Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

So are you following the monthly group reads, following your yearly plan, or just grabbing books on a whim to take to the beach or stay in with your air conditioning? Planning threads are a gold mine for reading ideas. What are your ideas this month?

A Fable William Faulkner ***
The Book of Records Madeleine Thien ****
A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley****
The Odessa File Frederick Forsyth***
Bonjour Tristesse Françoise Sagan ****
A Gathering of Old Men Ernest J. Gaines ****
Three Summers Margarita Liberaki ****
The Deserters Mathias Énard ****
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Tom Stoppard ****
Split the Lark: Selected Poems R.T. Smith ****
The Man of Property John Galsworthy *****
Giovanni’s Room James Baldwin *****
Endling Maria Reva *****
Red Sword Bora Chung ***
The Möbius Book Catherine Lacey ***
Call for the Dead John Le Carré ****
Meditations on First Philosophy René Descartes ****
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Tom Franklin ***
Taiwan Travelogue Yáng Shuāng-zǐ *****
Sweet Thursday John Steinbeck ****
Load in Nine Times: Poems Frank X. Walker ****
The Trick of It Michael Frayn ***





Shorts:
A Lost Opportunity Leo Tolstoy

Continuing:
The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever
The Red and the Black Stendhal ***
The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 Rick Atkinson
Women Who Run With the Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Simone de Beauvoir
Lili is Crying Hélène Bessette
Robinson Crusoe (Norton Critical Editions) by Daniel Defoe (23-Feb-1994) Paperback Daniel Defoe

I'm reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full by Conrad Black side by side.

Then for Jane Austen July I'll be reading Mansfield Park, which I never read before.

July is holiday month, but also less time on the sofa - I have some reading planned, but let's see how it goes ;-)

Currently reading
De måske egnede (Golden Laurels challenge)
Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life (audio)
Rødt og sort (group reads challenge)
Brændingen
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (reading my shelf)

To read
Gone Girl (thug notes challenge, reading my shelf)
Nine Perfect Strangers (reading my shelf)
Stay Close (reading my shelf)
Livlægens besøg (reading my shelf)
Carpe Jugulum
Light Thickens (Roderick Alleyn series challenge)
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (audio)
Onyx Storm (audio, goodreads challenge)
Mordet i Vestermarie (old&new challenge)
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (goodreads challenge)
Egoisterne (the golden laurels challenge)
Tre dage og et liv
Operaelskeren (Ny dansk litteratur) (the golden laurels challenge)
Dommen og andre fortællinger
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (group reads challenge)
Dobbeltfejl
Property (Womens Prize for Fiction challenge)
The Medici Return
The Singing Sands (Alan Grant series challenge)
4:50 from Paddington (Miss Marple series challenge)
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (audio)
Klubben (audio, feminist library)
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (old&new challenge)
Siren Queen (audio, feminist book club)
Post Mortem
Den dag historierne ender
Fæ og frænde: Syv en halv nats fortællinger om vejene til Rom og Danmark (golden laurels challenge) - started
Jacob A. Riis (audio)
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (goodreads challenge)
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (audio, goodreads challenge) - started
Den sista utposten
Algot, Anna Stina og den velsignede brændevin
The Illustrated Man (group reads challenge - Zero Hour) - started

July Goals

I finished up my Challenge Buffet last month, but I still have a few books left for some other challenges, like the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge and the Fantasy Bingo challenge from Reddit.

Other Challenges
✔️Peake: "Titus Groan" (1946) from The Gormenghast Novels
✔️Woodring: The Frank Book (2003)
Whiteley: The Arrival of Missives (2016)
✔️Newitz: Autonomous (2017)
✔️Toulmé: Hakim’s Odyssey: Book 1: From Syria to Turkey (2018)
✔️Steele: DeadEndia: The Broken Halo (2019)
✔️Waidner: Sterling Karat Gold (2021)

Non-challenge Books
✔️Euripides: "Andromache" (-426) from The Complete Euripides, Volume I: Trojan Women and Other Plays
✔️Melville: "The Piazza Tales" (1846) from Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories
✔️Jerome: "Three Men on the Bummel" (1900) from Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel
✔️H.D.: "Sea Garden" (1916) from Collected Poems, 1912-1944
✔️Roethke: "The Lost Son and Other Poems" (1948) from The Collected Poems
✔️Merrill: Nights and Days (1966)
✔️Weis/Hickman: "Dragons of Spring Dawning" (1985) from Dragonlance Chronicles
✔️Fillingham: Foucault for Beginners (1993)
✔️Wodehouse: Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere (1997)
✔️Christensen: Natalja's Stories (1998)
✔️Seuss: It Blows You Hollow (1999)
✔️Smith: Other Stories and Other Stories (1999)
✔️Gospodinov: The Physics of Sorrow (2011)
✔️VanderMeer: Authority (2014)
✔️Adam: Audition (2023)
✔️Énard: The Deserters (2023)
✔️Kanefield: Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals: The Story of the Bill of Rights (2025)
✔️Kim: This Part Is Silent: A Life Between Cultures (2025)
✔️Moore: Make Your Way Home: Stories (2025)
✔️Nettel: The Accidentals (2025)
✔️Penman: Erik Satie Three Piece Suite (2025)

