The Classics Spin #18

The Classics Spin #18

I love these Classics Spins because they get me reading the books on my list when I might otherwise avoid them.

Here’s how it works: I list 20 books here that I have yet to read from my original list of 50+ classics. On Wednesday, August 1, the Classics Club will announce a number, and I have to read whatever book on my list has that number.

So here’s my list:

1. Masters, Edgar Lee. Spoon River Anthology (1915)
2. Agee, James. A Death in the Family
3. Wilson, Sloan. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
4. Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men
5. Cather, Willa. O Pioneers!
6. James, Henry. What Maisie Knew
7. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice
8. Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
9. Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons
10. Lewis, Sinclair. Babbit
11. Styron, William. Darkness Visible (1990)
12. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment
13. Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd
14. Adams, Richard. Watership Down
15. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls
16. O’Neill, Eugene. The Iceman Cometh
17. James, Henry. The Beast in the Jungle
18. Pym, Barbara. Excellent Women
19. Nabokov, Vladimir. Pnin
20. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway

Update

And the winning number is . . . 9! So I get to read The Magnificent Ambersons this month.

And here’s something weird: Right after I posted my list of 20, I thought, “I hope The Magnificent Ambersons number comes up.” And it did! What are the chances of that happening? (Yes, I know it’s one in 20, but I like to think of it as a wonderful synchronicity, a reward from the universe allowing me to do what I wanted to do anyway.)

© 2018 by Mary Daniels Brown