So the Classics Club spin number is 12. And I have all 12 remaining works by Aristotle fronting my list. Seems like Destiny.
It was my goal to be finished with Aristotle by May 1st anyway, but now I have that added incentive. Here we go.
Category: The Classics Club
Another Classics Club spin
Yes, the Classics Club have announced another spin. The challenge for classics lovers is to create a list of 20 titles and when the random spin is announced next Friday, the challenge is to read the correspondingly numbered title by May 1. See more at https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com
Since my readings for this blog are in roughly chronological order, I am loathe to skip titles to get to the one matching the number, so what I have tried in the past is to read all titles up to the one matching the number by the deadline, and have been mostly successful so far.
I was going to give it a miss this time, as I have a few things on my plate right now, but what the heck – I happen to have twenty titles left of the 4th century (most of them Aristotle) so maybe this will help push me through. Here goes…wish me luck.
| 1 | Historia animalium (History of animals) | Aristotle |
| 2 | De partibus animalium (On parts of animals) | Aristotle |
| 3 | De motu animalium (On motion of animals) | Aristotle |
| 4 | De generatione animalium (On generation of animals) | Aristotle |
| 5 | Organon (logic) | Aristotle |
| 6 | Metaphysics | Aristotle |
| 7 | Nicomachean Ethics | Aristotle |
| 8 | Poetics | Aristotle |
| 9 | Politics | Aristotle |
| 10 | Rhetoric | Aristotle |
| 11 | The Athenian Constitution | Aristotle |
| 12 | Physics | Aristotle |
| 13 | speeches | Demosthenes |
| 14 | Enquiry into plants | Theophrastus |
| 15 | Characters | Theophrastus |
| 16 | Dyskolos | Menander |
| 17 | Elements of Geometry (c. 300 BC) | Euclid |
| 18 | Writings | Zhuangzi |
| 19 | Writings | Mencius |
| 20 | The Old Testament : the Prophets |
Classics Club meme question #47
Each month The Classics Club website for lovers of reading classics asks their members a question to ponder. I don’t usually post but I often read other bloggers’ replies. This month the question is:
What is the best book you’ve read so far for The Classics Club — and why?
A fairly straightforward question, especially as I have given them each my personal rating. So far, after 92 books in 17 months, I have given no book 10/10 but two plays by Aristophanes The Wasps and The Thesmophoriazusae were given 9/10. I suspect many bloggers will have difficulty narrowing their choice down to one book, so if I had to urge a friend which one to read, I would choose The Wasps as the mental pictures created by the old man trying to escape his house, and the chorus of old men singing and dancing dressed as wasps is delightful.
https://chronolit.com/2016/05/30/48-the-wasps-by-aristophanes-422-bc/
Interestingly, when I read the Classics Club question, my initial thoughts went to the Ramayana which is also an excellent read, and I gave 8/10 at the time, If Ancient Greek comedy is not your thing, or you are open to trying something outside the Western canon, you could do a lot worse than this excellent fantasy. I am sure the version will make a big difference too, so I recommend the modern English translation by Ramesh Menon. You can read my review at
https://chronolit.com/2015/09/09/14-the-ramayana-by-valmiki/
So I guess I can’t choose just one either 🙂
Another Classics Club spin
Twice I have participated in the Classics Club spin, where readers create a list of twenty classics from their reading list, and number them 1-20. The Club selects a number (to be announced on Monday) and all the ‘spinners’ attempt to read the corresponding title on their individual lists before December 1.
https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/29/the-classics-spin-14/
Because I am trying to read my titles in approximately chronological order, in my previous two spin efforts I kept my titles in order, and read all the titles up to and including the matching title. The first time was a bit of a struggle as I had to mail order one of the books and it took longer to arrive than I expected, ( I guess I could have bought it as an ebook), but both times I was successful.
