Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

It's August, which means happy Women in Translation Month! What does everyone have planned? I'd like to wrangle the last of all my challenge reads in the next four weeks, but considering how much partial shifting over to other reading pursuits I'll be doing, finishing my challenges will probably be more of a gradual phasing out than a grand finale.

Women in Translation 2022
Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran - Shahrnush Parsipur (completed 8/7/22)
Territory of Light - Yūko Tsushima (completed 8/16/22)
The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow - Fuyumi Ono (Currently Reading)

Post-Classics 2022
Indian Horse - Richard Wagamese (Currently Reading)

Quest for Women
Ramona - Helen Hunt Jackson (completed 8/10/22)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë (Currently Reading)
Widow Barnaby - Frances Milton Trollope

People of Color Old & New
Palinuro de México - Fernando del Paso (completed 8/20/22)

Bingo
The Tin Drum - Günter Grass (completed 8/5/22)
Venus in Furs - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (completed 8/11/22)
The Annotated Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum (Currently Reading)
Long Day's Journey into Night - Eugene O'Neill

2022 AUGUST

Women in translation: Colette
3/5 Claudine at School
3/5 Claudine in Paris
4/5 Claudine Married
4/5 Claudine and Annie
5/5 La Vagabonde
4/5 Chéri
4/5 Claudine's House
5/5 The Ripening Seed
4/5 The Last of Cheri
3/5 The Other One
5/5 La Chatte
3/5 Duo
3/5 My Apprenticeships
4/5 Le Toutounier
3/5 Hotel Bella Vista
4/5 Chambre d'hôtel
5/5 La lune de pluie
2/5 The Pure and the Impure
4/5 The Kepi
3/5 Gigi
5/5 L'Enfant malade

Elizabeth von Arnim (part 1)
5/5 Elizabeth and Her German Garden
5/5 The Solitary Summer
5/5 The Pious Pilgrimage
4/5 The Benefactress
4/5 The Adventures of Elizabeth ...
3/5 The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight
5/5 Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther
3/5 The Caravaners
4/5 Vera
5/5 Mr Skeffington

Antiquity: Minoic and Micenean Crete
3/5 La filosofia prima della filosofia

Other
5/5 Wide Sargasso Sea
4/5 David Golder
4/5 Il colore dell'acqua
3/5 Grand Hotel
4/5 The Difficult Man
3/5 L'incorruttibile

2022
06 | 07 | 08

Daz's August Eight :
Maias, The Eca de Queiros, José Maria de 1888 (first half at least)
Good Companions, The Priestley, J. B. 1929 (first half at least)
Lord Jim Conrad, Joseph 1900
Married Man, A Read, Piers Paul 1979
So Long, See You Tomorrow Maxwell, William 1979
Vicar of Wakefield, The Goldsmith, Oliver 1766 (group read)
Oedipus The King Sophocles -450 (group read)
Howards End Forster, E. M. 1910 (re-read)

I always look forward to Women in Translation month to encourage me to pick up more of my translated books. This year I can complete my century challenge and add to my bingo board if I read my planned translated books.

Century Challenge
Claudine at School by Colette DNF
The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun (and bingo)
Iza's Ballad by Magda Szabó (and bingo)
Dance on the Volcano by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Bingo
The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller
The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf

Read for fun
Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
The Lost Man by Jane Harper 8/6/22

So many great Women in Translation choices!

Here's my WiT plans/hopes:
Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
A Bookshop in Berlin by Françoise Frenkel
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Eartheater by Dolores Reyes
Places by Colette

Group Reads:
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s by Cornelia Otis Skinner
Coming Up for Air by George Orwell

and the BIG read, The Magic Mountain, over the next few months.
And to go along with that I picked up Sagas of the Norsemen: Viking and German Myth by Loren Auerbach

I enjoyed this last year, but somehow never got into it this year.

