Group Check-In #14 – August 2015

I am the Once Lost Wanderer (aka Joseph or J.E. Fountain), from the blog of the same name: formerly known as The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time (and my quest to read them). While that old title was very descriptive, it was also very boring. One of the first things the Classics Club did for me was to inspire me to change the name of my blog. There were so many creative, poetic, fanciful names, I felt compelled to come up with something more lyrical.

I’ve been with the Classics Club since May 2014, and I’ve completed 32 of 50 (57 of 100 of my greater Quest) novels thus far. My favorite is The Lord of the Rings, but that was a reread and it has been my favorite for decades. So, my favorite NEW discovery was Gone With the Wind.

I completed a reading bucket list thing last weekend with my last read. I read The Call of the Wild at the Library of Congress. Read more about that venture here.

I’m enjoying my current read, The Scarlett Letter, very much.

Next up is Mrs. Dalloway. I’m not terribly excited about that. I was not overly fond of my other experience with Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse.

A couple reads that I have coming up that I am looking forward to: War and Peace, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Atlas Shrugged.

I haven’t changed my list at all, unless you count a few that I threw out. I’m on a pretty fixed quest, and I haven’t really given myself the option of changing.

Regarding those I threw out – Please – no debate. I am not asking anyone else to burn books, just some things I didn’t want to read.

New favorite authors: I’ll say the Russians as a group. I loved both Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov.

Everyone must read now: I could never be so demanding, but here are a few that no one besides myself at the CC has reviewed: Lucky Jim, Catch-22, Under the Volcano, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Blood Meridian, and The Day of the Locust.

One of the things I have enjoyed most about the Classics Club is the ability to compare notes with other classics readers. A bit more specifically, one of the things I enjoy most about that is how another blogger and I seem of the same mind for most books, but then one comes up that we are polar opposites. Sort of related to that, there have been a number of books I have not enjoyed, but then I read some passionate reviews by other members and they helped me see things from a different perspective and improved my opinion.

I’ve made some wonderful acquaintances here, but I don’t dare begin naming them, for fear of leaving someone out.

Blog administrivia: If you have added The Once Lost Wanderer to your blogroll (or somesuch), and I haven’t returned the favor…Please send me a note. So, many blog tweaks, updates, etc. that is something I sort of lose track of. My apologies.

BIG, BIG thanks to The Classics Club Mods for creating and maintaining such a great forum.