Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

What are you currently reading? What are you planning to read over the next month?

Please use this thread to let us know what you are currently reading. You can also let us know your plans for future reading. Feel free to update your reading and planning as often as you like.

Remember, you can also record and list your current and future reading on your Personal Challenge Thread, your Bingo Challenge Thread, and your Buffet Challenge Thread.

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Current-
Other than a couple of more Christmas stories, I have started my last book for 2025, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare.

Future-
January Start and Finish
*Pale Fire, O&N
*Allan Quatermain, O&N
Zorba the Greek, New School
Kew Gardens, Group/Short Story
*Love Songs, #14 Genre Poetry
Nevada Barr - *Ill Wind, #14 Neglected Author
*My Mortal Enemy, Century

Start
*No Name, Long Read
Family Matters place library order on 10th gives me 6 weeks from delivery, Amok
*The Long Valley, Short Story/Novella can start and stop as needed
*The October Country, Short Story/Novella can start and stop as needed

thanks

for Dec - wrapping up:

There are 2 books that I will not get around to, I under-estimated how long it would take me to read *. I've also been reading more about Edgar Allan Poeand will spill into next year. For this year (with 9 days left) I'm focusing on finishing:

*The Romance of the Three Kingdoms 80% read
Pride and Prejudice 60%

Rough plan for 2026, to finish the 2 I didn't get to this year + read more of history of science, and also films, I have roughly 20 novels lined up, a handful of plays, making another attempt at poetry, that's the theory.

For Jan 2026, I am planning to read:

The Argonautika
War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad
Prometheus Bound
Hedda Gabler

There's more and will add as I go along.

(I've also posted this on my personal challenge thread in this group.)

Lately, I have gone a little insane in all the reads I have been trying to join. I don't know if this is all going to work out, but here are my current plans and my January plans:

DECEMBER WRAP-UP

Finished:
✔ The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau ★★★★ (4.0)
✔ The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton ★★★★ (4.0)
✔ A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash ★★★★★ (4.5)
✔ The Lightning Bottles by Marissa Stapley ★★★ (2.5)
✔ The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell ★★★★★ (5.0)
✔ A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg ★★★★ (3.5)

Starting and Plan to Finish by End of Month:
in progress 93% Satantango by László Krasznahorkai
in progress 38% St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton

Started and Will Spill Over into Next Month:
in progress 8% Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (re-read) by Susanna Clarke
in progress 73% Half Bad by Sally Green
in progress 21% Small Spaces by Katherine Arden

Will Fit in if Time Permits:
When the Sparrow Falls by Neil Sharpson
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

JANUARY LOOK-FORWARD:

Will Begin the Month with These:
Maurice by E.M. Forster
Howards End by E.M. Forster
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry

Am Trying to Fit These In:
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear

I like the idea of this current and planned reads thread!

I'm nearing the end of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. It's fantastic, and will be my last challenge book to complete bingo.

For the rest of the year, I'll continue with these:
Emma by Jane Austen
Jane Austen: A Life by Carol Shields
The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
and hope to start
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré

And January is coming up fast! Here's what I have planned.
Group reads:
Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

As far as the others, I want to wait to see what I'm in the mood for, but some possibilities:
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
Skylark by Paula McLain
The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck

Finishing in December:
The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin
Elbows Up!: Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance
The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
Polar Vortex: A Family Memoir by Denise Dorrance

December/early January (maybe) reads on Hoopla:
The Passing of the Dragon by Ken Liu
Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 6, March 2020

January:
Book club reads for Jan & Feb: Ice by Anna Kavan and Neuromancer by William Gibson
Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey
The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart

Pam wrote: "January:
Book club reads for Jan & Feb: Ice by Anna Kavan and Neuromancer by William Gibson
"

Ice was a fascinating read Pam! The imagery and language are often beautiful, though the story is hallucinatory and contradictory by design. Curious to hear what you think of it!

My last book of the year is in progress:
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)


January Plans 2026
St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton (1923)
A Cry of Angels by Jeff Fields (1974) 392 pages
The Moon-Spinners by Mary Stewart (1962) 400 pages
I Sing the Body Electric! & Other Stories by Ray Bradbury (1969)

Short Stories
Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf (1919)
Taking the Veil by Katherine Mansfield (1930)

January always seems to be my books that were left from over-planning the previous year.

Thanks for setting up this thread, Bob!

January Goals
I'm hoping to get a solid start on my 2026 challenges!

Buffet and Bingo Challenges
James: The Ambassadors (1903)
Forster: Howards End (1910)
✔️ Woolf: "Kew Gardens" (1919)
Woolf: To the Lighthouse (1927)
✔️Faulkner: "Spotted Horses" (1931)
✔️Faulkner: "Barn Burning" (1939)
Faulkner: The Hamlet (1940)
Williams: The Glass Menagerie (1944)
✔️Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1962)
✔️Howard: Quantities: Poems (1962)
Burgess: The Novel Now: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction (1971)
Rich: Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (1973)

Non-Challenge Books
Gaddis: The Recognitions (1955) <-- finish
✔️Rawls: Where the Red Fern Grows (1961)
Simpson: Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies (2020)
Lewat: The Aquatics (2021)
McSweeney's Issue 74 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern): 25th Anniversary Issue (2024)
Beilin: Sea, Poison (2025)
Fosse: Vaim (2025)
Searls: Analog Days (2025)
Smith: Gliff (2025)

Long Reads
Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)
Conjunctions 83 Revenants (2024)

Maybe/Added Later
Narayan: Malgudi Days (1943) <-- Challenge

I am starting off a bit too ambitiously by listing a number of books I plan to read. I probably will not get to several of them. I will move the books I do not read to the next month. Also I have several books carrying over from last year. I will decide whether I wish to continue or drop them some time during the month, and hopefully that will get my plans in order.

Will Finish:
Zeke and Ned Larry McMurtry ***1/2
If Morning Ever Comes Anne Tyler
A Complicated Kindness Miriam Toews
The Berlin Novels Christopher Isherwood
The Honorary Consul Graham Greene
King of Ashes S.A. Cosby
The Well of Loneliness Radclyffe Hall
Mrs. Bridge Evan S. Connell ***1/2
Excellent Women Barbara Pym
Prelude to Terror Helen MacInnes
Family Matters Rohinton Mistry
Zorba the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis
Howards End E.M. Forster
We Computers: A Ghazal Novel Hamid Ismailov
Cécé Emmelie Prophète
Daisy Miller Henry James
Ugliness Moshtari Hilal
The Queen of Swords Jazmina Barrera
The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam Lana Lin
Wintering Out Seamus Heaney
Memorial Days Geraldine Brooks
One Day I'll Remember This: Diaries 1987–1995 Helen Garner
The King of Elfland's Daughter Lord Dunsany





shorts:
Kew Gardens Virginia Woolf
The Poor Relation's Story Charles Dickens ***


Continuing:
Republic Plato
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Kiran Desai
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 Rick Atkinson
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Simone de Beauvoir
Watt Samuel Beckett
Effingers Gabriele Tergit
No Name Wilkie Collins

Just finished reading: Le Rêve / The Dream by Émile Zola.

In progress: Re-read of Paris: Les Trois Villes - Tome 3, book 3 of the Three Cities, a Trilogy by Émile Zola

Short term planned reads:

L' Oeuvre / The Masterpiece by Émile Zola
Le Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac
No Name by Wilkie Collins (as soon as I get the book)
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant

Long term: let's see.

I hereby declare my "January Eleven":

6x 2025 carryover:
I Am a Cat Soseki, Natsume 1905 - In Progress...
Jurassic Park Crichton, Michael 1990 - In Progress...
Pop. 1280 Thompson, Jim 1964 - Finished - 4
The Towers of Trebizond Macaulay, Rose 1956 - In Progress...
My People the Sioux Standing Bear, Luther 1928
Regency Buck Heyer, Georgette 1935

5x 2026 "new build"
A-Z "A": The Axe (Master of Hestviken #1) Undset, Sigrid 1925
A-Z "B": G. Berger, John 1972
A-Z "C": No Orchids for Miss Blandish Chase, James Hadley 1939
author-more: Little Boy Lost Laski, Marghanita 1949
re-read: The Information Amis, Martin 1995 - In Progress...

Last year I embarked on an overly ambitious personal challenge called Tim's Around the World in Classics. The list included several very long landmark novels; completing many of them felt like a major accomplishment!

This year I would like to continue the journey by retaining the list but working with it in a more open-ended way. This means that I would ignore certain books I don't want to read right away, and add books I do want to read within different countries.

