Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Challenge #1 - Old & New TBR Challenge
Choose 12 books you want to read and list three alternates, to use as substitutes should one of your choices need to be replaced. You do not have to read all 15 books listed. 12 books read is a complete challenge. Any books read is a success, as you will have reduced your TBR

1914 and earlier
✔ 1. The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories 1/28/2025 ***1/2
2. On the Basis of Morality (currently reading)
3. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

1915-2005/New School
❌ 4. Murphy
✔ 5. The Tartar Steppe 4/23/2025 **1/2
✔ 6. Watership Down 7/18/2025 ****1/2

Six Bookshelf Dust Collectors
❌ 7. House of Leaves
✔ 8. The Girl in the Tower 6/26/2025 *****
9. The Book of Sand
❌ 10. Meditation finished 12/24/2024 so disqualified
11. Watt
12. Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas

Alternates
✔ A-1. The Necklace 1/4/2025 ***1/2
✔ A-2. 1984 1/19/2025 *****
A-3. Brodie's Report

✔COMPLETED✔
Challenge #2 - Members Choice Challenge
Choose one book per category/genre for a total of 9 books.

✔ 1. 19th Century or Older - The Damned Thing, Deluxe Edition: Weird and Ghostly Tales 3/17/2025 ***1/2
✔ 2. 20th Century - In Praise of Darkness 2/7/2025 **** and Watership Down 7/18/2025 ****1/2
✔ 3. 21st Century - The Girl in the Tower 6/26/2025 *****
✔ 4. Nonfiction - Letter to My Father by Franz Kafka 5/22/2025 *****
✔ 5. An Author never read before - The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati4/23/2025 **1/2
✔ 6. Diversity, read a book from a religion, culture, country, or race different than yours - The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories 1/28/2025 ***1/2
✔ 7. Members Choice Genre: Philosophy - The Last Messiah 1/14/2025 *****
✔ 8. Members Choice Genre: Science/Speculative Fiction - 1984 1/19/2025 *****
✔ 9. Members Choice Genre: Short Story Collection by author - The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories 6/8/2025 *****

Science Fiction. Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Suspense, Young Adult, Nonfiction, Poetry, Romance, etc.

Second Challenge #2 - Members Choice Challenge
Choose one book per category/genre for a total of 9 books.
1. 19th Century or Older - Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
2. 20th Century - Brodie's Report
✔ 3. 21st Century - Dungeon Crawler Carl 9/1/2025 ***
4. Nonfiction - Petrushka: The Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre (currently reading)
✔ 5. An Author never read before - A Dog of Flanders 6/28/2025 *****
6. Diversity, read a book from a religion, culture, country, or race different than yours - Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas by Patrick Modiano (Paris, France)
7. Members Choice Genre: Philosophy - On the Basis of Morality (currently reading)
8. Members Choice Genre: Post-Modern/Fantasy - The Third Policeman (currently reading)
9. Members Choice Genre: Short Story Collection by author - The Book of Sand

✔ COMPLETED✔
Challenge #3 - Expand Your Horizon with New Authors

Seek out at least six (6) authors that you have never previously read, from any genre or era you want.

✔ 1. Peter Wessel Zapffe 1/14/2025 *****
✔ 2. Octavia E. Butler 1/20/2025 ***
✔ 3. Ambrose Bierce 3/17/2025 ***1/2
✔ 4. Dino Buzzati 4/23/2025 **1/2
✔ 5. Mircea Eliade 5/5/2025 ***
✔ 6. Ouida 6/28/2025 *****
✔ 7. Susan Sontag 6/29/2025 ****1/2
✔ 8. Matt Dinniman 9/1/2025 ***
Catriona Kelly
Patrick Modiano

✔ COMPLETED✔
Challenge #4 - Short Story Challenge
Read 18 short stories.

