The Classics Spin!

Fallen Asleep While Reading (1872)

William Powell Frith

Though I'm currently inundated with a variety of projects, both professional and personal, I'm longing for an entire week of nothing but leisure reading. Hopefully, my March schedule will ease up (keep your fingers crossed for me!) so I can indulge in some good -- nay, fantastic -- books. Ah, what luxury.

Even if it's a bit late, I've decided to join The Classics Spin! The concept is to select twenty unread titles from your Classics Club list: five titles one is dreading, five highly anticipated titles, five titles to which one is different, and five wild card titles (a category of one's own choosing). I'm not particularly dreading any titles on my list, but I'm most intimidated by chunksters right now as I worry that my easily distracted brain will abandon them after a few brief chapters. Time to face my fears. I also mentally chastise myself for not reading the wealth of children's classics sitting on my shelves, so that genre will be represented in my wild card selections.

The Classics Club randomly selected #14 as the title for participants to read, but I'm stealing a page from Cassandra's book by having a random generator decide which title I read so I can still experience the luck of the draw. The goal is to read the text in its entirety before April 1st.

Behold, my chosen titles...

Five Chunksters:

1. The Brontes by Juliet Barker

2. No Name by Wilkie Collins

3. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

4. Cecilia by Fanny Burney

5. Patronage by Maria Edgeworth

Five Titles I Can't Wait to Read:

6. The Warden by Anthony Trollope (barely made a dent in this in January!)

7. Adam Bede by George Eliot

8. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

9. The History of Pompey the Little by Francis Coventry

10. A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne

Five Titles About Which I Am Currently Indifferent:

11. The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

12. The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

13. Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

14. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

15. East Lynne by Ellen Wood

Wild Card -- Five Children's Classics:

16. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

17. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

18. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

19. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

20. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

And now my randomly generated number: 5

I will be reading Patronage by Maria Edgeworth in March. I swear I didn't cheat! I was sort of hoping I'd 'get stuck' with a chunkster, as I need a gentle push to get going with these. I usually end up loving chunksters, so a little nudge is appreciated. I'm quite happy with this result. :)

If you're also participating in the spin, I'd love to hear what you'll be reading and your feelings about it. Are you apprehensive? Excited?

Classics Club Readathon

The Classics Club Readathon is here! Unfortunately, I won't be able to dedicate the whole day to reading literary gems, but I'll spend as much time as I can indulging in snippets of genius here and there.

After much indecision and abrupt changing of mind on my part, I've finally decided on The Warden by Anthony Trollope.

Funnily enough, the novel's successor, Barchester Towers, has been sitting on my shelf for far too long. I bought it thinking it wasn't necessary to read the series in chronological order, but some astute reviews on Trollope convinced me otherwise. Once my painful ban on book buying was lifted, The Warden was one of my first purchases. I can't wait to properly dig in, so to speak, and only hope that I like Trollope as much as I hope I will.

I might not update this post again during the readathon and opt instead to focus on the literature. Nevertheless, I'll try to share a few thoughts on twitter. Yet even as I write this, fatigue is quickly setting in, so I best get going.

Happy reading, fellow Classic Club members! I look forward to hearing about your reading choices. So many wonderful classics, so little time....

The Woman in White Readalong

I've barely made a dent in my spring reading plans. Life has got in the way, cruelly pushing literary perusal to the back burner. And yet...

I just can't resist joining in The Woman in White Readalong hosted by Reading Rambo. This wildly popular sensation novel is calling me, and I find myself headed towards the proverbial white light. Joining the cyber-discussion of Wilkie Collins's most beloved text will be great fun, and the month-long schedule will still allow me to progress with my spring reading plans. Perfect!

To kick off the event, bloggers are meant to share their preconceptions about The Woman in White and its author. I probably know a bit more about this 1859 novel than many of the participants, because I've started it twice before and [gasp] never finished it. On my second attempt I was approaching the halfway point before jumping ship. Oh, the shame!

I wouldn't wish anybody to attribute my inattention to Collins's writing. In fact, on both occasions I found the The Woman in White to be intriguing and engaging, and on both occasions the multiple distractions of daily life managed to interrupt my experience. This time, however, I'm determined to succeed!

The readalong has come at an opportune time, because Wilkie Collins has been on this reader's mind quite a bit in recent months. The bohemian lifestyle of this benchmark Victorian writer (a great friend of Charles Dickens) has been a fascinating topic of research. I recently posted about how Collins secretly maintained relationships with two women under separate households. Coincidentally, the bigamy plot permeated the sensation genre for which Collins became famous, though I haven't seen any signs of it in his own fiction. Isn't it funny how art imitates life?

Not too long ago I also completed my first Wilkie Collins novel. Heart and Science was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this lesser-known work compares to the decidedly more famous Woman in White. Contained within a sub-plot of Heart and Science was a compelling depiction of vivisection (experimentation on live animals) -- a practice fiercely debated in the late-Victorian period. From what I've heard, The Woman in White also features representations of animals, a key area of interest for me. Do they anticipate Collins's later fascination with animal welfare? I'm excited to discover more work from this celebrated nineteenth-century writer. 

If you've read The Woman in White, what did you think of it? If you haven't read the novel, but are interested in doing so, consider joining the readalong!

The Classics Club

I'm thrilled to announce that I will be participating in The Classics Club, recently established (and hosted) by Jillian at A Room of One's Own. After much deliberation, I have finally formed a list of 100 works of fiction I hope to have read in six years time. I have also whipped up short little lists of poetry, drama and non-fiction selections to be read alongside my fictional titles. You can view my page dedicated to the project to see my chosen texts.

Making The List required great restraint on my part, because it quickly turned into a Bookish Bucket List. I reminded myself that I didn't need to include every book I'd like to read before I die in this five-year plan. Giving books I already own the priority has helped me to narrow things down significantly.

I've also tried to give my project a sense of balance. True, the majority of my chosen texts are from favourite time period: the long nineteenth century. This was deliberate, as I really want to delve deeper into my beloved Victorian and Romantic eras. Nevertheless, the list ranges chronologically from the Renaissance to the contemporary. There are numerous children's books, and I've attempted to include some American and French authors into my reading. Some are tried-and-true classics, while other selections are non-canonical. In some cases, I'm attempting to include an author's entire oeuvre (e.g., Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the complete Sherlock Holmes), and I'm also adding one or two texts from authors with whom I've yet to be acquainted (Flannery O'Connor, Nathaniel Hawthorne). I think this list represents the breadth of reading I hoped to achieve. Bring on the literary adventure!

I have no intention of reading exclusively from this list over the next six years -- it may even alter as time goes by. Rather, the purpose of my participation in The Classics Club is to focus my reading and give me an opportunity to discuss literature with people who share a similar love of the classics. I'll be sharing my literary opinions and reading experiences along the way. While it's aimed primarily at bloggers, anybody is welcome. Please consider joining in the fun. (Click here for more information.) Happy reading, everybody!