Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

This is a monthly challenge for those readers who have had books forever on their TBR list.

This challenge will help you get those books finally read.

If you wish to participate then from your TBR bookshelf list 5 books that you would like to read for the month of May. The next member who comments will pick two choices from your list. You are only obligated to read 1 of those books, but you may choose to read both. Once you read it, let us know and you may add your review or link to your review!

RULES:
1) If you would like to participate, please sign up by May 31st, 2014.

2) Choose 2 books from the person's list that commented before you. First in, is last to pick - First person to sign up, please pick books for the last person to sign up :).

3) Each participant will have the entire month to read their book(s), post their rating and review. And tell us what you think of your book in this thread.

Let's have fun reducing our TBR piles.

(link to April 2014)

Ok, here are the 5 dustiest books on my shelves:

1. All About Emily
2. Legacy: An Event Group Thriller
3. Existence
4. The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
5. Worlds That Weren't

So... guess I'll pick your books in a month, mystery reader.

Hi there, Cattfish!

I will choose for you:
Worlds That Weren't and The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

And for myself, here are some dusty ones:

1. The Martian Chronicles
2. Letters to a Young Mathematician
3. Spirits of the Ordinary: A Tale of Casas Grandes
4. Dead Souls
5. Elfland

Hi Kathy,
Here are my choices for you. I choose Letters to a Young Mathematician and Elfland just because the titles are interesting.

Here is my dusty list. Some have been on my shelf so long they have started sending down roots!

1) Our Town
2) So Big
3) The Sun Also Rises
4) A Bell for Adano
5) The Executioner's Song

Hi Connie! Love your analogy ;-)

I choose for you Our Town and A Bell for Adano

Here is my list!

1.) Fahrenheit 451
2.) Little Women
3.) The Handmaid's Tale
4.) Rosemary's Baby
5.) Love in the Time of Cholera

Hi Alissa!

I choose for you Fahrenheit 451 and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Mine to dust off are:
1) The Kite Rider
2) The Ambassador's Son
3) On the Road
4) Tigana
5) Bud, Not Buddy

Still two weeks left to join the "Collecting Dust" challenge for May~~! :)

The Prince by Machiavelli
The perpetual peace by Kant
20 Years crisis by E. Carr
The art of war by Sun Tzu
Empire by Antonio Negri and M. Hart

EDIT: And Hi Amy! I will choose On the road and The ambassador's son :)

Lorena wrote: "I have some e-books collecting dust cells in my folders :)

The Prince by Machiavelli
The perpetual peace by Kant
20 Years crisis by E. Carr
The art of war by Sun Tzu
Empire by Antonio Negri and M..."


Wonderful! Go ahead and choose two selections for Amy. Then whoever posts next will do the same for you :).

Hi Lorena,

I choose for you

Perpetual Peace by Immanual Kant
and
The Twenty Years' Crisis by E. Carr

These both look like great books. In fact, I'd like to read "Perpetual Peace" before the year is out.

Choices from my shelf are:
1 I Am a Cat, Natsume Sōseki
2 Leo Africanus, Amin Maalouf
3 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan
4 The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler
5 I am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett

Hi, Daisy!
I choose for you I Am a Cat and I am Not Sidney Poitier. And I add them to my to-read list!

My books are:
1. Red Harvest
2. A Tale of Two Cities
3. La ciudad y los perros
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. A Confederacy of Dunces

Hi Maria!
For you, I choose A Tale of Two Cities and To Kill a Mockingbird. I can't speak for A Tale of Two Cities (yet), but I adored To Kill a Mockingbird when I read it.

My books are:
1. A Tale of Two Cities
2. The Fellowship of the Ring
3. Brave New World
4. Memnoch the Devil
5. The Poe Shadow

Hi, Hyllow!

I pick for you A Tale of Two Cities and Brave New World...mostly because those are two books I want to read, too!

Okay, my books are:
1. The Picture of Dorian Gray
2. 1984
3. Great Expectations
4. The Odyssey
5. Fahrenheit 451 (I read it in HS, but want to revisit.)

I couldn't wait for May for this one. I was in between books so decided to go for a short one. Read Our Town by Thornton Wilder in just a couple of hours. This seems to be my month for trying new formats - first graphic novels and now a play.

Hi Amanda! For you I pick The Picture of Dorian Gray and 1984. I have read both of these and loved both of these.

