Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

This is the time of year that I start taking stock of my challenges. What are you planning on reading?

My list has two of our monthly reads and three for my neglected Old and New Challenge.

☑ What the Shepherd Saw by Thomas Hardy (1898)
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864)


Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1601) 289 pages
Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde (1892) 84 pages
The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima (1954) 183 pages

October Goals
Since finishing up my challenges for this group, I'm working on wrapping up the 2024 Read Harder challenge, and I have two books left for a Fantasy/Speculative Fiction challenge over on Reddit.

Aside from that, I'm working on the deep backlog of books I've been amassing and keeping up with a few reading groups on Reddit.

(Read Harder and Spec Fic) Challenge books to read/finish in October
✔️Jones: Howl’s Moving Castle (1986)
✔️Burnell: Harper and the Scarlet Umbrella (2017)
✔️Takei: They Called Us Enemy (2019)
✔️Yu: Human Enough (2019)
✔️Vaid-Menon: Beyond the Gender Binary (2020)
✔️Orange: Wandering Stars (2024)



Non-challenge books to read/finish in September
✔️Euripedes: "Iphigenia at Aulis" from The Complete Euripides, Volume II (-414)
✔️Machiavelli: The Prince (1513)
✔️Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part I (1597)
✔️Joyce: Dubliners (1914)
✔️Joyce: Ulysses (1922)
✔️O'Brien: At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
✔️Wodehouse: Spring Fever (1948)
✔️Bowles: The Sheltering Sky (1949)
✔️Tanizaki: The Maids (1962)
✔️Herbert: Dune Messiah (1969)
✔️King: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (1982)
✔️Pratchett: Moving Pictures (1990)
✔️Maher: "Spirits to Enforce" from Six Plays (2003)
✔️McEwan: On Chesil Beach (2007)
✔️Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend (2012)
✔️Smith: Autumn (2016)
✔️Tokarczuk: The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story (2022)
✔️McBride: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (2023)
✔️Myers: Cuddy (2023)


Long reads
Aeschylus: The Complete Aeschylus, Volume I: The Oresteia (-459)
Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

My october plans

Currently reading:
The Sea, the Sea (bingo challenge)
En pige forlod værelset (Danish Broadcasting Novel Prize Nominee 2025)
The Last Devil to Die
Loveless (audio, sync)

To read:
Hell Bent (goodreads challenge)
The Goldfinch (pulitzer challenge, members choice challenge)
No Longer at Ease (continents challenge)
Ulykkens år
Miss Peregrine's Museum of Wonders
Kulmørket (Agnethe Bohn Book 4)
Vortsted (audio)
Iron Flame (audio)
Jagten på Casanova
Kongen af Os
The Price of Salt - started
Den røde hane (Danish Broadcasting Novel Prize Nominee 2025) - started
Divine Rivals (audio, goodreads challenge) - started

I see some books I've loved here, particularly JP's Wandering Stars and Julie's The Sea, the Sea. Enjoy!

I have a ridiculous list, and we'll just have to see what comes of it.
Currently Reading
Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
First Priority
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Letters of Shirley Jackson by Shirley Jackson
What the Shepherd Saw by Thomas Hardy
Second Priority
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Apparently I have kind of a singularity this month. I’m about to wrap up several books that I’ve been reading, and then I’ll be starting several books that I don’t intend to finish this month.

Continuing and finishing
✓ James [Constant Reader BC]
✓ Of Human Bondage [Ditto ⇑]
✓ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales [EHRTBM BC]
✓ The Picture of Dorian Gray [Local BC]
✓ Notes from Underground [Revisit the Shelf read]
✓ Witch Hat Atelier, vol. 9 It’s been a good run, but I don’t think I’ll be continuing with this series.

Continuing and not finishing
⯈ David Copperfield [EHRTBM long-read]

Starting and finishing
⯈ 84, Charing Cross Road Actually, I'm not going to read this till November.

Starting and not finishing
⯈ In the Lives of Puppets [Local BC] Started it; DNF’d it. Guess I won’t be going to that book club this month.
⯈ Death on the Nile [EHRTBM BC]
⯈ No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era [Nonfic Award Nominees challenge]
⯈ Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered [EHRTBM Bingo challenge]

Ongoing long-term reads that I usually fail to mention bc I read them so sporadically. Will I make any progress? Will I finish any?
⯈ Martyr Actually I think I may finish this one in October. I started it in August as a bit of a lark, but I’ve been enjoying it more & more, and my reading of it has picked up quite a bit in the last couple weeks.
⯈ After Virtue Been reading since November 2020. This was always going to be a slow burn. I’m re-reading each chapter as I go along, and it’s rare that I finish more than a chapter or two per month.
⯈ The Wise Man’s Fear Been reading since December 2021. Would like to finish this year, but doubt that I will. I’ve actually pretty much lost interest, but I’m too far in to want to DNF it.
⯈ The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan Been reading since July 2023. Would like to finish by the end of this year.

