Earlier in the 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 CCSpin #43, and for me personally, #15!)

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 #43, the lucky number is:

And that means I’ll be reading:

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Published 1948

Synopsis:

I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle’s walls and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has “captured the castle”– and the heart of the reader– in one of literature’s most enchanting entertainments.

And here’s the synopsis from the hardcover deluxe edition released in 2017 from Wednesday Books:

Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and her family may live in a ramshackle old English castle, but that’s about as romantic as her life gets. While her beautiful older sister, Rose, longs to live in a Jane Austen novel, Cassandra knows that meeting an eligible man to marry isn’t in either of their futures when their home is crumbling and they have to sell their furniture for food. So Cassandra instead strives to hone her writing skills in her journals. Until one day when their new landlords move in, which include two (very handsome) sons, and the lives of the Mortmain sisters change forever.

Finally! I’ve had I Capture the Castle on my to-read list for ages, and it’s been on my spin lists since the very first time I participated. I own a battered old paperback edition, and a few years ago I also picked up the hardcover deluxe edition:

Why has it taken me so long to read this book? No idea… except once I started including it on my spin lists, I’ve just been waiting for its turn to come around. And now it has!

I’m very happy with this spin! I’m looking forward to starting I Capture the Castle — probably a bit later this month. The deadline to finish this spin book is March 29th, which gives me plenty of time. I’ll be back with my reaction before then.

What do you think of my spin result this time around?

There’s a movie adaptation of I Capture the Castle from 2003 — so assuming I can find it to stream, I’ll plan to watch it before the end of March as well!

PS – Did you know… I Capture the Castle was Dodie Smith’s first novel, but she’s perhaps best known as the author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians!

Here’s my list of 20 titles for Classics Club Spin #43:

1. The House on the Strand by Daphne DuMaurier
2. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
3. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick
4. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
5. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
6. White Fang by Jack London
7. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
8. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
9. Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
10. Pat of Silver Bush by L. M. Montgomery
11. Peony by Pearl Buck
12. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
13. Frederica by Georgette Heyer
14. The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
15. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
16. Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham
17. Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor’s Son by Sholem Aleichem
18. Queen Lucia by E. F. Benson
19. Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
20. Under the Rainbow by Susan Scarlett

My previous Classics Club Spin books:

CCSpin29: The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer
CCSpin30: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
CCSpin31: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
CCSpin32: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
CCSpin33: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
CCSpin34: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
CCSpin35: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
CCSpin36: A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
CCSpin37: Howards End by E. M. Forster
CCSpin38: The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
CCSpin39: An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott
CCSpin40: Dracula by Bram Stoker
CCSpin41: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
CCSpin42: My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

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