Spin #42 for the Classics Club, October 2025

 

The latest Classics Club Spin has been announced. To join in, I choose twenty books from my classics list. On Sunday, October 19th, the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The goal is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by December 21st, 2025.

I created a list for Spin #41, but I have not yet read the book that was picked (which was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark). I debated whether to join in on this one, but I decided I would take the optimistic approach and hope that I have time to read both books before the end of the year.

So, here is my list of 20 books for the spin...

1. Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
2. Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
3. Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana (1958)   
4. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
5. Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles (1950)
6. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
7. Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre (1847)
8. Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse-Five  (1955)
9. John Steinbeck – Cannery Row (1945)
10. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818)
11. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
12. Virginia Woolf – Flush (1933)
13. J. D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye (1951)
14. Anne Brontë – Agnes Grey (1847) 
15. Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958) 
16. Dashiell Hammett – Red Harvest (1929)   
17. Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin (1939)   
18. Albert Camus – The Stranger (1942)
19. Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
20. Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) 

The three books I would most like to read for this spin are A Wrinkle in Time by L'Engle, The Talented Mr. Ripley by Highsmith, or Our Man in Havana by Greene. However, any of the books on my list would be fine. 

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea: Rebecca Thorne

 

I first saw this book when my son purchased it at the book sale. The copy he got was especially nice, with sprayed edges (in a nice turquoise color), and a lovely map. I was interested in the book shop theme and the description: "a cozy fantasy steeped with love." And since I love tea, "tea" in the title of the book pulled me in too. I wanted to read it immediately and my son let me read it first.

The story is about a lesbian couple who want to leave their current lives behind and open a bookstore in a remote location where no one can find them. The problem is that Reyna is a private guard to a powerful and cruel queen, and Kianthe is a powerful mage. Somehow they both manage to leave their responsibilities behind and move to a small town far from their previous lives to set up a book shop. 

Reyna and Kianthe have never had any extended time together before, and they use this time to adjust to their differences and see if they can make a life together. 

My Thoughts on the Book:

What is a cozy fantasy? I had not been aware previously that there was a subgenre of fantasy that is described as cozy fantasy.  I don't often read cozy mysteries, but like any other genre or subgenre, there is a wide range of books within the mystery genre categorized as cozy. Online there are many different descriptions of cozy fantasies, emphasizing community or familial relationships, and focusing on comfort and a sense of belonging.

This book had griffons and dragons. Griffons are new to me. Dragons are not, but I did begin to notice how differently dragons are described and used in various fantasy series. In the last ten years, I think the only dragons I have encountered in fiction were in the Dragonriders of Pern series. In the Tomes & Tea series dragons are monsters, the enemy that can burn down towns (at least at this point). I am currently reading Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, a Discworld book, and dragons are summoned by evil forces and are attacking the city of Ankh-Morpork. The approach to dragons in the Discworld series seems entirely different.

The story was good and held my interest; it is a light-hearted tale, not too demanding, focused on community, sharing, being open to ideas. It has enough conflict to make it interesting.

I enjoyed the depiction of all the characters in the story, even the evil ones. The evil queen doesn't really get much time in the book until close to the end, but even in that case, her character is very well defined.

This book is not perfect. It was the author's first novel and in some ways it shows. Some behaviors and scenarios are used over and over. That may be realistic but in fiction it can get annoying. But I liked the story and the characters a lot and I am willing to try more books in the series to see how it develops.

Short Story Wednesday: The Literary Ghost, ed. Larry Dark

 

Last week for Short Story Wednesday, I wrote about the first three stories in one of my husband's  ghost story anthologies, The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, edited by Larry Dark. 

This is the description of this book at Goodreads:

"It takes a certain amount of daring for a literary writer to employ a device as powerful and obvious as a ghost, and a great deal of talent and self-assurance to pull it off. The fact that these stories are so different from one another and that no two ghosts in them are alike is a testament to the power of the individual imagination to appropriate established myths without assuming the associated clichés."

So writes Larry Dark in the introduction to this anthology of expertly crafted ghost stories by such luminaries as Donald Barthelme, Paul Bowles, A. S. Byatt, Robertson Davies, M. F. K. Fisher, John Gardner, Nadine Gordimer, Graham Greene, Patrick McGrath, R. K. Narayan, Tim O'Brien, V. S. Pritchett, Anne Sexton, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Fay Weldon.

Today I read a few more stories in that book. Several of these were very short so I don't want to say too much about them.

"The Others" by Joyce Carol Oates

A man begins to see people on the street that he recognizes from his past. He knows that some of them are dead. His wife makes light of it. He begins to see more and more people like that. 

This story was five or six pages long, and I thought it was pretty good, although what was going on was not explicit and not very scary. It was atmospheric.

"A Story of Don Juan" by V.S. Pritchett

First sentence: "One night of his life Don Juan slept alone."

Don Juan must stay at the house of a man whose wife died one year earlier, on their wedding night. He is still mourning her. He allows Don Juan to sleep in the room that he shared with his wife when she was alive.

