Happy new year to all Classics Circuit Participants!

Because of the holiday, we will be extending the sign up for the February 2010 Harlem Renaissance tour until the morning of January 2, 2010. There are numerous options to choose from, including poets (such as Langston Hughes) and fiction (like Zora Neale Hurston and James Weldon Johnson).

We’ll send out assignments this weekend, so make sure you sign up soon!

This week we’ll also be posting some recaps of the Victorian tours we hosted in November and December. I sure had fun following Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell, and I hope you did too!

Although the Wilkie Collins tour is winding down this week, Elizabeth Gaskell is going strong. I hope to post the January Edith Wharton schedule in the next few days (dates were emailed a few weeks ago, we’re just slow given the U.S. holiday). Then next week, we will begin sign up for the February tour. We’ll be keeping sign up open for a few weeks, and with the holidays, we’ll try to make sure there are options for anyone who choses to be unplugged those two weeks. Around the new year, we’ll post a poll with March options, and sign up for the March tour will be in January.

If you are able to, make sure you check back here next week for sign up to host The Harlem Renaissance on your blog. I have been reading about it and gathering information together for you to read and I am quite excited about all the options!

Thanks for all the enthusiasm and for all the wonderful blog posts we’ve seen so far for Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell!

If you do not frequently check the RSS feed or visit this site, you may need an extra reminder of sign ups for future Circuits. I’ve added an email sign up feature to The Classics Circuit. If you’d like to be notified when sign up is open, enter your email.

You have one more day to get in your votes in for the American tour! If you haven’t already voted, go do so!

We are so excited for the beginning of the Wilkie Collins Circuit next week. Thanks so much for your eagerness to celebrate the classics!

In the mean time, I created a logo for The Classics Circuit. Trisha also made up some buttons. Feel free to use them on your site if you are participating in the upcoming tours or even if you just feel like having a button!

I do ask that you download them to your own computer.

Just one more week until the beginning of the first Classics Circuit, Wilkie Collins, and I’m getting giddy! If you are participating in that tour, make sure the schedule we’ve posted is what you are expecting. I hope we haven’t missed anyone!

If you’d like, you  may add a sentence to your post that welcomes Wilkie Collins to “The Classics Circuit” and you can link to the full Collins Circuit schedule posted on this site so your blog readers can see where he’s been and where he is going. Likewise, Gaskell participants may want to direct their readers to the full Gaskell Circuit schedule.

I’m so excited for all the interest. I hope you are enjoying your reading!

For the January-to-February Tour, we’ve settled on American authors.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) through Saturday will be a poll of four American writers from which we’ll choose the January Circuit. Please note that if we have huge interest in more than one author, we’ll do overlapping tours as we did for the Victorians. Come back tomorrow to choose one of the four that you’d love to see on tour!

Sign up for the American January-to-February tour(s) will begin in November, probably the second week.

For the February-to-March tour, we won’t have a vote: we’ll be doing a thematic tour. We’re not sure how the theme will work, as compared to the author tours, but I’m excited because it’s an awesome theme. In honor of U.S. Black History month, we’ll be doing a Harlem Renaissance tour. We’re still working on the details (and we’ll get an information post up with reading options, as we did for the other tours). Sign up will be in December.

If you’re interested in the tours, here are some basics: Tours run Monday through Fridays. We’ll start assigning days the beginning of January and we’ll assign participants Monday through Friday until all participatns are assigned. Because we “assign” a day that the author will “visit” your blog, we like to know which days you are unable to host or which days your prefer. We need to know about other “tours” you’re doing that tie up your blog, weeks you’ll be out of town, and details like “I don’t want to host on Fridays.” Let us know that information when you sign up for the tour so the day we assign might work best for the tour.

We’re always looking for your suggestions on future tours. Fill out the Suggest a Tour form so we’ll have your ideas to work with!

I am so excited to see your excitement for the upcoming tours. Thank you for your eagerness, and I’m looking forward to the future!

Tours

I wanted to give you a quick note to remind you that the sign up for the Wilkie Collins tour will close Saturday morning (8 a.m. CST).

Next week, we’ll have a sign up for the Elizabeth Gaskell tour, which will overlap with Wilkie Collins.

I am so excited for all those who’ve signed up and I’m sure both are going to be fun tours around the the blogosphere!

We would like to plan to have another tour beginning the second week of January, but we need your help in deciding what authors would you love to see promoted via tour.

Go to the Suggest a Tour page and submit your authors and ideas. While right now we’re going to stay with authors, we may branch out in the future to subject tours. Please give us your insights and favorites so we have options to work with. I was thinking we select  a American author, but I’m up for suggestions!

Voting

In the middle of November, I plan on putting up a survey to vote for the January tour. Is that a good time to plan your reading for a January tour? Again, I’m open to suggestions.

A Community Effort

The most exciting thing about The Classics Circuit thus far is realizing how the community is joining together. Each of you will write a post for your blog. Our job it just to bring it all together, and I’m so excited how it’s all working out.

I’m realizing that this is going to be a lot of work to bring together a tour, and already I’m incredibly grateful to those who have helped out so far.

That great info about Wilkie Collins was compiled by Trisha (Eclectic/Eccentric), and Bella (A Bibliophile’s Bookshelf) is helping me organize the Collins tour. Elizabeth Gaskell book info (to be posted next week) was compiled by Eva (A Striped Armchair) and the Teresa (Shelf Love) is helping compile information about the life of Gaskell. Other bloggers are giving input behind the scenes as well, including Becky (Becky’s Book Reviews), Christine (booktumbling), and Cara (Ooh…Books). I’ve also gotten a few emails from some others who want to join in helping. I’ll be sure to get in touch with you too!

So the bottom line is that The Classics Circuit is turning in to a community effort. While I may post the surveys and the author info onto the website, there are a half a dozen other people who are helping out behind the scenes through emails, input, research, write-ups, and organization. I do truly appreciate all your help!

If you also want to help behind the scenes, send me an email at rebecca [at] rebeccareid [dot] com with “Classics Circuit Committee” in the subject line.

One more note: If you only want to subscribe to certain posts on The Classics Circuit, you can subscribe to each feed individually:

• General Information (such as this information post)
• Tour Schedule (future tour sign up, current tour schedules, past tour permalinks)
• Voting (voting for possible future tours, such as the Vote for November 2009 Circuit! post)

We are currently working on getting this site up and running. Please subscribe to the feed so you’ll get updates when we are ready to roll!