TBR list onto the current list of 50 as needed. In the end it’s your reading list, so make it work any way that suits you best 🙂

    Quite a few of your titles this time look like novellas which can help you if you plan to join in Novellas in November too!

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    1. That’s really encouraging, thanks! I’ve known from the start the list could change as it goes (part of why I joined, TBH), but I still feel guilty when I do–like I’m cheating or something, which is silly. I’ll just get over it!

      Oh, I don’t think I’ve heard of that! Is Novellas in November a Classics Club thing or something else?

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  2. It’s looks like some heavy stuff on your list this time! (for me, at least…) I have never read anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, but have always wanted to. Maybe you’ll get that and convince me with your review.

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    1. I’ve been trying to get more of the verse or essay stuff read, but I’m also kind of scared of getting some of them! Some will be heavy for sure.

      I’ve only read The Dispossessed by Le Guin and it was for a university class. I don’t know I would consider her writing my favorite, but I’ve heard The Left Hand of Darkness come up a lot and the title is evocative, so I figured why not!

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