October is the month I focus on Victorian literature or books about the time period. I don't exclusively read Victorian, but I read as much as I can. I am also reading a Shakespeare play as I listen to the audiobook each month this year, so I will continue with that goal.

Currently reading
✔ Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Planned
✔ The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
✔ Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau
Silas Marner by George Eliot (reread) audiobook
✔ What the Shepherd Saw by Thomas Hardy
✔ Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life by Lucy Worsley
✔ Richard III by William Shakespeare

following success in September for my more circumspect approach,
I will declare 4 for October:
Room at the Top Braine, John 1957 (Anthony Burgess 99 List)
The Little World of Don Camillo Guareschi, Giovannino 1948 (Short Stories)
Notes from the Underground Dostoevsky, Fyodor 1864 (Group Read)
A Void ("La Disparition") Perec, Georges 1969 (who wouldn't want to read a novel written without using the letter "e"?!)

Here is a list of classics I hope to read this month.

🍵 The King Must Die by Mary Renault Oct 02 ⭐⭐⭐
🍵 The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes Oct 04 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
🍵 The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois reread Oct 10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
🍵 "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman Oct 10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
🍵 The Chosen by Chaim Potok ⭐⭐⭐
🍵 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Oct 27 ⭐⭐⭐
🍵 All Around the Moon by Jules Verne Oct 31 ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

* The Golden Compass byPhilip Pullman
* Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne

RJs OCTOBER READS

Will Finish
Coach Wooden One-on-One by John Wooden and Jay Carty
Notes from Underground by Notes from Underground
Dubliners by James Joyce
The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Digger's Game by George V. Higgins
Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Won't Finish But Will Be Reading
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume III: The Nebula Winners edited by Arthur C. Clarke
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote
The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
Asimov's Chronology of the World: The History of the World From the Big Bang to Modern Times by Isaac Asimov

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "RJs OCTOBER READS

Will Finish
Coach Wooden One-on-One by John Wooden and Jay Carty
Notes from Underground by [book:Notes from Underground|49..."



I saw the Science Fiction Hall of Fame III on your list. "Passengers" by Robert Silverberg is a story I really like.

To Finish in October:
Early Poems by W.B. Yeats
The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism by Nicola Humble
The Odyssey by Homer
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin

To Finish at Some Point:
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Cymbeline by William Shakespeare

Options:
The Essential Horace Odes, Epodes, Satires and Epistles by Horatius
OR
The Aeneid by Virgil
And Maybe
Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rølvaag

Genesis and 2 Peter (Bible #61), ESV for New Life Bible Study

DONE The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides for my in-person library book club

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens for the Everyone Has Read This But Me Long-Read

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte for the Everyone Has Read This But Me Catch-Up

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen for the Everyone Has Read This But Me Classics

Changing Places by David Lodge for Reading the 20th Century

The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate for Reading the 20th Century

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge for Read Women

Ivanhoe by Walter Scott for Catching Up On Classics

Abigail by Magda Szabo for Women's Classic Literature Enthusiasts

A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie for Catching Up On Classics

Victober reads:
DONE A Scandal in Bohemia - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

DONE Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde

DONE Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Ha! As usual I read a lot of things I liked, but I'm super bad at predicting what they will be! Three of these were discussion threads from either this or last month. I try to join about two threads each month.


The King Must Die by Mary Renault (1958) October 11, 2024 4
What the Shepherd Saw by Thomas Hardy (1898) October 18, 2024 3*
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy (1886) Oct 26, 2024 5* reread.

I also read

Death do us part by Robert Silverberg (1994) October 6, 2024 4*
The City by Ray Bradbury (1950) October 19, 2024 5*
The Queen of Air and Darkness and Other Stories Title Story by Poul Anderson (1971) 10/21/2024 4*
Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book by Betty Crocker (1950) October 21, 2024 5*
Inside Earth by Poul Anderson (1951) October 29, 2024 5* - reread
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (1934) October 31, 2024 4*

my Core 4 for October were safely gathered in:

Room at the Top Braine, John - 4 Stars
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Little World of Don Camillo Guareschi, Giovannino - 4
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Notes from the Underground Dostoevsky, Fyodor - 2.5
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A Void ("La Disparition") Perec, Georges - 4
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...