I am not sure how this story fits into the description "contemporary ghost stories" since it was first published in 1941. However I enjoyed it anyway. It definitely had a ghost, although maybe an unusual one.

"Up North" by Mavis Gallant

This one was also 6 pages and I really liked it. I now want to find out more about Gallant and her writing. 

The story is set on a train. A woman and her young son are traveling from Montreal to a more northern part of Canada. She is from England and has come to join her Canadian husband, whom she met during World War II. Ghosts are discussed and the boy thinks he sees ghosts outside of the train. 

"The Warden" by John Gardner

This was a longer story, about 30 pages long, with chapters. I found it very confusing and did not understand what was going on at all. 

A man is running a prison, but he has no real authority. The warden is useless and will give him no instructions so he is left to make his own decisions. At the point the story begins, he never sees the warden, he just hears him pacing in his office and never comes out at all. 

I tried to find more information about the story, but was not successful. If anyone reading this post knows more about this story, I would love to know more about it. 

Below is a list of all stories in the book. The book is about 360 pages long and has 28 short stories.

• "The Lost, Strayed, Stolen," M.F.K. Fisher
• "The Portobello Road," Muriel Spark
• "The Ghost Who Vanished by Degrees," Robertson Davies
• "The Others," Joyce Carol Oates
• "A Story of Don Juan," V.S. Pritchett
• "Up North," Mavis Gallant
• "The Warden," John Gardner
• "The Death of Edward Lear," Donald Barthelme
• "The Circular Valley," Paul Bowles
• "The Third Voice," William Ferguson
• "Marmilion," Patrick McGrath
• "Spirit Seizures," Melissa Pritchard
• "Revenant as Typewriter," Penelope Lively
• "Ghostly Populations," Jack Matthews
• "The Ghost Soldiers," Tim O'Brien
• "Family," Lance Olsen
• "Letter from a Dogfighter's Aunt, Deceased," Padgett Powell
• "The Ghost," Anne Sexton
• "Angel, All Innocence," Fay Weldon
• "Jack's Girl," Cynthia Kadohata
• "The Next Room," A.S. Byatt
• "Grass," Barry Yourgrau
• "Eisenheim the Illusionist," Steven Millhauser
• "Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt," William Goyen
• "Letter from His Father," Nadine Gordimer
• "Old Man of the Temple," R.K. Narayan
• "A Little Place Off the Edgware Road," Graham Greene
• "A Crown of Feathers," Isaac Bashevis Singer

Short Story Wednesday: "The Portobello Road" by Muriel Spark

 

Last week,  at her Short Story Wednesday post, Patricia Abbott featured a short story collection by Muriel Spark, The Stories of Muriel Spark. Later my husband found this ghost story by Muriel Spark in one of his ghost story anthologies, The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories, edited by Larry Dark. Last night I read the first three stories in The Literary Ghost, including "The Portobello Road" by Muriel Spark.

Of the three stories, "The Portobello Road" was easily  my favorite. In this story, the ghost is the narrator. For some reason, not described in detail, this ghost had more business to finish and had not left the earth. She often strolled down Portobello Road, checking out the marketers and their stalls on the pavement. On one of her strolls she sees two people she knows, Kathleen and George. She speaks to the man and he can see her, although the woman cannot. From this point the ghost tells the story of herself (nicknamed "Needle"), and three of her childhood friends, Kathleen, George and a boy named "Skinny." They are very close friends while in school, but after they graduate, they go off to other areas, even other continents. George goes to manage his uncle's farm in Africa, and Skinny and Needle end up visiting him there. Kathleen stays in London with her rich connections. George eventually ends up returning to Great Britain because he wants to marry Kathleen, which leads to Needle's eventual death. This is my kind of ghost story.

Per EBSCO Knowledge Advantage this story was first published in 1958.

The first story in the book, "The Lost, Strayed, Stolen," by M.F.K. Fisher did not appeal to me at all. I think that the ghost story may be a fine one, and it is spooky, but for my tastes there was not enough background to flesh it out.

The third story was "The Ghost Who Vanished by Degrees" by Robertson Davies. I thought it was pretty good. It was about a professor at a college who ends up trapped in a room with a ghost who wants to defend his Ph.D. thesis because he never got the chance to do that while alive. It was shorter than the others and on the humorous side. A light read but not silly.

I will be revisiting this anthology more this month, and in another post I will list all the stories and authors in the book. 

#HYH25: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I read this book for Neeru's Hundred Years Hence challenge. The goal is to read one or more books that were published for the first time in 1925.  The challenge runs until the end of 2025.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway was a good experience for me. It was the first book I had read by Virginia Woolf, plus I had never read anything written in stream of consciousness style. It did take me a good while to adjust to that style of telling a story, and it got even more confusing when the story moves from Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to various other people's ruminations.

The story is basically a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway. As she goes through her day she muses about her past and her future: her daughter; her daughter's friend, who she doesn't like; and her own relationships with men over the years. She is probably thinking about the men in her life because an old boyfriend will be visiting her soon. He has been out of the country (in India) and they haven't seen each other for a long time. 