✔SET 1 COMPLETED✔
The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories
✔ 1. Ward No. 6 1/6/2025 ****
✔ 2. The Kiss 1/22/2025 ***
✔ 3. Betrothed 1/23/2025 ***1/2
✔ 4. The Black Monk 1/26/2025 ***1/2
✔ 5. Neighbors 1/28/2025 **1/2
✔ 6. The Student 1/28/2025 **

The Bet and Other Stories
✔ 7. The Bet 2/15/2025 *****

The Damned Thing, Deluxe Edition: Weird and Ghostly Tales
✔ 8. The Damned Thing 2/16/2025 ***
✔ 9. The Middle Toe of the Right Foot 2/15/2025 ***
✔ 10. The Suitable Surroundings 2/16/2025 ***
✔ 11. An Inhabitant of Carcosa 2/16/2025 ***
✔ 12. The Moonlit Road 2/16/2025 ***
✔ 13. The Spook House 2/17/2025 **1/2
✔ 14. The Death of Halpin Frayser 3/3/2025 ***
✔ 15. Moxon's Master 3/16/2025 ***
✔ 16. An Adventure at Brownville 3/16/2025 **1/2
✔ 17. The Eyes of the Panther 3/17/2025 ***
✔ 18. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 3/17/2025 ****1/2

✔ SET 2 COMPLETED✔
In Praise of Darkness
✔ 19. Foreward 2/1/2025 *****
✔ 20. The Ethnographer 2/1/2025 ***1/2
✔ 21. Pedro Salvadores: For Juan Murchison 2/7/2025 ****
✔ 22. Legend 2/7/2025 ***1/2
✔ 23. A Prayer 2/7/2025 ***
✔ 24. His End and His Beginning 2/7/2025 ****

Short Single Stories
✔ 25. The Necklace 1/4/2025 ***
✔ 26. Bloodchild 1/20/2025 ***
✔ 27. The Last Answer 3/23/2025 ***1/2

The Complete Stories
✔ 28. The Judgement 3/5/2025 ****
✔ 29. The Stoker 3/25/2025 ***
✔ 30. A New Lawyer 4/25/2025 ***1/2
✔ 31. A Country Doctor 4/25/2025 ****

Stories from Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic
✔ 32. The Child Who Believed 3/26/2025 ***
      It's a Good Life read 7/28/2024 **** from
      The Weird: A Compendium of Strange & Dark Stories
✔ 33. The Door, by E.B. White 4/4/2025 ***
✔ 34. Mysterious Kor 4/24/2025 ***
✔ 35. Nights at Serampore 5/5/2025 ***
✔ 36. The Dead Fiddler 5/9/2025 ***

⎯ ⎯ ⎯ SET 3⎯ ⎯ ⎯
Stories from Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic
✔ 37. The Phoenix by Sylvia Townsend Warner 5/14/2025 **
✔ 38. The Spider by Ewers Hanns Heinz 5/19/2025 ****
✔ 39. Changeling by Dorothy K. Haynes 5/29/2025 **
✔ 40. The July Ghost by A.S. Byatt 6/5/2025 ***
✔ 41. Poor Girl by Elizabeth Taylor 6/20/2025 ***1/2
✔ 42. Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched by May Sinclair 6/21/2025 **
✔ 43. The Complete Gentleman by Amos Tutuola 7/1/2025 ***
✔ 43. The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 7/6/2025 **
✔ 44. The Sausage by Friedrich Dürrenmatt 7/19/2025 ? I didn't get it **
✔ 45. Mummy to the Rescue by Angus Wilson 8/11/2025 **
✔ 46. Aghwee The Sky Monster by Kenzaburō Ōe 9/1/2025 ***

47. Liliana Hecker Berkeley or Mariana of the Universe
48. The Saint Antonia White
49. The Ghost of Firozsha Baag Rohinton Mistry
50. The Miracle of Ash Wednesday Yevgeny Zamyatin
51. Hortense Calisher Heartburn
52. Ann Bridge The Accident
53. Joyce Marshall The Old Woman
54. F. Scott Fitzgerald A Short Trip Home