Here goes som August plans:
Currently reading
My Name Is Lucy Barton (audio)
The Complete Stories, Vol. 2
A Death in the Family (pulitzer challenge)
A Lost Lady (serial reader)
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (audio)

To-read
Tarmen (audio)
Karolines kærlighed
The Witch of Duva
The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark
Light in August (old & new challenge)
Præsidenten (nobel laureate challenge + bingo challenge)
The Way We Live Now (old & new challenge)
Hogfather
Sad Cypress
The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943 (audio, sync)
A Walk on the Dead Side (Q author)
Flush (audio, group read september)
The Reluctant Assassin
It Started with a Secret
Miss Merkel - Mord i Uckermark
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf
Låst
Bødlens Revolution
Tevye the Milkman (audio)
An Artist of the Floating World (audio, I-author)
Should I Tell You?
When Morning Comes (audio, sync) - started
Uglens øje - started
Scales of Justice - started

Expecting to read fewer books this month, yet I hope anyway. . . .

Finished
2022 The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman (finished) Aug 01
1909The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux Aug 03
1950 The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury Aug 06
1934 Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie Aug 07
1982 A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
1907 Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice Leblanc
1998 Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
1915 Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1948 The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy by Evelyn Waugh Aug 15
1954 Lord of the Flies by William Golding Aug 19
1889 The Forsaken Inn by Anna Katharine Green Aug 21
Traditional Mexican Folktales from the Borderland by Riley Aiken Aug 24
2014 Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert Aug 30
2016 The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer Aug 31

Reading
The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton
Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America by Jonathan Gill

Planning
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre by Jack D. Zipes
Love Changes Things: Even in the World of Politics by Caroline Cottom
Cured: How the Berlin Patients Defeated HIV and Forever Changed Medical Science by Nathalia Holt (have suggested at a nonfiction group for a future read. So not reading this month.)
Green Metropolis: What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability by David Owen
Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico by Juan Villoro

I have nothing planned. This is a refreshing change for me. I mean I am not a great planner. But usually I know what I am going to read next. Not now. See you all next month. 😊

I think I've probably already overcommited myself, and I'm already preparing at least 2-3 of the books to be shelved for a later time. but basically:

Currently Reading:
Doctor Who: Killing Ground by Steve Lyons (this interminable book will never finish, its so boring and so badly written I just cannot pursue almost any of it, ugh).

To finish:
Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass - doubt this one will actually get read this month. Will roll over yet again to next month.
Obedience, Struggle, & Revolt: Lectures on Theatre by David Hare

To Read:
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy - priority for IRL bookclub
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (I like KSR loads, but, eh, its huge...this may have to be paused) - Abandoned for being one of the most boring and plotless things i've read.
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles - decided to not bother with this this month due to the pressures of other books. Perhaps another time.
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest (I really do want to read this, but if I commit to reading Blood Meridian and 2312, the former of which is very dense and the latter is very long, this may have to go by the wayside. It entirely depends in how quickly I can finish off all my current reads (both are super easy to read and actively enjoyable, and short, so that shouldn't be much of a problem) then how quickly I get Blood Meridian read, then the remaining time can be dedicated to 2312. KSR is a very, VERY good writer, and what I've read of thar book was superb, so it may be easier than I think. Hopefully).

Edit 24/08/22: Added I Am Legend by Richard Matheson at the last minute after discovering it was being read in the Guardian 1000 group. Can't believe I missed it! I'ts super short though so i should be able to easily squeeze it in.

Doing pretty well! Just two more to go and i'd have done most of what i intended to do. :)

Klowey's August 2022 Reading List
(numbered entries from my choices for the Challenge Buffet)

Plan to Finish:
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie:
        #6, Group Reads August New School Classic
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky:
        BINGO G4
        #5, Short Story
        #7, Expand Your Horizon With New Authors

Continue, but not Finish:
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann:
        #6, Group 3rd Quarter Long Read
The History Of World Literature by Grant L. Voth:
        #9, Fiction/Non-Fiction "Books"

The Plan

I want to finish at least one of my challenges. My best chance is the Member's Choice Challenge:
Nurse On Call: The True Story of a 1950s District Nurse - currently reading
The Bridge of Beyond - WIT

Continue reading:
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil - I hadn't planned on this being a long read but I find that after 3 or 4 chapters I need a break. Hopefully finish next month.

