Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

I know, I know, we still have some time before 2022 actually hits, but I figure some folks might appreciate having space to do some quiet challenge strategizing in between the successive holiday bonanzas. Besides, one usually plans before everything starts up, no? But if you want to wait till the big January 1st drops to post on here, no harm, no foul.

Quest for Women
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling - Marguerite Young (Currently Reading)
The Amber Gods and Other Stories - Harriet Prescott Spofford

People of Color Old & New
The Master of Go - Yasunari Kawabata (completed 1/16/22)
Fault Lines: A Memoir - Meena Alexander (completed 1/21/22)
Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man - U.R. Ananthamurthy (completed 1/23/22)
The Coldest Winter Ever - Sister Souljah (Currently Reading)
The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon (Currently Reading)
Last Words from Montmartre - Qiu Miaojin

Bingo
Proud Beggars - Albert Cossery (completed 1/9/22)
Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg (completed 1/12/22)
The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal (completed 1/22/22)
Jazz - Toni Morrison (completed 1/29/22))
Rending the Veil - Rumi (completed 1/31/22))
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John le Carré (Currently Reading)
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Train to Pakistan - Khushwant Singh

RJ's JANUARY 2022 READING

In January I will finish:

1. The Last Colony by John Scalzi - as much as I like to clown Scalzi for being a talentless hack, credit where it's due: his space opera stories are fairly good and very readable. This is the third of six books in his Old Man's War series.

2. Get Carter by Ted Lewis - originally published as "Jack's Return Home" the book is now known by the title of the 1971 film it inspired.

3. The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver - I didn't very much like the film version but so far the book is much better.

I won't finish but I will be reading:

1. Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - 2nd in the Pendergast series, sequel to Relic

2. Gone South by Robert R. McCammon - although I don't love McCammon's books quite as much as many other readers, I will say that he does an amazing job of getting into the head of his protagonist, a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD and Agent Orange exposure

3. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams - second in the "increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy"

4. The Hod King by Josiah Bancroft - the third installment in the four-volume Books of Babel fantasy series, one of the more unique entries in the genre that I have read and fairly well written as well, although just a bit on the precious side

5. This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson - well-written Booker-longlisted historical novel telling the story of the HMS Beagle's second voyage

6. Asimov's Chronology of the World by Isaac Asimov - this out-of-print history book written by Azimov shortly before his death tells the story of Earth's history from the Big Bang through the end of WWII

7. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham - I know nothing about this except that I've wanted to read it for a long time.

8. I'm also working on some short story collections:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories by Arthur Machen
Green Tea and Other Weird Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu which includes the novella Carmilla

I start off the year bravely.

Read
1) Diary of a Roblox Noob Jailbreak: Book 1 by Rob Xena
2) Carmilla: A Vampyre Tale by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
3) When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney
4) The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
5) The Art of War by Sun Tzu
6) The Siege by Helen Dunmore
7) Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
8) The Prince and Other Writings by Niccolò Machiavelli
9) Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
10) The Sorceress: A Study in Middle Age Superstition by Jules Michelet (dnf)
11) The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure by Xavier Dollo
12) Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
13) American Fairy Tales by L. Frank Baum



Reading
13) Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
14) Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by.Clarissa Pinkola Estés
15) The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley

January Reading Plans
Trying to be reasonable to start the year off. Should be some room for wildcards but we shall see what happens. Excited to start 2022 reading!

Planned Group Reads
Catching up on Classics
☑️The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton 🌼Bingo
☑️The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham 🌼 Bingo

On the Southern Literary Trail
☑️Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier 🌺Buffet
☑️The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton
☑️Cataloochee by Wayne Caldwell

Buddy Read
☑️The Siege by Helen Dunmore

Long Read
Bleak House by Charles Dickens 🌼 Bingo

Maybe
The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Wildcards
☑️Ross Poldark by Winston Graham

Lori wrote: "January Reading Plans
Trying to be reasonable to start the year off. Should be some room for wildcards but we shall see what happens. Excited to start 2022 reading!

Planned Group Reads
Catching up..."

Reasonable is always the goal. I have my challenge reads segmented out by page count so I don't overload myself, and I'm still tempted to take on too many long ones 😔

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis for Everyone Has Read This But Me

To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel by Fred Fordham for the Lemon Tea & Blueberry Scones Society

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton for The Catching Up On Classics Group

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith for the (Agatha) Christie Made Me Do It! Group

I finished my last book for 2021, the wonderful Just Kids by Patti Smith, so now I'm ready to think about 2022 (just in time I guess!)

I'm glad to see many of you planning on the January group reads--should be fun!

Most on my January list are group reads:
The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin
(very exciting just looking at all those great authors!)

I also hope to read:
The Office of Historical Corrections, Danielle Evans
Circus of Wonders, Elizabeth Macneal

And to fit in an as-yet-to-be-determined non-fiction. Some possibilities:
The Heroine with 1001 Faces or
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or
Life Among the Savages

Oh goodness! Nonfiction- yes thanks for the reminder Kathleen!

