Tuesday, February 12, 2013

My Classics Club Spin List (with result!)

The Classics Club is hosting a Classics Spin challenge. We have to list twenty books that we have left to read from our Classics Club list and then next Monday they will select a number and we have to read the book corresponding to that number during February and March. The idea is to challenge ourselves a little bit and list at least five we are pushing back in our reading schedules.

These are my twenty books. 

Five I’m hesitant to read:
1. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang – Fausto
2. Mann, Thomas – The Magic Mountain 
3. Joyce, James – Finnegans Wake
4. Camus, Albert – The Plague
5. Dostoevsky, Fyodor – Crime and Punishment

Five I can’t wait to read:

6. Shakespeare, William – King Lear
7. Shakespeare, William – The Tempest
8. Dickens, Charles – Bleak House
9. Hodgson Burnett, Frances – The Secret Garden
10. Nabokov, Vladimir – Lolita

Five I’m neutral about:

11. De Balzac, Honoré – Eugenie Grandet
12. Fuentes Carlos – La muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz)
13. James, Henry – The American
14. Kerouac, Jack – On the Road
15. Turgenev, Ivan – First Love

Five free choices: Re-reads I'm really looking forward to.

16. Bronte, Emily – Wuthering Heights
17. García Márquez – Cien años de soledad (A Hundred Years of Solitude)
18. García Márquez – El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera)
19. Cortázar, Julio – Rayuela (Hopscotch)
20. Woolf, Virginia – Mrs. Dalloway

This should be fun, though I don’t feel like reading James Joyce just yet. I’m really in the mood for Shakespeare so I will cross my fingers and hope I get one of the two plays I chose for this Spin list. Let’s see what happens!

*Edit

The number chosen was 14! I'm so relieved I don't have to read Finnegans Wake yet. I was hoping for one of the Shakespeare plays but maybe it is a good thing I can wait until I get the glossary I need to be able to really understand the Shakespearean language. 

I've heard many great reviews of On The Road, so I'm actually looking forward to reading it.

4 comments:

Teresa said...

I have 'The Plague' in my wishlist... After loving 'The Stranger' I've been looking forward to read more of his novels... And you shouldn't be hesitant on reading 'Crime and Punishment'! I also avoided reading it while it was on my 'to-read' shelve because... well, it's one of those classics (especially in Russian lit) that you've heard so much about – good and bad – that it kind of scares you.

Melissa Vizcarra said...

I loved The Stranger too, I don't know why I'm hesitant to read The Plague...
I've actually started reading Crime and Punishment a few times before and I always get stuck in the first 20 pages. I love Russian lit, last year I read Anna Karenina and really liked it and Doctor Zhivago is probably one of the best books I've ever read. I don't know what it is about Crime and Punishment...

Anonymous said...

I like your list. Some very good choices. Hope you enjoy Kerouac.

Melissa Vizcarra said...

Thank you! I think I will :)