Buddy Read:
The Fields

Other groups:
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s
The Professor's House

RJ's AUGUST READS:

Will Finish This Month:
They Call Me Coach by John Wooden as told to Jack Tobin
I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay
Wittgenstein's Lolita and The Iceman by William Gay
Green Tea and Other Weird Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Might Finish This Month: (AKA a whole bunch of group reads that I have committed myself to and now I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get them all done)
Cool Hand Luke by Donn Pearce
Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake
The Collector by John Fowles
Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916 by Michael Capuzzo
The Engines of God by Jack McDevitt
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Will Read But Will Not Finish This Month:
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
Fair Land, Fair Land by A.B. Guthrie Jr.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks
Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu
The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe

Mr Skeffington (1940, E. von Arnim) reminded me of Mrs. Dalloway (1925, V. Woolf). A lucid meditation on age and purpose; no stream of consciousness but still London. And loads of irony. 5/5

Fed wrote: "Mr Skeffington (1940, E. von Arnim) reminded me of Mrs. Dalloway (1925, V. Woolf). A lucid meditation on age and purpose; no stream of consciousness but still London. An..."

So glad to hear about this one, Fed. Thanks!

Kathleen, speaking of Elizabeth van Armin…

Just finished in August:
Vera by Elizabeth van Armin (Audiobook)
The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton (On the Southern Literary Trail)

Currently reading:
That Distant Land by Wendell Barry (On the Southern Literary Trail)
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain (Sister Book Club)
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Audiobook)

Over-extended because I also need to read:
The Fields by Conrad Richter (CUwtC Buddy Read)
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (Catching Up with the Classics)
The Time of Man by Elizabeth Madox Roberts (On the Southern Literary Trail)

Not sure I can do all this, but I am trying!

RJ Slayer, so glad to see you are reading Cool Hand Luke, My Cousin Rachel and Fair Land, Fair Land. I will look forward to reading your reviews!

Luffy, sometimes nothing is a great plan!

Aubrey, I will have to check out your review of Ramona, a book that has long been on my TBR, since I lived in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, 'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels'; or, LA, back in the 70s.

Aubrey, I just read your review of Ramona, but comment was stopped by GR. I had this to say:

Interesting review, Aubrey. I don’t think you’ve quite convinced me to write this one off my TBR list. As I recall from my college days, the book Ramona played a role in the popular early romantic vision of the pre-Anglo landscape of California (as in sleepy hacienda with cactus), and being a native, I have long wanted to read this. I think it will stay on my list.

Also noticed that Vera was also on your list. I will also look forward to that review.

Aubrey, maybe this will serve:

History of American Women: Black Women Writers Through Civil War and Reconstriiction

https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2021....

Terry wrote: "...RJ Slayer, so glad to see you are reading Cool Hand Luke, My Cousin Rachel and Fair Land, Fair Land. I will look forward to reading your reviews!..."

Thanks Terry. I should finish Cool Hand Luke in the next few days. The movie is an all-time favorite of mine and the book doesn't really add much, in my opinion, but I'm glad I read it. I'll probably post a review next Saturday since I usually don't get on GR much during the week, other than using the app to update my reading status.

Fair Land is really good; I should finish it and My Cousin Rachel in September.

And you are NOT along in over-extending yourself on group reads lately, by the way. I'm drowning over here! ;-)

I did not make any plan in August at all. It is beginning of a new school year, plus I am at home with Covid again. This one is much milder than previous bouts were. Thank goodness the pandemic seems to be following the pattern that other pandemics have.

