The Classics Club

Jillian of A Room of One’s Own started The Classics Club a few months ago, so I’m a little behind joining, but I’m SO excited. The Classics Club has grown so big that it actually has its own blog now.

Basically, it is a super-challenge that readers can join to commit to reading a minimum of 50 classics within the next 5 years (you choose how many and what titles). It is a way to connect to other readers, find suggestions and reviews of classics, and finally tackle that TBR classics pile!

Since I have a tendency to get in over my head with challenges, I’m going to sign up for the minimum of 50 classics over 5 years and leave some room for other reading options. Here is my list for now, but it is meant to be a living list that can change or be added on to in the future. I will be linking reviews on this page and on The Classics Club blog. Please tell me what classics I should consider adding to my list and if you are doing this challenge too! Expect my list to change quite a bit, especially since I don’t have all my books with me right now (I just moved) and I KNOW they include a lot of classics that I would like to read soon. Also, note that a classic is not just defined by being old, especially for this challenge. Classics have some basic things in common, but Jillian is pretty flexible about the definition

My Commitment Level: 50 classic books (I listed more because I like to have choices)
My Start Date: August 12, 2012
My End Date: August 12, 2017

The List:

1. Alcott, Louisa May – Little Women
2. Alighieri, Dante – Inferno
3. Austen, Jane – Emma
4. Austen, Jane – Persuasian
5. Austen, Jane – Sense and Sensibility
6. Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451
7. Bronte, Charlotte – Jane Eyre
8. Bronte, Emily – Wuthering Heights
   (Really looking forward to this!) edit: just bought an amazing copy of this – can’t wait!
9. Burgess, Anthony – A Clockwork Orange
10. Burnett, Frances Hodgson – A Little Princess (re-read)
11. Burnett, Frances Hodgson – The Secret Garden (re-read)
12. Capote, Truman – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
13. Carroll, Lewis – Alice in Wonderland
14. Dahl, Roald – Matilda
15. De Cervantes, Miguel – Don Quixote
16. Dickens, Charles – Bleak House
17. Dickens, Charles – Great Expectations
    (I’m ashamed to admit I’ve started this a few times and never finished it – though I have enjoyed it, I just somehow end up very distracted and forget about this one)
18. Dickens, Charles – The Old Curiosity Shop
19. Dickens, Charles – David Copperfield
20. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor – The Brothers Karamazov
21. Dumas, Alexandre – The Count of Monte Cristo
22. Du Maurier, Daphne – Rebecca
23. Eugenides, Jeffrey – Middlesex
24. Faulkner, William – As I Lay Dying
25. Faulkner, William – The Sound and The Fury
26. Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Great Gatsby (re-read)
27. Forster, E. M. – A Room With A View
28. Hardy, Thomas – Tess of the D’Urbevilles
29. Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The Scarlet Letter
30. Heller, Joseph – Catch-22
31. Homer – The Iliad
32. Homer – The Odyssey
33. Hosseini, Khaled – The Kite Runner
34. Hugo, Victor – Les Miserables
35. Ishiguro, Kazuo – The Remains of the Day
36. Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never Let Me Go (re-read)
37. James, Henry – The Portrait of a Lady
38. Kesey, Ken – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
39. Knowles, John – A Separate Peace (re-read)
40. Leroux, Gaston – The Phantom of the Opera
41. L’Engle, Madeleine – A Wrinkle In Time
    (How have I never read this?!? Must fix!)
42. Lewis, C.S. – The Magicians Nephew (re-read)
43. Lewis, C.S. – The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (re-read)
44. Lewis, C.S. – The Horse and His Boy (re-read)
45. Lewis, C.S. – Prince Caspian (re-read)
46. Lewis, C.S. – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (re-read)
47. Lewis, C.S. – The Silver Chair (re-read)
48. Lewis, C.S. – The Last Battle (re-read)
49. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia – Love in the Time of Cholera
50. McEwan, Ian – Atonement review here
51. Mitchell, Margaret – Gone With The Wind
    (SO excited for this one!)
52. Nabokov, Vladimir – Lolita
53. Orwell, George – 1984
54. Salinger, J.D. – The Catcher in the Rye (re-read)
55. Sewell, Anna – Black Beauty
56. Shakespeare, William – Macbeth
    (Surprisingly, I’ve never read this)
57. Shakespeare, William – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
58. Stevenson, Robert Louis – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
59. Styron, William – Sophie’s Choice
60. Thoreau, Henry David – Walden
61. Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Hobbit
    (I really, really, need to read this so I can actually say I’ve read SOMETHING of Tolkien’s. The shame!)
62. Tolstoy, Leo – Anna Karenina
63. Tolstoy, Leo – War and Peace
64. Von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang – The Sorrows of Young Werther
    (Can somebody please explain to me how to write authors name in the Last Name, First name format when names like this come up? I never know how to do it correctly)
65. Walker, Alice – The Color Purple
66. Wharton, Edith – Ethan Frome
67. Wiesel, Elie – Night
    (Another one I can’t believe I haven’t read yet)
68. Wilde, Oscar – The Picture of Dorian Gray
69. Woolf, Virginia – A Room of One’s Own

That’s all for now, but expect this list to be constantly updated, expanded, and maybe a few replaced!

Who else will be joining me?!