For example, in England I want to add all of Jane Austen, after reading Mansfield Park and Emma in 2025, all of George Eliot, after reading Middlemarch in 2025, all of Elizabeth Gaskell, following Mary Barton in 2025, all of Elizabeth Bowen (Anglo-Irish), and the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope.

To Nigeria, I will add Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (1964), following last year's Things Fall Apart (1958), two parts of a trilogy.

To Japan, I will add a book or two by Yukio Mishima, to follow last year's reading of his Spring Snow (1967, part of a sequence of books) and (more distantly) The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (1000).

To Germany, I will add On Tangled Paths (1887) by Theodor Fontane.

To India, I will add Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (1991), and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997).

I will add Norway to my list for Gunnar's Daughter by Sigrid Undset (1909).

To USA, I want to add a book or two by Zora Neale Hurston, at least Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934).

Beyond the personal challenge:

An emerging trend is my wanting to read multiple works by the same author (see England, above). Toward the close of last year I read my first Balzac novel, Cousin Bette (prompted by the Classics group), and that has led me to seek out all his books, so in 2026 I will continue to read Balzac, probably in something close to historic chronology. I am now in the midst of Catherine De' Medici with its tediously long introduction, called "About..." I really enjoy the richness of Balzac's prose, his characters and his attention to descriptive details, and I like the puzzle of figuring out when he is being serious, satirical, humorous or cranky.

Last year, I came upon The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962) by Giorgio Bassini and discovered that it was part of a trilogy of novels, Il romanzo di Ferrera (Italy), so I want to read the other two books.

Additional recent discoveries (again prompted by members of the Classics group) are the English novels of Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym, so on my reading pile are Taylor's The Sleeping Beauty (1953), In a Summer Season (1961) and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1971). The Taylor and Pym novels continue the rich portrayal of English social life in Austen, Gaskell, Eliot and Trollope, and in Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen, making up a composite English "human comedy" of their own.

I welcome further suggestions from Classics members to complement the books and writers listed above!

I did pretty well in finishing what I wanted in December, and several of them were wonderful! There was really only one that I didn't care for.

DECEMBER 2025: (final)

Completed:
✔ The Keepers of the House (Shirley Ann Grau) ★★★★ (4.0)
✔ The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (G.K. Chesterton) ★★★★ (4.0)
✔ The Lightning Bottles (Marissa Stapley) ★★★ (2.5)
✔ The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (Maggie O'Farrell) ★★★★★ (5.0)
✔ A Land More Kind Than Home (Wiley Cash) ★★★★★ (4.5)
✔ Satantango (László Krasznahorkai) ★★★★ (3.5)
✔ A Redbird Christmas (Fannie Flagg) ★★★★ (3.5)
✔ St. Francis of Assisi (G.K. Chesterton) ★★★★ (4.0)

In Progress and Will Spill Into January:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) 68% complete
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke) 8% complete

I've started a reread of Les Misérables which I'm really enjoying. I'm also rereading Howards End for the group, and The King of Elfland's Daughter, which I've not read, for the buddy read.

Beyond that I wanted a mystery, so I picked up The Cater Street Hangman for another visit, and am enjoying it all over again. Clearly I'm in a reread mood right now. :)

update on message 4:

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms ✔️read
Pride and Prejudice ✔️read

Rough plan for 2026, to finish the 2 I didn't get to this year + read more of history of science, and also films, I have roughly 20 novels lined up, a handful of plays, making another attempt at poetry, that's the theory.

For Jan 2026, I am now reading:

The Argonautika
War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad 📖current read📖
Hannibal Rising
Brave New World 📖current read📖
The Chocolate Box ✔️read
Kew Gardens ✔️read

(I've also posted this on my personal challenge thread in this group.)

January Reading Plan
Current Reads:
1Night Shift- King
The Prisoner's Throne (top priority)
The Dead Romantics (top priority)
Witch King (top priority)
5Hemmingway short stories

Future Reads:
Speed of Dark (top priority)
19th century Women horror short stories (continue)
Mr. Mercedes-King (top priority-continue)
Dracula (maybe-continue)
10The Mysterious Mr. Quin (maybe-start)
How to Become the Dark Lord... (maybe or later-continue)
Mr. Wrong # (later probably-start)
13The Familar (later probably-start)
14City of Fallen Angels (maybe-continue)
15Thursday Murder Club (maybe or later- start)

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

The first Pulitzer winner I have read and it quickly became a favorite. Award winning literature is seldom this fun and accessible. An excellent novel about espionage, identity, immigration and a lot more.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...