With only 4 1/2 months left in 2022, it is time to start targeting my reading toward completing Challenges. I read two different plays this weekend to complete Bingo squares:

Smilin' Through: A Romantic Comedy in Three Acts by Allan Langdon Martin
The Tenth Man: A Tragic Comedy in Three Acts by W. Somerset Maugham

I have so many books in the queue. We'll see what if anything else is finished.

Dang, Lynn. I am sorry Covid just won't seem to leave you alone! I am also trying to concentrate more on the challenges. Good luck.

Lynn wrote: "I did not make any plan in August at all. It is beginning of a new school year, plus I am at home with Covid again. This one is much milder than previous bouts were. Thank goodness the pandemic see..."

Wish you a pain-free recovery.

Sorry to hear this Lynn. Are prayers okay? I would like to pray for your quick, complete, and permanent recovery from covid.

Prayers are always nice. Wow, I didn' t mean to sound an alarm. I think I just have Fall allergies. I always get sinus pressure and drainage that causes me to lose my voice each August... grass allergies. This time there was no fever, no aches or pains, but my doctor chased me down with that test and voila it's positive. I ducked and rolled but she tackled me... I think I have that persistent positive Covid thing.

Prayers going out. . . .Hope you feel better soon

Sure hope you ate better soon, Lynn!

Hope you recover very soon, Lynn ! 🙏

Thanks folk,,, I am already back at work. Really I just thought I had allergies...I wonder if the test is just picking up an older Covid infection. I got caught by procedures.

Hi Aubrey,
I am new and so joining a bit late (also not sure what all the numbers mean next to the titles) but nevertheless I wanted to post here and thank you for adding the book Elizabeth and her German garden to this list. It’s a really light hearted book, perfect for a way to unwind after the long summer day. I’m really enjoying it. Great suggestion.

Aubrey and Wendy, Just FYI, perhaps wholly unlike Elizabeth and her Garden, which I have not read, Vera is not a light-hearted book. It’s a cautionary tale and a bit spooky.

Hope everyone is satisfied with their reading month! I am satisfied with having largely read for my bingo card, genre study, and other reading challenges. . . . Getting ready to reread The Tempest, hoping someday to make time to read some retellings of Shakespeare plays.

This month was rather unusual for me. In addition to the third grade classroom reading I did, I read three plays. Reading plays is unusual for me, especially that many in a row. It was a nice change of pace; plus I found that all three could be used on Challenges.

Smilin' Through: A Romantic Comedy in Three Acts by Allan Langdon Martin
The Tenth Man: A Tragic Comedy in Three Acts by W. Somerset Maugham
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

ok so I managed 7 out of my August Eight :
Maias, The Eca de Queiros, José Maria de (first half) - going nicely...
Good Companions, The Priestley, J. B. (first half) - going a bit boringly...
Lord Jim Conrad, Joseph - 3.5 Stars
Married Man, A Read, Piers Paul - 3
Vicar of Wakefield, The Goldsmith, Oliver (group read) - 2.5
Oedipus The King Sophocles (group read) - 3
Howards End Forster, E. M. (re-read) - 4.5

and one I didn't get to :o(
So Long, See You Tomorrow Maxwell, William

Darren wrote: "ok so I managed 7 out of my
August Eight
:
Maias, The Eca de Queiros, José Maria de (first half) - going nicely...
Good Companions, The Priestley, J. B. (first half) - going a bit boringly...
L..."

Darren, you should definitely get to" So Long, See You Tomorrow!" Maxwell is a wonderful writer!!
Also, you had recommended "The Snapper" to me after I read "The Commitments," and I finally read it last month and Loved It!! Thanks for the recommendation!

Terris - I will be reading the Maxwell in September don't worry!
so glad you liked The Snapper - I'll be re-reading it myself this month

Enjoy —again! :)