Today’s the Day!
On the 22nd November, 2020 we announced the latest Classic Club Spin, challenging you to read book 14 on your CC Spin #25 list by 30th January, 2021.
Did you read your book? Did you write about it, or not?
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 26 is scheduled for April.
Here’s my review of ” Madame Bovary”. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. https://literarygitane.wordpress.com/2021/02/08/madame-bovary-cest-nous/
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A bit late but I’ve now written about my Spin book – Orlando by Virginia Woolf – http://booksplease.org/2021/02/07/orlando-by-virginia-woolf/
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For once, I read AND reviewed my Spin book, Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell, on time! 😊 Here’s my post: https://thebookwormchronicles.wordpress.com/2021/01/25/%F0%9F%93%96-mary-barton-by-elizabeth-gaskell-%E2%AD%90%E2%AD%90/ 🙂
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Epic fail! My spin pick was The Portable Dorothy Parker. I find a little of her goes a long way. I admire the writing but it was just too much of the same thing and I found most of the stories depressing. Still more than 300 pages to go.
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Totally get that. I read this early last year and did it over quite a long period of time between other books. A little of her does go a long way. And some bits I found better than others. She does have a biting style that comes off quite negative in some of the selections. Don’t push it. Set it aside and read something else and come back to it.
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I did finish my spin but forgot to update here! The House of the Dead was an interesting book and I definitely want to read more Dostoevsky in the future.
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Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck meh https://hopewellslibraryoflife.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/classics-club-spin-25-review-tortilla-flat-by-john-steinbeck/
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I finished mine too, Phantastes by George MacDonald. I wrote about it in detail on my blog, and I think my rating is probably 4 out of 5. For such a short book it took me almost a month to read!
https://cabdriversandcoffeepots.blogspot.com/2021/01/classics-club-phantastes-faerie-romance.html
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Yep, I finished Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 4 out of 5 Stars
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I finished my book, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, but haven’t written about it yet! I hope to get it done later this week.
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I don’t imagine it would be easy to sum up one’s thoughts about Orlando!
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It’s not! My mind’s in a whirl thinking about it.
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I actually did finish my book. A thin one, although not so easy to read. My spin book was Jung, C.G. – Jaget och det omedvetna (NF) (Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Ich und dem Unbewußten) (The relation of the ego to the unconscious.). Quite complicated at certain times, but the studies of the personal mind quite thrilling. Although I cannot say I understood it all.
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Actually finished mine this time! On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner. My review on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/224623368
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I really enjoyed my CC Spin – The Yellow Joss and Other Tales, by Ion L Idriess. Some details here… https://bookobsessed.home.blog/2021/01/16/the-yellow-joss-and-other-tales/
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I read Lorna Doone, by H. M. Blackmore. It was quite an adventure! https://howlingfrog.blogspot.com/2021/01/cc-spin-25-lorna-doone.html
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Nice! I started Lorna Doone about 5 years ago but never finished it. Someday!
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I finished my Australian classic, My Love Must Wait – not a romance at all, but the life & times of Matthew Flinders as he circumnavigated Australia.
For those of you who haven’t found me yet at my new home – I’m on WordPress now 😄
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I finished reading Madame Bovary and I enjoyed it a lot. Do we have to write and blog about it by a certain date? Is there a deadline? I am in the process of writing a review.
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No hurries or pressure. We just pick a random end for everyone to aim towards. When you get your review written, just pop a link back here so everyone else can see it too.
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I did! The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill.
http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-autobiography-of-john-stuart-mill.html
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Yes, I finished Madame Bovary. Definitely not my favourite classic though, but I can at least cross it off the list now.
https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/2021/01/madame-bovary.html
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I struggled with Madame M too.
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Not sure if my comment posted on you blog. Just in case, this is what I said:
I knew someone with borderline personality disorder when I first tried to read this. It was too close to the bone & I couldn’t continue. So in that way it’s a good novel – a realistic depiction of someone with such a disorder, but it doesn’t make for comfortable reading at all!
Well done for finishing it.
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Madame Bovary is one of my favourites. I find it a brilliantly dark satire, but I can see how others might find it a bit off-putting — Flaubert had a really merciless edge to him.
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These days I find it hard to spend time with deeply unlikeable characters that seem to exhibit no redeeming qualities at all, no matter how good the writing!