Joseph Conrad The Brute
Ethel Wilson Mr Sleepwalker

⎯ ⎯ ⎯ SET 4⎯ ⎯ ⎯
Stories from The Book of Sand
Table of Contents
    The Other
    Unlike
    The Congress
    There Are More Things
    The Sect of the Thirty
    The Night of the Gifts
    The Mirror and the Mask
    "Undr"
    A Weary Man's Utopia
    The Bribe
    Avelino Arredondo
    The Disk
    The Book of Sand (already read)
    Afterword

Stories from Brodie's Report
Table of Contents
    Foreward
    The Interloper (may be the same as "The Intruder" from The Aleph and Other Stories)
    Unworthy
    The Story of Rosendo Juarez (see "Rosendo's Tale" from The Aleph and Other Stories)
    The Encounter (need to reread)
    Juan Murana
    The Elderly Lady
    The Duel
    The Other Duel
    Guayaquil
    The Gospel According to Mark
    Brodie's Report

✔ A Dog of Flanders by Ouida 6/28/2025 *****

The Complete Stories
✔ Investigations of a Dog
 • Description of a Struggle

Kafka Four Stories: A Country Doctor, the Hunger Artist, the Little Woman, Report to the Academy
✔ A Country Doctor
✔ The Hunger Artist
 • The Little Woman
✔ Report to the Academy

Challenge #5 - Century Challenge
Read one book from 10 consecutive decades, one century total.
✔ 1900-1909 Betrothed (1903) 6/23/2025 ***
✔ 1910-1919 The Stoker (1913) 3/25/2025 ***
✔ 1920-1929 One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello 7/30/2025 ***
✔ 1930-1939 The Last Messiah by Peter Wessel Zapffe 1/14/2025 *****
✔ 1940-1949 1984 by George Orwell 1/19/2025 *****
1950-1959 Watt by Samuel Beckett
✔ 1960-1969 In Praise of Darkness by Jorge Luis Borges 2/7/2025 ****
✔ 1970-1979 Watership Down by Richard Adams 7/18/2025
✔ 1980-1989 Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler 1/20/2025 ***
1990-1999 Petrushka: The Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre by Catriona Kelly (currently reading)

Challenge #7- Series Books – Start, Continue, Complete

Each member is to decide what they wish to accomplish. For challenge purposes, read at least two books. That is only 1 every six months. This is doable

I plan to continue with book 2, The Girl in the Tower, in series The Winternight Trilogy.

I plan to complete the Alice in Wonderland books by finishing Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

Status:
✔ The Girl in the Tower 6/26/2025 ***** looking forward to the 3rd book in the trilogy

Challenge #9 - Rereading - Some do Some don't
Choose five or more books you found worthy of rereading. This year’s challenge is, reread two of your reread selections.

Books I'd Love to Reread
1. The Shadow
✔ 2. The Unexpected Guest 4/30/2025 *****
   I had slightly misremembered a few details from the ending,
   so it was great to have been encouraged to reread with this challenge.
3. Philomel Cottage: A Short Story
4. What Are the Chances? Probability Made Clear
5. Our Mutual Friend
6. In the Penal Colony
7. The Third Policeman [currently reading]
8. Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith

Read Again in 2025
✔ 1. The Unexpected Guest 4/30/2025 *****
2.

Challenge #12– Fiction/Non-Fiction
This is always a tough one for me. We'll see.

Pick three subjects of interest and read a fiction book and a non-fiction book about that subject. Total number of books for this challenge is six.

✔ Kafka
Fiction: The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories by Franz Kafka 6/8/2025 *****
Non-Fiction: Letter to His Father 5/22/2025 *****

Russian History
Fiction: The Chekhov Collection of Short Stories by Anton Chekhov 1/28/2025 ***1/2
Non-Fiction: Petrushka: The Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre by Catriona Kelly (currently reading)

Mathematics in Wonderland with Martin Gardner
Fiction: The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition annotated by Martin Gardner
Non-Fiction: The Magic and Mystery of Numbers by Martin Gardner 8/11/2025 **

===For 2026===
Proust
Fiction: Swann's Way
Non-Fiction: Proust by Samuel Beckett

Evolution
Fiction: Galapagos
Non-Fiction: On the Origin of Species

Enjoy your planning! Our Mutual Friend is my favourite Dickens I think, and Watership Down is one of my all-time favourites. You're off to a great start!

