Tag: Classics Club Spin

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin is number …

Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by 11 April 2025.

Synopsis from Goodreads

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens’s most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.


I first read Bleak House after watching the 2005 Andrew Davies’ adaptation of the novel on BBC1 with Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock and Charles Dance as lawyer, Mr Tulkinghorn, with many more well known actors in the cast. I’ve been meaning to re-read it sometime and so I am pleased to be reading it again.

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?

Classics Club Spin

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin.

Before next Sunday, 16 February 2025 create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list. On that day the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by the 11 April 2025

Here’s my list:

  1. The Annotated Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (a re-read)
  2. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  3. The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
  4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  5. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
  6. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
  7. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
  8. Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning
  9. The Birds and other short stories by Daphne du Maurier
  10. I’ll Never be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier
  11. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
  12. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
  13. The Go Between by L P Hartley
  14. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
  15. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  16. Daisy Miller by Henry James
  17. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
  18. Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning
  19. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
  20. Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault

I’m happy to get any of these, but it would be great if it’s Pride and Prejudice as that is the book I’ll be (re)reading in March as part of the ReadingAusten25 project.

Which one/s would you recommend?

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin is number …

3

which for me is The Stars Look Down by A J Cronin. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by 18th December, 2024. I added The Stars Look Down by A J Cronin because I enjoyed The Citadel many years ago. So, I’m looking forward to reading it but I hadn’t realised that it is 712 pages long!

Synopsis from Amazon

The Stars Look Down was A.J. Cronin’s fourth novel, published in 1935, and this tale of a North country mining family was a great favourite with his readers.

Robert Fenwick is a miner, and so are his three sons. His wife is proud that all her four men go down the mines. But David, the youngest, is determined that somehow he will educate himself and work to ameliorate the lives of his comrades who ruin their health to dig the nation’s coal. It is, perhaps, a typical tale of the era in which it was written – there were many novels about coal mining, but Cronin, a doctor turned author, had a gift for storytelling, and in his time wrote several very popular and successful novels

In the magnificent narrative tradition of The Citadel, Hatter’s Castle and Cronin’s other novels, The Stars Look Down is deservedly remembered as a classic of its age.

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?

Classics Club Spin

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin.

Before next Sunday, 20 October 2024 create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list. On that day the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by the 18th December, 2024.

Here’s my list:

  1. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  2. The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
  3. The Stars Look Down by A J Cronin
  4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  5. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
  6. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
  7. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
  8. Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning
  9. The Birds and other short stories by Daphne du Maurier
  10. I’ll Never be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier
  11. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
  12. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
  13. The Go Between by L P Hartley
  14. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
  15. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  16. Daisy Miller by Henry James
  17. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
  18. Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning
  19. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
  20. Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault

I hope it’s one of the shorter books! Which one/s would you recommend?

The Classics Club Spin

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Today is the day to finish reading the latest Classics Club Spin, which for me was How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn. I forgot about it until last week and so there wasn’t enough time for me to finish it by today. But I began reading it anyway. Sadly, I decided that it wasn’t a book for me. I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll try again some time.

The Classics Club Spin Result

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The spin number in The Classics Club Spin is number …

17

which for me is How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn. The rules of the Spin are that this is the book for me to read by 22 September 2024.

Synopsis from Goodreads

A poignant coming-of-age novel set in a Welsh mining town, Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley is a paean to a more innocent age, published in Penguin Modern Classics

Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons – at the kitchen table, at Chapel and around the pit-head. Looking back on the hardships of his early life, where difficult days are faced with courage but the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory. An immediate bestseller on publication in 1939, How Green Was My Valley quickly became one of the best-loved novels of the twentieth century. Poetic and nostalgic, it is an elegy to a lost world.


This is good as How Green Was My Valley is also on my 20 Books of Summer list. I’m looking forward to reading it. It’s been on my To Be Read list for so long!

Did you take part in the Classics Spin? What will you be reading?