Here are my five:
1.Floating Dragon
2. The Damnation Game
3. Ghosts: True Encounters with World Beyond
4. Mr. X
5. The Stephen King Universe: The Guide to the Worlds of the King of Horror

Connie wrote: "... This seems to be my month for trying new formats - first graphic novels and now a play. "

Good for you, Connie! It's fun to try new formats/genres.

Hi Nikki,
I pick The Damnation Game andThe Stephan King Universe for you.

Here's my list:
1. Bread and Wine
2. The Three Musketeers
3. Wuthering Heights
4. Sex and the City
5. 1984

Susie I pick for you Wuthering Heights and 1984 - both wonderful books that I have enjoyed :-)

My list of five are:
1. This Body of Death
2. A Place Called Freedom
3. Bleak House
4. A Son of the Circus
5. A Long Fatal Love Chase

Hi Julie,
I pick 'A Son of the Circus' and 'Bleak House' for you. Enjoy them.!

As for my shelf:
1. American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis)
2. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (John Le Carre)
3. Amerika (Franz Kafka)
4. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
5. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce)

I look forward to dusting off two of those books and reading them in May!

Hi Sofia,
I pick 'American Psycho' and 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.' Enjoy!

I hope to dust off two of the following:

1) Vicomte de Bragelonne
2) A Tale of Two Cities
3) A Farewell to Arms
4) Robinson Crusoe
5) 1984

Thanks!

Thanks Lorena! I think I'll read the first chapters of both and then see which one stays off the shelf first

Hi Lewis!

My two picks for you are "A Farewell to Arms" and "1984."

Here are some books on my shelf that have been sitting there for a while...
1. A Mighty Heart (Marianne Pearl)
2. Million Little Pieces (James Frey)
3. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (David Sedaris)
4. The Reader (Bernhard Schlink)
5. Friday Night Lights (H.G. Bissinger)

I'm estactic to find out what books y'all will pick.

Hi Rachel,

I pick for you The Reader (because it's awesome) and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Here are the books on my shelf I'd like eventually to get to:

1. Lady Audley's Secret
2. The Visible World
3. The Man Who Was Thursday
4. The Bellwether Revivals
5. She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

Hi Leanne,
I've chosen The Man Who Was Thursday and The Bellwether Revivals for you. Good Luck and enjoy!

My five dusties are:
1. Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)
2. The Boat (Nam Le)
3. Into The Storm (Tom Clancy)
4. Feral: Searching For Enchantment on the Frontier of Rewilding (George Monbiot)
5. The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)

Hi Kayleen.
I pick for you:
Kitchen Confidential and Into the Storm (I love Tom Clancy). Enjoy!

My five dusties are:
Just After Sunset by Stephen King
Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison
Stop The Wedding! by Maris Soule
The Pleasure Principle by Kimberly Raye
Adam's Bride by Rosemary Carter.

I love that even though we are a classics group, the books on our lists are pretty eclectic. This challenge always give me new fodder for my reading lists.

Duane wrote: "I haven't read any of your dusty's but I will pick for you Just After Sunset because it's first, and Stop the Wedding!, well, just because.

My five are:
[book:Light ..."

Hello Duane,

For you I will pick Oryx and Crake and the Left Hand of Darkness on account that I like those titles the best! Good reading!

My five are:

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Hello Mbondare!
I will pick for you The Master and Margarita and Jane Eyre which is a brilliant book,one of my favorite!I enjoyed it very much :)
My books are:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lord Emsworth by P.G. Woodehouse
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Age of innocence by Edith Wharton
Dead souls by Gogol

Hello Teo! I'd like to choose Lord Emsworth and Dead Souls for you. I hope you enjoy them!


My 5 are:
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
The Adventures of a Cello by Carlos Prieto
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
Turtle Feet by Nikolai Grozni

Hello Kristi I choose 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'Turtle Feet' for you to read.

My 5 are:

Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
A Study in Scarlet
Tender Is the Night
Dracula

Hi Caroline!

I choose for you Dracula (because it's one of my husband's favourite books) and Northanger Abbey.

I went back and selected things from my To Read List that I added when I first joined:

1) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2) The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart
3) The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
4) Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
5) Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson

Sort of a weird bunch of books, and no real 'classics' - hopefully that's alright!

