Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

What are you thinking about reading this month?

Finally my exams are over and that means more time for reading. Yay! Here's a rough plan:
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (I slowly want to finish this over April. Every story so far has been interesting.)
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
Narcissus and Goldmund
Fifth Business
Effi Briest

I really liked Narcissus and Goldmund Ila, hope you do too.

Plan is to finish reading The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett. This is taking me awhile for some reason. And then I would like to read...

Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCartney
The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christy (re-read)
Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition by Walt Whitman
The Children of Green Knowe and The River at Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston

April goals

Challenge books to read/finish in April
✔️Anselm of Canterbury: Three Philosophical Dialogues (1086)
✔️Shakespeare: King Lear (1605)
✔️Tennyson: Idylls of the King (1885)
✔️Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
✔️London: To Build a Fire (1902)
✔️Neruda: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924)
✔️Wodehouse: Very Good, Jeeves! (1930)
Kesselring: Arsenic and Old Lace (1939)
✔️White: The Once and Future King (1958)
✔️Duras: The Lover (1984)

Non-challenge books to read/finish in April
✔️Plutarch, tr. Waterfield: Greek Lives (100)
✔️Pratchett: The Truth (2000, 448)
✔️Erpenbeck: Kairos (2021)
✔️Genberg: The Details (2022)
✔️North: House of Odysseus (2023, 432)

Long reads
✔️Sophocles, ed. Grene/Lattimore: Sophocles I (-451)
Sophocles, tr. Fainlight/Littman: The Theban Plays (-451)
✔️Aristotle: Politics (-351)
Melville: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories (1853)

Added later
✔️Harding: This Other Eden (2023) - Non-challenge
✔️Gaiman: Neverwhere (1996) - Group Read
✔️Schwab: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020) - Non-challenge

Challenge completions this month
Challenge #4 - Members Choice Challenge - 4/25/24
*Challenge #5 - Short Story Challenge - 4/29/24
Challenge #10 - The Half a Millennium Challenge with a Sour Lemon Twist of Difficult - 4/18/24
Challenge #11 - Old and New Linked Categories - 4/25/24
Challenge #12 - Series Books – Start, Continue, Complete - 4/29/24
Challenge #13 - Travel the World One Continent at a Time - 4/17/24
Bingo Challenge - 4/25/24

*I finished this last month, counting short plays and essays. This month I finished 24+ legit short stories.

My challenges are doing great this year - and I even have plenty of time for "non-challenge" reading

Currently reading
Foucault’s Pendulum (bingo challenge, catchup)
Little Dorrit (bingo challenge, catchup)
Manual til dårlig stemning (non-challenge)
Not Without Laughter (audio, sync)

To read
Barbar: Tavshedens objekt (poetry, non-challenge)
Camille (non-challenge)
Turist ved et tilfælde (old&new challenge)
Hedeselskabet (non-challenge)
The Glass Menagerie (bingo challenge)
A History of What Comes Next (non-challenge)
Have His Carcase (Dorothy L. Sayers series challenge)
Några steg mot tystnaden: En roman om fångna (nobel laureate challenge)
Blodigt bryllup (non-challenge)
Heartstopper: Volume Five (non-challenge)
The Heartstopper Yearbook (non-challenge) - started
Killer Dolphin (Ngaio Marsh series challenge)
Wolf Hall (ongoing birthyear challenge)
Et casestudie (non-challenge) - started

Continuing and finishing
⬦ Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land ★★★★☆
⬦ How to Say Babylon [Almost a week into May now, and not quite done with this, but so close.]
⬦ Rebecca ★★★★☆
⬦ The Way We Live Now —Finally! Started this in September, and I have actually been reading at a pretty consistent pace, but as some of you know, it’s a long one. ★★★★☆

Continuing and not finishing
⬦ Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

Starting and finishing
⬦ ¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons ★★★★★
⬦ The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder —probably finishing right at the end of the month Actually took me until May 4, but I was close. ★★★★☆
⬦ The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering ★★★★☆

Starting and not finishing
⬦ Dancing with the Octopus: The Telling of a True Crime
⬦ Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
⬦ The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

RJs APRIL READS

Will Finish
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Clockers by Richard Price

