Earlier this week, I shared a post with my list of books for the newest Classics Club Spin challenge (see it here), and today, this spin’s number was announced. (For those keeping track, it’s CC Spin #34, and for me personally, #6!)

Hosted by The Classics Club blog, the Classics Club Spin is a reading adventure where participants come up with a list of classics they’d like to read, number them 1 to 20, and then read the book that corresponds to the “spin” number that comes up.

For CCSpin #34, the lucky number is:

And that means I’ll be reading:

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (published 1915)

Synopsis:

A prominent turn-of-the-century social critic and lecturer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is perhaps best known for her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a chilling study of a woman’s descent into insanity, and Women and Economics, a classic of feminist theory that analyzes the destructive effects of women’s economic reliance on men.

In Herland, a vision of a feminist utopia, Gilman employs humor to engaging effect in a story about three male explorers who stumble upon an all-female society isolated somewhere in South America. Noting the advanced state of the civilization they’ve encountered, the visitors set out to find some males, assuming that since the country is so civilized, “there must be men.” A delightful fantasy, the story enables Gilman to articulate her then-unconventional views of male-female roles and capabilities, motherhood, individuality, privacy, the sense of community, sexuality, and many other topics.

Decades ahead of her time in evolving a humanistic, feminist perspective, Gilman has been rediscovered and warmly embraced by contemporary feminists. An articulate voice for both women and men oppressed by the social order of the day, she adeptly made her points with a wittiness often missing from polemical writings.

This wasn’t necessarily the book I was most hoping for this time around, but I’m happy with the spin results regardless! I do think I may have read an excerpt from Herland for a women’s studies class way back in my college years — but I’m not 100% sure, so this will be a good chance to find out. This is a relatively short book (under 150 pages, in the edition I checked out from the library), and I look forward to diving in!

What do you think of my newest spin book?

Here’s my list of 20 titles for Classics Club Spin #34:

1. Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
2. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
4. Dracula by Bram Stoker
5. Peony by Pearl Buck
6. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
7. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
8. Howards End by E. M. Forster
9. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
10. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
11. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien
12. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
13. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
14. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
15. Passing by Nella Larsen
16. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
17. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
18. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
19. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
20. A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

My previous Classics Club Spin books:

Are you participating in this Classics Club Spin? If so, what book will you be reading?