The problem with planning for January is that it is a new year, so I have an entire year's list of books I want to read.

Should finish in January:
Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles
The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum
The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

Starting in January:
Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

And then I have an entire stack of books sitting here waiting to see if they get to be chosen next to read. I will see what wins that fight.

I seem to have settled into reading about 10 books per month,
but I'll just name 8, so as not to over-promise/put too much pressure on myself...
I have 5 that will be personal challenge:
Faerie Queene, The Spenser, Edmund 1590 (first third!)
Ginger Man, The Donleavy, J. P. 1955
God's Bits Of Wood Sembene, Ousmane 1960
Invisible Man, The Wells, H. G. 1897
Drowned World, The Ballard, J. G. 1962
plus 3 that are highest priority "carry-over" from 2021:
House Of Suns Reynolds, Alastair 2008
Phantastes McDonald, George 1858
Siege Of Krishnapur, The Farrell, J. G. 1973

[Heavy sigh] I did not yet finish Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, so it is still on my list. I am about halfway through and I will not give up on this! I also did not finish The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, which I am listening to, and will eventually get through, although it is a slog. In both cases, I will intermittently keep working on these.

However, I have planned reading that I would very much like to do, so today I am starting Ken Follett’s new novel, Never. This is for my book club. It is 802 pages long, so I need to start reading to finish in time.

Then, I would also like the read, in this order:

The Siege by Helen Dunmore
The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War by Howard Bahr
Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

I think this is a very ambitious reading list for me. So these last three books may lag behind. I need to spend more time reading! That sounds like a great resolution for the new year.

I will be restarting my short story challenge so short stories.

Barn Burning by William Faulkner
The Complete Christmas Stories by L.M. Montgomery

Then
The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell for the Buddy Read

For fun
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss - rereading a Scholastic Paperback that I bought as a school girl about 50 years ago. It is the same copy.

Other things will come up I am sure.

RJ - Love your list! Lots of fun stuff. I love the Pendergast series. The Relic is one of my favorite books that I've read multiple times.

I also love The Hitchhiker's series. It makes me laugh.

I'm going to check out those short story collections you shared. They look intriguing.

Matt - I also decided to read all the January books. I got a bit of a jumpstart over Winter Break (I'm a teacher) so all I have left is House of Mirth. I'm only listening to one chapter a day in The Old Curiosity Shop so I won't finish that for awhile.

Cynda - Wow! That's an ambitious and awesome list! Lots of great books on there that I'd like to read.

Terry - "Slog" is definitely how I felt about The Prince and the Pauper! I also listened to an audiobook and by the end I had it at like 2.2x speed just to get it over with.

In addition to all the Catching up on the Classic group reads for January I'm also listening to The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. (It's read by Cary Elwes which makes me so happy.)

I also started listening to The Idiot so I could finish in February. I like to listen/read multiple books at once so for books like this I typically take it one chapter a day. I'm also currently listening to Vanity Fair, just one chapter a day.

I'm also in the midst of rereading the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. It's one of my favorite urban fantasy series.

January

The Fall
The Brothers Karamazov
The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child's Education
Hard Times
Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder
The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

Natalie wrote: "In addition to all the Catching up on the Classic group reads for January I'm also listening to The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. (It's read by Cary Elwes which..."

I love their Hidden Legacy books.

I have a lot of Achievements i want to complete for the year, 5 books on my Merril Collection; three books by James Branch Cabell, finish the Cornelius Quartet and especially, try to finish the Sci-Fi Collection boxed set of 10 books i have, at least 5 more on that target.

So January will be trying to get as good a jump on those lists as possible so that i can spread the rest of them out throughout the year :) .

Well, taking on one of the longest single novels to have ever been composed certainly slowed this month down for me, but eight works isn't bad (even if most of them are admittedly of the shorter variety). In any case, made a good start on two of my three challenges and am expecting to do the same for my third once the longest of the longs is wrapped up, so a decent way to get 2022 rolling so far.

January reading:

I am half-way through Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I am also partially through the short story collection The Complete Christmas Stories by L.M. Montgomery.

I have read several short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Barn Burning by William Faulkner
and The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell,

The only novel I read was The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

I really enjoy short stories. I appreciate the emphasis we place on them in this reading group and plan on reading more. For many classic authors, short stories were an important part of their writing output.

I brought in my "core 8" for the month (see Message#11) barring the last few pages of Drowned World - darnit!

Faerie Queene (first third!) - 4 Star so far...
Ginger Man - Finished - 3
God's Bits Of Wood - Finished - 4
The Invisible Man - Finished - 3.5
Drowned World - not quite finished...
House Of Suns - Finished - 4
Phantastes - Finished - 3
Siege Of Krishnapur - Finished - 4

Finished in January:
The Prince and the Pauper
Never
The Siege
Thirteen Moons
The Power of Myth

Still reading:
Cat’s Eye
Look Homeward Angel