This time I am facing a long list of Plato’s philosophy and politics (most of which seem to be short but very convoluted), and Xenophon’s histories (which are much longer), so I am not sure how successful my version of the spin will be. But it may help push me a little harder to finish the Greeks, so what’s the worst that can happen?? 🙂
My list is
1 Plato Hippias Major and Minor ♥
2 Aristophanes Wealth ♥
3 Plato Euthydemus ♥
4 Plato Euthyphro ♥
5 Plato Apology ♥
6 Plato Crito ♥
7 Plato Phaedo ♥
8 Plato Gorgias ♥
9 Plato Menexenus ♥
10 Plato Protagorus ♥
11 Plato Meno ♥
12 Plato Cratylus ♥
13 Xenophon Memoribilia
14 Xenophon Apology (defence of Socrates)
15 Xenophon Economics
16 Xenophon Symposium (Banquet)
17 Xenophon Miscellaneous writings Horsemanship, Cavalry, Dogs, Ways and Means
18 Xenophon Anabasis ♥
19 Xenophon Agesilaus
20 Plato The Republic
To many observers, this is not a particularly tasty or tempting list, but I am committed now, so on I go, and will read some scifi and murder mysteries in the background. Roll on Monday!
Fifteen by August 1st
So thanks to the Classics Club spin (see earlier post) I’ll be aiming to read 15 Greek plays through the months of June and July, reaching Electra by Sophocles by August 1st. If this past weekend’s weather here is anything close to what to expect from winter, I’ll be indoors a lot anyway. I read two last weekend, so only thirteen to go – easssssy 😉
Another Classics Club spin!
The meta-literary bloggers website Classics Club (https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/author/theclassicsclubblog/) is running another spin starting Monday June 6 and finishing August 1. The idea is to pick 20 of your to-read books, and when the spin number (1-20) is announced on Monday, to read your corresponding book before the August deadline.
My spin on their spin (which I achieved – just – last time) is to read up to their number before the deadline e.g. if the number is 14, I have to read all books 1-14 on my list. Since I have at least 20 Greek plays in order to read next before striking out into the more intellectual forests of Plato and Aristotle, this seems a good way of pushing through. Wish me luck!
So my next twenty books are, in order,
| 1 | Electra | Euripides |
| 2 | Heracles | Euripides |
| 3 | The women of Troy | Euripides |
| 4 | The Birds | Aristophanes |
| 5 | Ion | Euripides |
| 6 | Iphigenia among the Taurians | Euripides |
| 7 | Helen | Euripides |
| 8 | The Thesmophoriazusae | Aristophanes |
| 9 | Lysistrata | Aristophanes |
| 10 | The Phonecian Women | Euripides |
| 11 | Philoctetes | Sophocles |
| 12 | The Cyclops | Euripides |
| 13 | Orestes | Euripides |
| 14 | Oedipus at Colonus | Sophocles |
| 15 | Electra | Sophocles |
| 16 | The Bacchae | Euripides |
| 17 | Iphigenia at Aulis | Euripides |
| 18 | The Frogs | Aristophanes |
| 19 | The Ecclesiazusae (Assemblywomen) | Aristophanes |
| 20 | Wealth | Aristophanes |
And the lucky number is ….
8 !!
So my target before May 2nd for the Classics Club spin
https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/category/classics-spin/
is to read The Knights by Aristophanes.
Before The Knights, I will have to read Women of Trachis and Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles ; The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus, Andromache, and Hecuba by Euripides, and the earlier Acharnians by Aristophanes. This is not part of the Classics Club spin challenge, but self-imposed by my own proviso to try and read the classics in chronological order.Since there are 8 weeks to the deadline (coincidence? I think not 😉 ), all I have to do is average one play a week, and I will make the cut.
I hope to finish Thucydides today, and then divert to something off my shelves (perhaps Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Lost Continent or Stephen Baxter’s Mammoth) before beginning the plays.
Good luck to all fellow Classic Club spinners. I hope you got something you will enjoy, or at least you will enjoy getting off your list.