Will Be Reading But Won't Finish This Month
The Getaway by Jim Thompson
Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter (or whichever book wins the Group Read Poll in the Pulp Fiction club)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors by Stephen E. Ambrose
Night Shift by Stephen King
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Roughing It by Mark Twain
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume II B edited by Ben Bova
Asimov's Chronology of the World: The History of the World From the Big Bang to Modern Times by Isaac Asimov

ooh^ Wasp Factory and Clockers - couple of my faves there!

my April "Core 6":
Picture Of Dorian Gray, The Wilde, Oscar 1891 (re-read/group read)
Great Fortune, The Manning, Olivia 1960
Shahnameh Ferdowsi, Abolqasem 1010 (first half)
Some Prefer Nettles Tanizaki, Jun'ichiro 1928
Concrete Island Ballard, J. G. 1974
Songlines, The Chatwin, Bruce 1987

I'll be happy if I can finish all three Khaled Hosseini books.

The Kite Runner (re-read)
A Thousand Splendid Suns (re-read)
And the Mountains Echoed

Lots of good reading going on here. Here's my plan.

Continue
Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner
The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany, Martin Kitchen

Group Reads
Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
To Build a Fire, Jack London

Series
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (re-reading the first two to get to the third I haven't read yet)

Darren wrote: "ooh^ Wasp Factory and Clockers - couple of my faves there!..."

I'm about halfway through Clockers - wow! I didn't really realize how long it is. There's a lot of detail which gives it the ring of authenticity, but also made it a little hard to get into in the beginning. I saw the film a long time ago but don't remember much of it. I just started Wasp Factory so I don't have many thoughts yet but it's short so I'll finish it in another week or so.

I have not put any books on a list this month, because I filed my retirement papers this month. It's a lot of work this preparing to retire!!

Already read or currently reading
Gathering Blue
The Teacher
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

Plan on reading
All of Us Villains
Bunny
The Outsider

Possible DNF
The Virgin Suicides

I'm trying to just get myself into a regular reading routine again, so I'm going to try finish something accessible and hopefully engaging, William Golding's Lord Of The Flies. So far I'm enjoying it :)

Lynn wrote: "I have not put any books on a list this month, because I filed my retirement papers this month. It's a lot of work this preparing to retire!!"

Congrats, Lynn! I know retirement is well deserved, and you will be missed at your school.

Lynn wrote: "I have not put any books on a list this month, because I filed my retirement papers this month. It's a lot of work this preparing to retire!!"

Wow! Lynn! Congratulations on your pending retirement! I'm sure you'll miss teaching and the kids, but you will definitely enjoy retirement. Keep working on those papers -- it will be worth it! ;)

Terris wrote: "Lynn wrote: "I have not put any books on a list this month, because I filed my retirement papers this month. It's a lot of work this preparing to retire!!"

Wow! Lynn! Congratulations on your pendi..."

Thanks. I plan on doing some substituting for a while, but I really don't want full-time anymore. This is what I was going to do three years ago, when I got a phone call asking me to come back full-time.

Laurie wrote: "Lynn wrote: "I have not put any books on a list this month, because I filed my retirement papers this month. It's a lot of work this preparing to retire!!"

Congrats, Lynn! I know retirement is wel..."

Thanks Laurie!

Lynn wrote: "I have not put any books on a list this month, because I filed my retirement papers this month. It's a lot of work this preparing to retire!!"

Congratulations on your retirement!

Congrats, Lynn! Don't answer that phone this time, and enjoy settling into a brand new wonderful routine. :-)

so my April "Core 6" went like this:
Picture Of Dorian Gray, The Wilde, Oscar (re-read/group read) - 4 Stars
Great Fortune, The Manning, Olivia - 3
Some Prefer Nettles Tanizaki, Jun'ichiro - 4
Concrete Island Ballard, J. G. - 4
Songlines, The Chatwin, Bruce - 3

Shahnameh Ferdowsi, Abolqasem (first half) - only got to 22%, but enjoying and will continue...

Is there a May Reading Plans post?

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "Is there a May Reading Plans post?"

Sorry RJ. I thought I made one. I guess it didn't post.

April Reading:

Short stories
The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak (1958) April 17, 2024 4*

In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras (1948) April 24, 2024 4*

Novella
Exploration Team by Murray Leinster (1956) April 26, 2024 3*