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That’s fair enough! Sometimes we need to be in the right sort of mood for a book like Madame Bovary.
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Yes, I read The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki and really enjoyed it:
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I liked this a lot when I read it!
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I finished it on Christmas Day, but realize I haven’t written about it yet. It was The Letter Killers Club
by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, totally weird book, even for me who like out of the box books. Even with the awesome introduction, I probably didn’t understand what this was all about. Has anyone else read it here? What did you think?
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New to me, but hopefully one of our wonderful clubbers will know it.
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I read it a few years ago! It was indeed really weird, and if I’m being honest it’s a bit of a blur in my head, but I remember that I interpreted it as being about what it’s like to live under a totalitarian regime where writing down what you really think could lead to persecution or even death . . . so the surrealism of “the club” struck me as a potential allegory for what life was like as a Soviet writer. But what I mostly remember is that I found it an *interesting* reading experience, but not necessarily an enjoyable one, if that makes sense.
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I have that one on my shelf, but haven’t tackled it yet.
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My CC Spin book was The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights by John Steinbeck https://piningforthewest.co.uk/2021/01/28/the-acts-of-king-arthur-and-his-noble-knights-by-john-steinbeck/
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Ha! I read his “other” Arthurian book–Tortilla Flats! https://hopewellslibraryoflife.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/classics-club-spin-25-review-tortilla-flat-by-john-steinbeck/
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I read The House of the Whispering Pines by Ann Katherine Green. It was slow reading at first, but I ended up really enjoying it – much more than I thought after the first few chapters.
https://emily101.wordpress.com/2021/01/04/the-house-of-the-whispering-pines/
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Didn’t do this one
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That happens. There’s always next time.
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The main problem is that I usually don’t quite have a schedule set for classics
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I read Little Women for the last spin and I liked it a lot. Much more than I expected.
My review is here:
https://bitterteaandmystery.blogspot.com/2020/12/little-women-louisa-may-alcott.html
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A personal childhood favourite. Lovely to read it over the Christmas period too.
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Yes, it was a perfect Christmas read.
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Yes, I did. I read The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. Now I’m inspired to read Love in a Cold Climate.
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Gosh, I think I read that when I was eight. Fun!
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Oops, somehow it printed my comment for Heidi twice. What I meant to say about your choice was that both those books are great.
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And there I was thinking what an advanced 8 yr old reader you were. Mitford at 8! 😀
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Ha ha ha!
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My Spin #25 book was Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. My post about it can be found on my blog at: https://afondnessforreading.com/2020/12/20/classics-club-spin-25-heidi/
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Gosh, I think I read that when I was eight. Fun!
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Kay, somehow I missed reading it as a child, so I needed to read it during these second childhood years.😉
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Ha ha!
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Yes, I did finish my spin. It was a short story.
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I had to read The Castle of Otranto in middle school. It was pretty weird!
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🙃
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I read that not long ago…really enjoyed it.
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I did finish the spin and it was so much fun! My pick fell on Around the World in Eighty Days and what’s not to love about that book. I’m doing a Around the world in Eighty Books challenge this year, so mixing this book of with that, works very well.
Thanks for hosting!
Elza Reads
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That sounds like fun!
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Yes, I did. My book was Oroonoko by Aphra Behn: https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/review-1607-classic-club-spin-result-oroonoko/
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I’ve always wanted to read that. Well at least since my twenties when I first heard about it anyway!
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I was familiar with Aphra Behn a little bit, anyway, but hadn’t heard of Oroonoko until I made my list.
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My CC Spin book was Edgar Huntly or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown. I finished it, but mostly out the sheer hope that it would get better by the end. It really didn’t… More thoughts here: https://katenread.wordpress.com/2021/01/11/reading-notes-1-11-21-bob-wrap-up/
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Huh, that’s interesting. I’ve never heard of Charles Brockden Brown.
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So my CC spin book was Shirley by Charlotte Bronte and unfortunately I didn’t finish it. This book is dragging. I explain in my review. https://nicoleantonucciblog.wordpress.com/2021/01/30/shirley-by-charlotte-bronte/
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It’s been a long time since I read Shirley, but I seem to remember it being my least favorite book by Charlotte.
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I am glad to hear that I am not the only one.
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Thank you for this. I finished the book from my Spin #25. It was Capital by Karl Marx. Totally interesting.
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