What is the spin?

It’s easy. At your blog, before next Sunday 17th October, 2021, create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list.

This is your Spin List.

You have to read one of these twenty books by the end of the spin period.

Try to challenge yourself. For example, you could list five Classics Club books you have been putting off, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favourite author, re-reads, ancients, non-fiction, books in translation — whatever you choose.)

On Sunday 17th, October, we’ll post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by the 12th December, 2021. That’s an eight week reading window for this spin. You may like to stack your list with books that you know are do-able for you within that time frame.

We’ll check in here on Sunday the 12th December, 2021 to see who made it the whole way and finished their spin book!

How I Chose The Books On This List:

I haven't read a lot of classic books, lately.  So I did what most people do when they don't have answers.  I Googled "Classic Books".  And there, I found a predictable list of the classic novels one would find in any Western literature class.  And I realized that all of the books were written by, almost exclusively ,white European men. 

Now, one of my pet peeves is the lack representation in the Arts.  So I decided that my list needed to have novels from a variety of sources.  I particularly wanted to place books that are from various places in the world.  I hope that this challenge pushes me to read more of these classic books.

Here's my list:

1. Middlemarch; George Eliot
2.  Nada; Carmen LeFloret
3. The Enchanted April; Elizabeth von Arnim
4. Mrs. Dalloway; Virginia Woolf
5. A Passage to India; E.M. Forster
6.  The Book of Lamentations; Rosario Castellanos
7. On The Road; Jack Kerouac
8. The Quiet American; Graham Greene
9. The Death of Artemio Cruz; Carlos Fuentes
10. Things Fall Apart; Chinua Achebe
11. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; John Lee Carre
12. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting; Milan Kundura 
13. Oscar And Lucinda; Peter Carey
14. Northern Lights; Phillip Pullman 
15. Pedro Páramo; Juan Rulfo
16. Their Eyes Were Watching God; Zora Neale Hurston
17. Roots; Alex Haley
18. The Women of Brewster Place; Gloria Naylor
19. Midnight’s Children; Salmon Rushdie
20. A Wrinkle in Time; Madeleine L’Engle