Long Reads
Proust: Sodom and Gomorrah (1922)
✔️Foucault: Selections from Rabinow, ed.: The Foucault Reader (1984)
Chiang: Exhalation (2019) <-- Challenge

This month I am clearing the decks so I can do the group's long read, The Tale of Genji. If time allows, I may continue my Calvino challenge with The Baron in the Trees. Random short works may demand my attention.

I'm too anxious and volatile to stick to a plan, but...

I want to finish The Loyal Subject: Heinrich Mann (The German library) by Heinrich Mann and start Dune #4 or my bookclub's read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

I'll just try to keep up with the July group reads here and for a few other groups and then I have these books I've owned for awhile that I want to try to get to.

I'm going into another month, foolishly thinking I can read MUCH more than will be possible. Miracles have happened, so you never know!

Currently reading
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (I'm halfway through this, but may have to let it go because it's really dragging)

July Group Reads
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Man of Property by John Galsworthy
Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Bonjour tristesse by Françoise Sagan

I have some other books I'd like to fit in, but that seems pretty unlikely, so I'll stop with these!

Kathleen - coincidentally I DNF'd Shadow Of The Wind at half-way, so you'd be in good company ;o)

I am currently reading:
Covenant With Death Harris, John 1961
The Flounder Grass, Günter 1977
Rogue Male Household, Geoffrey 1939
The Time Ships Baxter, Stephen 1995
and hoping also to get to:
Mildred Pierce Cain, James M. 1941
Erewhon Butler, Samuel 1872
Good Behaviour Keane, Molly 1981

Darren wrote: "Kathleen - coincidentally I DNF'd Shadow Of The Wind at half-way, so you'd be in good company ;o)"

Oh, I'm so glad to hear this Darren. Back on the shelf it went, to hopefully try again another time. Hope you're enjoying Mildred Pierce!

I agree with Julie that July is vacation time! It's July 7th and I am just starting my reading. Last week was family time and travel.

I have a stack of partially read books that I started earlier this year. If I finish even one of these then I will consider it a win.

Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis I have read 8 out of 12 essays.

Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener 20% read.

☑ Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke Yippie, I completed something! 5*

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco 33% read.


I ordered The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike.

I usually read the Short Story Group Read so I might start the August story Lois the Witch by Elizabeth Gaskell

So again completing any of the above would feel like I had achieved a goal for the month.

Reserved

I was forgetting about the edit option, so i can start making my list now with what i remember and add to it later. Just typing titles today, will fill in as i get more time.
Edit: like Kathleen, I'm still overbooked! 😅🤷‍♀️

✔Where the Library Hides
✔Childhoods End
Knight and the Moth
Nettle and Bone
Once and Future King
Hitchhikers Guide
Not Another Love Song
Pines
Last Town

Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry
One Hundred Years of Solitude
- (if loan available)
Dead Silence
Ghost Bride
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (if loan available)
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (if loan available)
Eugene Onegin (Loan)
Frenchmans Creek (loan)

Additional Goals:
Housemaids Secret
Gone Girl
Soulmate Equation (might be August)
Good Girls Guide
You Slay Me
Time of Death
Gunslinger-King

The end of July wrap-up:

My goal was to complete something, anything. Sometimes I build up a pile of half-read books that need to be whittled down. I completed:

The short story
Beyond the Door by Philip K. Dick (1954) July 1, 2025 , 3*

and 3 books
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke (1953) July 11, 2025, 5* (reread)
Daniel - The Book of Daniel (The Holy Bible #27), NASB by Anonymous (165 BC) July 25, 2025 5*
The Book of Jubilees by Anonymous (approximately 100 BC) July 31, 2025 4*

I am still reading:
The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike (2008)

my July went very well, with only Günter Grass' (long, dense) The Flounder carrying over to August
finished were:
Covenant With Death Harris, John - Superb, 5 Stars
Rogue Male Household, Geoffrey - unusual, 4
The Time Ships Baxter, Stephen - surprisingly good, 4
Mildred Pierce Cain, James M. - meh, 2
Erewhon Butler, Samuel - mess, 2
Good Behaviour Keane, Molly - wonderful, 4.5

Darren wrote: "Good Behaviour – Keane, Molly"

Noted, thank you! No English edition in my library catalogue, but there are two different Italian translations. “Devoted Ladies” is also present.