Robyn wrote: "Sort of a weird bunch of books, and no real 'classics' - hopefully that's alright! "

Absolutely! My tbr list for the 'Collecting Dust' challenges hasn't included a single classic yet, since we started :p. These are just books YOU wanted to read, but left in a pile so long, you have to dust them ;-).


Still 3 days to join the TBR challenge for May, everyone :).

Hi Robyn, I pick Americanah, because I like stories set in different cultures, and The Drunken Botanist, because its premise is fascinating.

Here's my five:
1) Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
2) Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
3) Self-Help by Lorrie Moore
4) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5) The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Still 1 more day to join TBR challenge for May :). Signups through midnight, last day of the month!

(okay, really until the next morning when I wake up and post the new month, but .... shhhhhh don't tell ;-))

Last night! Would anyone like to join the challenge, choose books for Maggie, and put forth your own list of 5 TBRs?

*sadly, I am forced to admit that I have to sit out this month*

I have waayyyyyy too much reading to catch up on :p. I still have to report back on my MARCH book, never mind my APRIL book. Such a fun challenge tho!

Maggie,

I choose The Hobbit and Julius Caesar for you! The Hobbit is one of my all time favorites.

My 5 are below:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Cattfish wrote: "Ok, here are the 5 dustiest books on my shelves:
...

So... guess I'll pick your books in a month, mystery reader. "

Catfish, would you be so kind as to pick books for Shawn? ty in advance!

(Shawn, if Catfish isn't by, by morning, I'll pick for you, or ask the first person to stop by to do so ... )

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Entries for May are closed! Please post your reviews, as you read. Happy Reading :D

Collecting Dust June 2014 challenge is open, at this link.

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Shawn wrote: "Maggie,

I choose The Hobbit and Julius Caesar for you! The Hobbit is one of my all time favorites.

My 5 are below:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck"


Shawn, since Catfish hasn't stopped by to make your picks, I will choose for you, if you're alright with that.

If so, my picks are easy!
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
and/or Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Thanks for the help!

:-)) Happy reading! (I hope, lol)

...alight, my job here is done!

Cattfish wrote: "...alight, my job here is done!"

lol `~~~

On to June! Come sign up :D
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I finished Fahrenheit 451, yet another book that I meant to read as a high schooler but never did. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't blown away by it like I was with some other recent classics I've read (ex. 1984). But i'm glad it was chosen for me!

I am def going to try and read my second pick- Love in the Time of Cholera. with this and the group pick, One Hundred Years of Solitude, it will be a Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez-heavy month. And since he just recently passed away I am interested in being introduced to his work.

Just finished Dracula, I really enjoyed it. Can't think why I left it unread for so long! Thanks to Robyn for choosing it for me. I'm hoping to get my second pick read too. (Northanger Abbey)

I finished A Son of the Circus - it's been on my shelf for 4 years! Such a shame, since it's a great read, must try to incorporate some of my other John Irving books in he future, stille have two on the shelf that are unread.
I will try to see if I can also read Bleak House this month, otherwise I will get it read in June. I haven't signed up for the dusting off challenge for June - think I might do them every other month :)

Julie wrote: "I finished A Son of the Circus - it's been on my shelf for 4 years! Such a shame, since it's a great read, must try to incorporate some of my other John Irving books in he..."

I LOVED Son of the Circus! I have much enjoyed most John Irving books. This is the order in which I like them:
1. A Prayer for Owen Meany
2. Son of the Circus
3. Cider House Rules
4. A Widow for One Year
5. Hotel New Hampshire.
I was not as fond of "The Fourth Hand" and "Until I see You Again" or something like that ... I have not read "The World According to Garp" although I'm sure it's great...I've seen the movie several times and it's a hoot.

I read Americanah earlier this month (I'm so behind - reading got done while on vacation but commenting & reading GR did not!). I really enjoyed it, though I was a little let down by the ending. (Nothing wrong with it, just a rather abrupt ending.) The writing is engaging and Adichie created some seriously engaging characters. I learned a lot about Nigeria and the experience of Non-American Blacks (NABs, in the book's parlance) in America.

Managed to get my second pick done. Northanger Abbey, another classic I'd been meaning to read for a very long time but somehow never got around to. I really liked it.

Well done, Caroline!

Thanks. So glad I found this challenge. It's the push I needed to actually read some of the classics I've been collecting! Have signed up for June already.