Some challenges finished and one not so much...

I'm proud to say that I'm already done with the Classics Challenge hosted by Trish! It actually runs until 31 October and required us to read 6 classics plus one book that is thought to become a classic. Classics are a weakness of mine so I enjoyed catching up a bit - even though what I read barely resembles my original plans... which had more serious/difficult/challenging classics than the ones I ended up with!

Here's what I read:
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
A Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Plus The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

My least favorite of the bunch was definitely Riders of the Purple Sage - I wanted to try a western but this genre is clearly not for me as I couldn't even finish this book! I enjoyed both the Agatha Christie and the first Sherlock Holmes story and loved The Little Prince as always. But the prize has to go to The Handmaid's Tale, which was original and beautifully written. I love Margaret Atwood!

Thanks Trish for hosting, looking forward to the next edition! :-)

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I also completed the Centuries Challenge hosted by Becky. I had higher hopes for myself here too and here's what I ended up reading in the end:

Aesop's Fables by Aesop (c. 550 B.C.E. - Greece)
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (16th century)
Sleeping Beauty and Other Stories (17th century)
Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery (20th century)

Obviously Anne wins here, but then there isn't much out there that would beat Anne with an 'e'!

Thanks Becky - this was fun!

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And I'm afraid that however much I wanted to finish the Spiritually Speaking Challenge hosted by Lilly from Reading Extravaganza, I got nowhere near the finish line - see my meager progress here and note that I do really, really want to read all those books at some point. Soon. :-)

Thanks anyway Lilly, I might have made it if it went on all year... or if I hadn't signed for every challenge known to man! ;-)

Classics Challenge

Trish is hosting the Classics Challenge again and she's right, I really can't resist. I enjoyed this last year and since I want to read more classics anyway, this is certainly the right way to go.

There are several options and I'm choosing to read 6 classics + one modern classic between 1 April and 31 October 2009. To sign up and for detailed info, visit the challenge post.

Completed: ALL 6/6 and 1/1 as of 29 June 2009

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (re-read)
The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (re-read)
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (re-read)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
War of the World by H.G. Wells
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
A Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Possibilities for the "Should be/Will be Classics" Bonus
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Dune by Frank Herbert
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood