I know I have been gone for a month of Sundays or more, but I am back and ready to tackle some focused reading. Nothing focuses the reading urge better than a Classics Club reading list that has been withering on the vine lo these many months and (dare I say it) YEARS.
To add insult to injury, I looked at my self-imposed deadline for finishing the list -- AND IT'S A LITTLE OVER EIGHT MONTHS AWAY.
....MASSIVE PANICKED GULP.....
Well.
Never let it be said that I shirk from a challenge. Since I have done virtually NO reading on this list, there's no way to finish it. But how far COULD I get with it? If I started now?
A good way to start now (other than just starting, duh) is to participate in the Classics Club spin which is coming up next week. Here's the way this works: I pick 20 of the books on my list that I haven't read yet (BOY THAT WAS EASY) and list them here. To wit:
- Hadrian the Seventh -- Frederick Rolfe
- The Scarlet Letter -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Call of the Wild -- Jack London
- Of Human Bondage -- W. Somerset Maugham
- The History of Mr. Polly -- H.G. Wells
- The Good Soldier -- Ford Madox Ford
- Vanity Fair -- William Thackeray
- Gulliver's Travels -- Jonathan Swift
- Dracula -- Bram Stoker
- Kidnapped -- Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy -- Laurence Sterne
- The Rainbow -- D.H. Lawrence
- Frankenstein -- Mary Shelley
- Mrs. Dalloway -- Virginia Woolf
- Three Men in a Boat -- Jerome K. Jerome
- Nightmare Abbey -- Thomas Love Peacock
- The Golden Bowl -- Henry James
- The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame
- Sybil -- Benjamin Disraeli
- Babbitt -- Sinclair Lewis
Then, next Monday, the Classics Club moderators will post a random number from 1-20, and that's the book I read from the above list. Simple! And Terrifying! I will NOT want to see some of those books on the list popping up to be read, but that's the fun part of this, I suppose.
Good luck to everyone participating (and me!!)!
*****
UPDATE: The spin number has been released and it's 5. That means my book will be The History of Mr. Polly by H.G. Wells. SIGH. I can't say I am even remotely enthused about this one. But I will soldier on and trust that there's something valuable there.
According to Wikipedia:
"The History of Mr. Polly is a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells. The protagonist... is an antihero inspired by H. G. Wells's early experiences in the drapery trade: Alfred Polly, born circa 1870, a timid and directionless young man living in Edwardian England, who despite his own bumbling achieves contented serenity with little help from those around him. Mr. Polly's most striking characteristic is his 'innate sense of epithet', which leads him to coin hilarious expressions like 'the Shoveacious Cult' for 'sunny young men of an abounding and elbowing energy' and 'dejected angelosity' for the ornaments of Canterbury Cathedral."
*****
UPDATE: The spin number has been released and it's 5. That means my book will be The History of Mr. Polly by H.G. Wells. SIGH. I can't say I am even remotely enthused about this one. But I will soldier on and trust that there's something valuable there.
According to Wikipedia:
"The History of Mr. Polly is a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells. The protagonist... is an antihero inspired by H. G. Wells's early experiences in the drapery trade: Alfred Polly, born circa 1870, a timid and directionless young man living in Edwardian England, who despite his own bumbling achieves contented serenity with little help from those around him. Mr. Polly's most striking characteristic is his 'innate sense of epithet', which leads him to coin hilarious expressions like 'the Shoveacious Cult' for 'sunny young men of an abounding and elbowing energy' and 'dejected angelosity' for the ornaments of Canterbury Cathedral."
This was actually one of Wells' later works, written after his more famous novels such as The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, and others. So maybe it will be good. There are apparently more than a few people who regard it as one of his best works, so we'll see.