The old boyfriend is Peter Walsh, and he still has feelings for Clarissa. Peter Walsh musings as he visits London and Clarissa are second focus of the book. There is another couple whose thoughts are shared in the book, although they have no real connection to Mrs. Dalloway other than proximity to her when she goes out on her morning walk, to pick up flowers for the party she will be giving in the evening. That couple, Septimus and Lucrezia Smith, have an interesting story and it is kind of a downer.

The edition I read had a Foreward by Jenny Offill and an Introduction by Elaine Showalter.

My Thoughts:

This book is just filled with lovely quotes, sad quotes, quotes to think about. But I had a difficult time reading it. So many characters are touched on that I got lost at times. Since it is told in stream of consciousness style, this makes perfect sense, but it still did not make for a pleasant read. There were many pages and sections that I had to reread to make any sense of. 

The story has a lot of depth to it. It is about a middle-aged woman, doubting herself as she gets older and her daughter nears adulthood. It takes place on one day in June in 1923, so the reader sees a picture of life 100 plus years ago, in London, written by someone living at that time. The story of Septimus and Lucrezia Smith involves the husband's mental illness due to his experiences in the Great War. 

One thing I noted while reading this novel and even more so afterward is how much difference it might make whether you read this novel for the first time when you are a teen, or thirty, or fifty, or like me, in your seventies. Jenny Offill expanded on this idea in her Foreword (although I recommend not reading the Foreword until after you have read the book for the first time).

Since I am not familiar with Virginia Woolf's novels and stories, I did not realize that the character of Mrs. Dalloway shows up in other writings by her. She appears in Woolf's first novel, The Voyage Out, and in at least one short story, "Mrs. Dalloway of Bond Street." That makes me want to read more by Virginia Woolf (recommendations are welcome). 

I do hope to reread this book sometime to see what more I can get out of it on a second reading, when I am not distracted by the unusual structure.

Annual Book Sale 2025: My Son's Books

As usual, we attended the Planned Parenthood Book Sale that runs for 10 days in September; the first few days and the last few days are the busiest; we went five times this year. 

My son's tastes usually are in the fantasy or science fiction genres. Below are a few of the books that my son purchased this year.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

Originally published in 2022; this trade paperback edition was published in 2024.

This is a cozy fantasy about a lesbian couple who want to leave their current lives behind and open a bookstore in a remote location where no one can find them. The problem is that one of them is a private guard to a powerful and cruel queen, and the other is an important and powerful mage. 

Note: I just finished reading this book and I enjoyed it a lot. It seemed to me to go just a bit beyond the bounds of cozy, but that was fine with me.

Dinotopia Lost by Alan Dean Foster

Dinotopia is a fictional utopia created originally by James Gurney in 1992. In the first book, Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, which had illustrations, Arthur Denison and his son, Will, are shipwrecked on island where humans and dinosaurs live together in harmony. James Gurney wrote three more books about Dinotopia, but other authors have also written spin-off books in the series. In Alan Dean Foster's Dinotopia Lost, published in 1996, a ship with a crew of pirates lands on the island.

Monday Starts on Saturday by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Andrew Bromfield (Translation)

This book was first published in 1965 and seems to be a combination of science fiction and fantasy. Humorous and satirical.

This description is from a summary at Goodreads: 

Sasha, a young computer programmer from Leningrad, is driving north to meet some friends for a nature vacation. He picks up a couple of hitchhikers, who persuade him to take a job at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy. The adventures Sasha has in the largely dysfunctional Institute involve all sorts of magical beings—a wish-granting fish, a tree mermaid, a cat who can remember only the beginnings of stories, a dream-interpreting sofa, a motorcycle that can zoom into the imagined future, a lazy dog-size mosquito—along with a variety of wizards (including Merlin), vampires, and officers. 

The Protectorate Series by Megan E. O'Keefe

This series is a space opera trilogy, that begins with Velocity Weapon (published in 2019, 544 pages) and continues the story with Chaos Vector (published in 2020, 546 pages) and Catalyst Gate (published in 2021, 608 pages). The 1st book sounds very good, and I have read good reviews of the 2nd and 3rd books. 

This excerpt from the review at Kirkus is the best description of the first book in the series that I could find.

The last thing Sanda Greeve remembers is her ship being attacked by rebel forces. She's resuscitated from her evacuation pod missing half a leg—and two centuries—as explained to her by the AI of the rebel ship that rescued her. As The Light of Berossus—aka Bero—tells her, she may be the only living human for light-years around, as the war wiped both sides out long ago. Sanda struggles to process her injuries and her grief but finds friendship with the lonely spaceship itself. Sanda's story is interspersed with flashbacks to the war's effects on her brother, Biran, as well as scenes from a heist gone terribly wrong for small-time criminal Jules. The three narratives, separated by a vast gulf of time, are more intertwined than is immediately apparent. When Sanda rescues Tomas, another unlikely survivor, from his own evacuation pod, she learns that even time doesn't end all wars. Should she trust Tomas, a fellow human but a rebel soldier who has his own secrets—or Bero, the ship that saved her?

                            Velocity Weapon

                  

                              Chaos Vector

                                Catalyst Gate