✔ COMPLETED✔
Challenge #15 - Award Winners
Seek out and read two award winning books.

1. Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas by Patrick Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 1972 Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française, and the 1978 Prix Goncourt for his novel "Rue des boutiques obscures".

2. A book by Samuel Beckett awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.

✔ 3. One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature. 7/30/2025 ***

✔ 4. Watership Down by Richard Adams won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1972. 7/18/2025 *****

✔ 5. Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler won the Hugo and the Nebula Award1/20/2025 ***

I'm also planning on rereading Through the Looking Glass this year, I haven't read it since I was a child. And I'll vouch for Watership Down, I've reread it several times. Enjoy your books!

Looks like a wonderful plan. Do have fun!

Teri-K wrote: "I'm also planning on rereading Through the Looking Glass this year, I haven't read it since I was a child. And I'll vouch for Watership Down, I've reread it several times. Enjoy your books!"

Great. I am reading the two Alice books via The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition but never got past the first page of "Looking Glass" so this challenge was the perfect motivator.

I am also hoping to get to Watership Down in 2025, Klowey. Good luck with your challenge.

Klowey, let me know if you'd like me to delete message 9, so all your challenge messages can be grouped together.

Wobbley wrote: "Klowey, let me know if you'd like me to delete message 9, so all your challenge messages can be grouped together."

Thank you for the offer. I was rather touched that you were the first to comment so, I think it looks very nice where it is and will inspire me. :-)

Klowey wrote: "Thank you for the offer. I was rather touched that you were the first to comment so, I think it looks very nice where it is and will inspire me. :-)"

Fantastic!

Love the 3 novellas by P. Modiano! I've read his novels....but this book looks like one I need! Good luck with your challenges!

Wobbley wrote: "Enjoy your planning! Our Mutual Friend is my favourite Dickens I think, and Watership Down is one of my all-time favourites. You're off to a great start!"

I think I missed you mentioning Our Mutual Friend is your fav Dickens. I loved it and it was the first Dickens I read. I have since read A Christmas Carol and liked that too. I've seen several films based on other Dickens novels.

I chose Our Mutual Friend because from reading about it, it sounded like it would most interest me. I like post-modernism and I think OMF was very modern in its structure, etc. (I simliarly liked Bartleby the Scrivener). On that basis I was thinking about trying Bleak House. Since Our Mutual Friend is your fav, which of his books would you suggest?

Klowey wrote: "Since Our Mutual Friend is your fav, which of his books would you suggest?"

I think I've read 6 Dickens novels, which is really only scratching the surface of his oeuvre. I've never read Bleak House. Of the ones I've read, the one that came closest to Our Mutual Friend for me was Little Dorrit. I'm thinking of tackling Nicholas Nickleby this year, based on recommendations from others in this group.

Whichever you pick, I hope you'll love it!

I’m adding Our Mutual Friend to my TBR, based on both comments. Thanks!

Terry wrote: "I’m adding Our Mutual Friend to my TBR, based on both comments. Thanks!"

It was the last novel he wrote and from what I've read he was experimenting when he wrote it. From the wikipedia entry:

Some reviewers suggested that Dickens was, in fact, experimenting with structure, and that the characters considered somewhat flat and not recognized by the contemporary reviewers were meant rather to be true representations of the Victorian working class and the key to understanding the structure of the society depicted by Dickens in the novel.

That said, FYI: I especially like modern writing, 20th c., and post-modernism. That is why I chose OMF to read and perhaps is why I liked it. While it includes Dicken's usual social satire and scathing critique of injustice, I sensed a modernism in it. Another writer from the 19th c. that I thought was amazingly modern for his time was Herman Melville when I read Bartleby the Scrivener.

Wobbley wrote: "Klowey wrote: "Since Our Mutual Friend is your fav, which of his books would you suggest?"

I think I've read 6 Dickens novels, which is really only scratching the surface of his oeuvre. I've never..."

Thank you for the recommendation. I had been interested in Little Dorrit. Adding it to my to-read list.