Tag Archives: classics

The Classics Club: what I got for The Classics Spin #25

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The Classics Club
2020-2025

MY FULL CLASSICS CLUB LIST IS HERE

The Classics Spin #25

Twitter hashtag: #ccspin

For this Classics spin #25, I got #14, which on my list was

The Letter Killers Club

I usually don’t read many short stories, but I just finished listening to a collection and read another one, and the spin ends up on a collection of Russian short stories!
I’m really looking forward to reading The Letter Killers Club (1926), as I don’t know the author Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, and it sounds deliciously meta-literature.

“Original Writers are professional killers of conceptions. The logic of the Letter Killers Club, a secret society of “conceivers” who commit nothing to paper on principle, is strict and uncompromising. Every Saturday they meet in a fire-lit room hung with blank black bookshelves to present their “pure and unsubstantiated” conceptions: a rehearsal of Hamlet hijacked by an actor who vanishes with the role; the double life of a medieval merry cleric derailed by a costume change; a machine-run world that imprisons men’s minds while conscripting their bodies; a dead Roman scribe stranded this side of the River Acheron. The overarching scene of this short novel is set in Soviet Moscow, in the ominous 1920s. Known only by pseudonym, like Chesterton’s anarchists in fin-de-siècle London, the Letter Killers are as mistrustful of one another as they are mesmerized by their despotic president. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is at his philosophical and fantastical best in this extended meditation on madness.”

Have you read it? What did you think?

It’s never too late to challenge yourself to (re)discover the classics and connect and have fun with other Classics lovers. See here what this is all about.

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Here is what I got for the previous Classics Spins:

A wizard of Earthsea Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Arsene Lupin

For Classics Spin #14, I got #1: A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin
For Classics Spin, #15, I got #12: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
For Classics Spin, #16, I got #4: Arsène Lupin, by Maurice Leblanc

The Face of Another A Moveable Feast The Dream of the Red Chamber

For Classics Spin, #17, I got #3: The Face of Another, by Kobo Abe (not yet reviewed!!)

For Classics Spin, #19, I got #1: A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

For Classics Spin, #20, I got # 19: The Dream of the Red Chamber
by Cao Xueqin

On the Edge of the World  Sanshiro The Sleepwalkers

For Classics Spin, #21, I got # 5: On the Edge of the World, by Nikolai Leskov

For Classics Spin, #22, I got # 13: Sanshiro, by Natsume Soseki

For Classics Spin, #24, I got # 18: The Sleepwalkers, by Hermann Broch, which I didn’t take time to read!!

 

📚 📚 📚 

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK?
WHAT DID YOU THINK?
IF YOU ARE MEMBER OF THE CLASSICS CLUB,
WHAT BOOK DID YOU GET FOR THIS SPIN?

MY FULL CLASSICS CLUB LIST IS HERE

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The Classics Club 2020-2025

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The Classics Club
November 2020 – November 2025

I’m thrilled to present to you my 3rd list of 137 titles for The Classics Club.
I stupidly thought our lists had to have 50 titles, but I discovered on the Wall of Honor that we could choose as many titles as we want.

Here is my new table, with color codes for nonfiction, mystery, and Japanese, three prominent categories. Plus my two special projects!
I will obviously update the table as I go along.

Why 137 titles?
I just added one title to my previous list to make it to 50,
plus my Bible (49 books to go)
and my Hercule Poirot (38 books to go)  projects.
Hence 137.
And I am planning on being more serious with my spins!

How did I come up with these titles?
Simple: I opened my To-Be-Read Goodreads shelf, and put them in order of publication, and I picked the 50 oldest titles! Those are titles I added there along the years.

Be patient, it may take a few seconds for the file below to show up

You can also click on this link to access it.

I’m curious:

  1. How many of these have you read?
  2. Which one/ones is/are your favorite?

See my 2nd list here.
And my first list here.

Club hashtags on Twitter:

OUT OF THESE 50 TITLES
HOW MANY HAVE YOU READ?
WHICH ONE IS YOUR FAVORITE?

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The Classics Club 2019-2024: 2nd list recap

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The Classics Club
September 7, 2019 – September 7, 2024

You read it right: I had five years to read my 2nd list of 50 titles for The Classics Club.
But I actually managed to read/listen to them between September 2019 and November 2020!
See my 2nd list here. As usual, 34 titles were added to my original list!
And my first list here.
Alas, I’m so so far behind as for reviews.

📚 Here is a little recap:

Besides Bible books, the oldest title was published in 1824:
The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe
And the most recent in 1953:
Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke

📚 Genre:

  • 2 scifi
  • 3 nonfiction
  • 4 fiction
  • 15 Bible
  • 22 mysteries

Both scifi were super disappointing.
In nonfiction, my favorite was

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

In  fiction, I so loved

Parnassus on Wheels

In mystery, this one was a big revelation:

The Lodger

I read the first 9 Maigret mysteries by Georges Simenon.
I really liked the ambiance, as explained for instance in this post.

And I’m really thrilled by my current project or listening to all of Hercule Poirot, as the first story with him was published one hundred years ago.
I enjoy this experience as much I enjoyed listening to all of Sherlock Holmes in 2017. I am more and more discovering all the intricacies of the main character.
And Agatha Christie’s plots are so genially put together, with not two alike, even if several are the type of closed room mystery.

So far, I have listened to 8 and read 1, which is actually a play!
Most of these were narrated by the amazing Hugh Fraser. I did watch the BBc series, so it’s really neat to find his voice again. He is so so good at doing all kinds of different characters.
And a couple were with David Suchet, who’s really dedicated all his life to Hercule Poirot.

As I haven’t written any review of these, I’d like to share here something I have discovered, thanks to the audio format. It never struck me when I was reading them (I did read a few Hercule Poirot books in the past).
We all know Hercule is a francophone Belgian, and his English is not perfect.
When you read/hear him, you may notice some awkward phrases and think, well, he’s not a native English speaker and not think more about it.
But there’s actually more to the story. I realized that his mistakes are based on French constructions. The latest most obvious example I encountered is in Lord Edgware Dies. At one point, Hercule tells Captain Hastings, “You mock yourself at me.”
In French, the verb ‘to mock’ is indeed not a transitive verb, but a pronominal verb (se moquer de), so to say: you mock me, we do literally say “you mock yourself at me” (vous vous moquez de moi).
There are many similar examples like this in all the Hercule Poirot stories I have listened to so far, which shows that either Agatha Christie was fluent in French, or she did extensive research to make Hercule very real. Her family spent a year in France, that probably helped, though I don’t know how old she was then. I so need to read her biography!

📚 Format:

  • 18 print
  • 32 audio

📚 Authors:

  • 5 by a Japanese author
  • 6 by an American author
  • 10 by a French author

Club hashtags on Twitter:

DID YOU LIKE THE BOOKS HIGHLIGHTED 
IN THIS POST?

COME BACK TOMORROW
TO DISCOVER MY NEWEST LIST!

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