Did You Finish Your Spin?

~ The Classics Club

Today’s the Day!

On the 19th November 2018, we announced the special CHUNKSTER edition of the Classic Club Spin, challenging you to read book 1 on your CC Spin #19 list by 31st January 2019.

Did you read your book? Did you write about it, or not?

Book The End

What’s Next?

  • In the comments below, tell us what book you read, and what you thought of it?
  • Feel free to add a link to your review, here, on twitter and/or fb.
  • Also add your link to the ‘Reviews by Members’ in the tab at the top of the page.
  • Take a moment to see what everyone else has been reading.
  • Tick/strikeout/cross off that book from your Classics Club List – congratulations!

As always, the prize is the reading experience. 

We hope you enjoyed it.

Twitter hashtag: #ccspin  #ccwhatimreading

Calendar alert: #ccspin 20 is scheduled for mid April.

78 thoughts on “Did You Finish Your Spin?”

    1. I should add – I was rather meh on these books. Didn’t particularly enjoy or dislike them. The Woman in White was fairly fun to read, but I kept wanting it to be The Moonstone and it wasn’t. Still, I like Wilkie Collins. Prince and the Pauper was not exactly what I expected at all out of Dickens and I didn’t find myself wanting to read.

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    2. Congrats on making the chunkster spin work for you the best way 🙂
      There’s an old B&W movie of the woman in white starring Sydney Greenstreet as the Count and a young Agnes Moorehead that’s a real treat.

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  8. Oh…yeah…almost forgot, yeah I did finish my spin. First, my ALMOST guilty conscience has to explain something: I misread the rules a bit, and I didn’t think EVERY book on my list had to be a chunkster. I had quite a few heavy tomes, just not all…and the spin turned out to be one of the shortest novels on my list…The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Alan Poe, and that’s why I ALMOST feel guilty. To ALMOST atone, I read Pym PLUS a sequel…An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne. So, two reviews:
    The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
    And An Antarctic Mystery

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  11. Alas, I did not finish. To be honest, I didn’t really read much at all in Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, but I did carry it around in my bag several times. I plan to read it in 2019. I’ve been a bit of a moody reader these days. It is always a joy to see what everyone has been reading.

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    1. I understand completely about the mood reading part. The Odyssey is definitely one that has to be tackled in the right one. My last attempt to read it was rather torturous, but I still bought the Wilson edition to try again one day #gofigure

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    2. I did enjoy the Odyssey. Read it for a literary course. I don’t remember the translator but I think I downloaded a rather old version. I have read half the Iliad, but a while ago. Will probably start from the beginning. I have just read ‘The Greek Treasure’ by Irving Stone about Heinrich Schliemann and his search for Troy. Makes you go back to the original.

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  12. I finished Trollope’s “Can You Forgive Her?”, the first of the Palliser series of 6 chunksters. I’m ruminating on it before writing my review. I liked it a lot and have just started the next one, “Phineas Finn”.

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  13. I did! Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin! Excellent! Am in process on composing a review. Interesting research findings about it, too! Also read The Fire Next Time, written by Baldwin. Quite the treatise on oppressive whites and the subjugation of blacks via “Christianity.’ Reviews to come!

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  14. I did not finish my CCSpin Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achabe. I read it in high school and didn’t particularly enjoy it and the same is true some 20+ years later. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to DNF for good or give it another go later. 🤔

    Kind of bummed because this is the second CCSpin in a row in which I haven’t enjoyed the book. 😞

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    4. Well, I think you can safely decide it’s not for you. (But hey, I think I’ve read Catcher in the Rye three times in the same pursuit, so.) It’s too bad your Spin book was a dud *again,* but maybe next time…

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  18. i read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Interesting and proof that not all Roman Emperors were as bloodthirsty as Nero or Caligula, but philosophy is not really my thing and I felt a little disappointed as it is certainly a very popular book with some readers.
    There were certainly some gems though
    “What injures the hive injures the bee”
    “The best revenge is not to be like that”
    “Concentrate …. on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice … do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life”
    and perhaps the best for me ….
    “At dawn when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself “I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for … is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm? – But its nicer here …” 🙂

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    6. This is my favourite Anne Brontë book. It is so modern after all this time. I think she managed so well to describe the society, marriage, motherhood and love. An amazing book.

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  24. I finished it, and exceptionally, I even had time to review it. A Moveable Feast: https://wordsandpeace.com/2019/01/18/book-reviews-for-winter-reading-challenges/
    I went into it with fear and trembling, because I really didn’t like at all all the novels I read by Hemingway. But several members of this club encouraged and reassured me, and they were right! This is nonfiction on Paris, and it’s very good, I think. A good book to read for those who dislike the author!!

    It is not a chunkster, but actually, I’m reading 3 right now, though only 1 is on my official list: The Moonstone (I should be able to finish listening to it tonight), Don Quijote (with a read-along that will extend into May). And with a French student, I am rereading Les Misérables in French. A couple of chapters a day.
    I just DNFed another classic, Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Doblin. Too tough for me, Not unsimilar to Ulysses by JJoyce.

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  27. No, I’m still going on Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (about a third of the way through) though I did put up an interim post about it: https://wp.me/p2oNj1-3ey
    Having said which, I am enjoying it, reading Claire Harmon’s biography of Charlotte in tandem and also dipping, as is my wont, into other fiction as a change of mood and pace!

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    2. Took me a long time to finish this one, and I didn’t like it as I read it. I must admit it grew a little bit on me, after I finished it. It is always nice to read the prose of Charlotte, but the story was too boring for me.

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      1. Because so little initially happens (and when it does is low key) I’ve had to relax while reading this and see it as interplay between characters as well as character sketches. It’s also interesting to read Claire Harmon’s biography of Charlotte in tandem with this to see how the author drew on her own experiences and, perhaps, the experiences of her father in the period covered by this novel.

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        1. I recently did a similar thing with Frankenstein – reading the book as I dipped into a bio about Mary Shelley and her mother. It’s a good way to help you get through a book you’re not sure if you’re enjoying/getting or not.

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          1. I agree, absolutely. There’s always an argument for being an ‘innocent’ reader, encountering a novel for the first time without preconceptions. But sometimes, especially with long-dead authors from a bygone age, it helps the reader to get the most out of it by knowing something about the background of the writer and her or his times: with the Brontës (and indeed with Mary Godwin Shelley) we can imagine ourselves as an acquaintance or confidante of the writer, both having at first written under a pen name or anonymously, and perhaps get under the skin of the narrative and appreciate the nuances.

            What was the Shelley/Wollstonecraft bio you read, by the way?

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    2. I read it some years ago. Although it is a chunkster and you think half of it would be enough, there is something attractive about it. Probably all the descriptions of nature, castles, the romantic surroundings. Although totally overwritten as far as the story goes. It could have been done in half the pages. But, but still there to enjoy. Glad you loved it.

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      1. Not sure how i managed to post the comment and didn’t finish it. 🙈 what I was trying to say is someone recommended it to me and I have a note to look for it at my used bookstore. I think someone mentioned to me Jane Austen Northanger Abbey is a satire of Gothic fiction and suggested I read Udolpho first.

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  30. I did not adapt my list for chunksters so got Washington Square by Henry James (https://thecontentreader.blogspot.com/2018/12/washington-square-by-henry-james.html). I decided to add a chunkster as well, so I read Katrin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. https://thecontentreader.blogspot.com/2019/01/kristin-lavransdatter-by-sigrid-undset.html It is not an easy read, but it stays with you afterwords! I am happy to say I managed to finish it!

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