So as I wrote a couple of days ago, I have decided to join The Classics Club. Below you’ll find my list of the 50 books I pledge to read before September 2017. It’s a bit scary to create such a list because my intention is to try and stick to it and actually get these books read. I started with listing the books I already own that qualify for this club – 25 books in all (one of these is a reread). And then came the trickier part – going through my wish list of 1000+ books and determining the last 25 books…
There was some titles I immediately knew I wanted to include – like Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 and Dumas The Count de Monte Christo. But then I just went through my wish list, added the books I felt for. I have to admit that apparently, not that many classics have spoken to me. I only ended up with a list of 55 novels – so 30 novels out of my 1000+ wish list are what I determine classics…! That’s just sad! If I had known that, I probably would have joined The Classics Club a lot sooner to get more recommendations…!
But anyway, here’s my list. I haven’t paid attention to making sure both men and women are included or that all the authors aren’t ‘old white men’ but I still have a bit of everything, I think. The last to be included was Ernest Hemingway – I’ve been putting of reading him for so long, him being this big game hunter who drank too much, but I’m slowly coming to the realization that I might actually still like some of his works… So I kicked Mervyn Peake off the list and added Hemingway.
Here’s the list – deadline: September 2017:
- Richard Adams: Watership Down. (Own collection)
- Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
- Jane Austen: Northhanger Abbey. (Own collection)
- Paul Auster: The New York Trilogy. (Own collection)
- Frank L. Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Karen Blixen: Out of Africa. (Own collection)
- Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
- Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Little Princess
- William Burroughs: Naked Lunch. (Own collection)
- A.S. Byatt: Possession. (Own collection)
- Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland. (Own collection)
- Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass. (Own collection)
- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: Don Quixote (Own collection)
- Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone
- Charles Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby. (Own collection)
- Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities. (Own collection)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Idiot. (Own collection)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment. (Own collection)
- Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy
- Alexander Dumas: The Count of Monte Christo
- Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. (Own collection)
- George Elliot: The Mill on the Floss
- Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. (Own collection)
- Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows. (Own collection)
- Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory
- Graham Greene: The End of the Affair
- Alex Haley: Roots
- Thomas Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge
- Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
- Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
- Frank Herbert: Dune. (Own collection)
- Victor Hugo: Les Misérables. (Own collection)
- Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady
- Christopher Isherwood: A Single Man
- James Joyce: Ulysses. (Own collection)
- Mario Vargas Llosa: Conversations in a Chatedral
- Gabriel García Márques: One Hundred Years of Solitude. (Own collection)
- Carson McCullers: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
- Toni Morrison: Beloved
- Marcel Proust: In Remembrance of Things Past. (Own collection – I’m not sure if the edition I’m reading is being published and I don’t know if the last volume is finished in 5 years but I’ll try to finish as much of it as is published.)
- Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children. (Own colletion)
- John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men
- J.R.R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings. (Own collection – reread)
- Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited. (Own collection)
- Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
- Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence
- Virginia Woolf: Orlando. (Own collection)
- Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road
- Émile Zola: Thérèse Raquin
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The Literary Bunny 
Great list!
Thanks Heather!
So many awesome books. Thing Fall Apart, Possession, Les Mis, The Age Of Innocence, 100 yrs.. I’m excited for you!
I’m excited too! 🙂
Nice list! And, I tried to read Mervyn Peake a little while back and it was horrible. You’re not missing anything. (I’d substitute The Worm Ouroboros–just as influential but actually readable, sort of.) I keep changing my list as I find more to read; it’s getting way out of control. Held og lykke med det!
Tak Jeanlp! Er du fra Danmark eller? Yeah, I’ve actually tried to read Mervyn Peake too and disliked the book so much that I gave it away – I never do that… But since, I’ve read a lot about it and what he was inspired by so I would like to give it another go. Never heard of The Worm Ouroboros – will check that out, although sort of readable isn’t the best recommendation 😉
Jeg var engang udvekslingstudent på Fyn–men det var jo lang siden. Ouroboros is another cornerstone of British fantasy literature and influenced Tolkien especially–but an easy read it is not. 🙂
Welcome to the Classics Club. That’s a great list.
Thanks 🙂