I never got around to reading Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac which was the novel picked as a result of the Classics Club Spin #43 . Let’s hope I do better with Spin #44.
The rules are the same as always:
- List 20 books still to be read from our Classics Club list.
- Read whichever number is picked when the wheel is spun on Sunday May 17.
I’ve refreshed the list a little, adding in The Conquest of Plassans which is the next book in the series by Emile Zola and They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple, an author I’ve not read previously. I’ve also swapped out one of the Welsh classics for the The Birds by the Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas.
Here’s my new spin list.
- The Nose by Nikolay Gogol (1836)
- A Sentimental Education by Gustav Flaubert (1869)
- The Conquest of Plassans/La Conquête de Plassans by Emile Zola (1874)
- A Study In Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (1886)
- New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)
- What Maisie Knew by Henry James (1897)
- Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)
- The Painted Veil by W Somerset Maugham (1925)
- Quartet by Jean Rhys (1929)
- Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)
- They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple (1934)
- Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan (1938)
- On the Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleža
- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
- Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)
- The Far Cry by Emma Smith (1949)
- In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming (1953)
- The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas (1957)
- The Bitter Glass by Eilis Dillon (1958) — Ireland
- A Toy Epic by Emyr Humphreys (1958) — Wales
Whichever of these books “wins” the spin, I’ll be aiming to read it before the “deadline” of July 5 2026.
If this list was yours, which titles would you be hoping to see come up in the spin??
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