Classics Club

In the words of its moderators, “The Classics Club was started on March 7, 2012 by a blogger who wanted to ‘unite those of us who like to blog about classic literature, as well as to inspire people to make the classics an integral part of life.’ She thought about several ideas but finally settled on inviting people to make out a list of (at least 50) classic titles they intend to read and blog about within the next five years. After a few months, the club grew, and it was decided to create a separate site to house everything related to The Classics Club.”

Here is my list, which I worked on from 2014 to 2019. During that time I completed and blogged about nearly 50 titles that you can find in this post. Since I gave myself more than 50 books to choose from, I’ve decided to keep it for reference, and to continue at my own pace without a particular goal.

Phoenix Award winners
Click here for more about the Phoenix Award
1. The Mozart Season – Virginia Ewer Wolff
2. A Solitary Blue – Cynthia Voigt August 2014 – 1
3. A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver – E.L. Konigsburg
4. Habibi – Naomi Shihab Nye
5. Smith – Leon Garfield June 2014 – 1
6. Under the Blood-Red Sun – Graham Salisbury
7. The Fledgling – Jane Langton July 2017 – 4
8. Frindle – Andrew Clements
9. The Mark of the Horse Lord – Rosemary Sutcliff July 2015 – 2
10. My Brother Sam Is Dead – James Lincoln Collier

Trying again with authors I didn’t like the first time
11. Barchester Towers – Anthony Trollope July 2014 – 1
12. The Aspern Papers – Henry James June 2015 – 2
13. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
14. The Spire – William Golding
15. Dubliners – James Joyce
16. Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf July 2015 – 2
17. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
18. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe – Penelope Lively – 4
19. Three plays – Eugene O’Neill November 2016 – 3
20. A Separate Peace – John Knowles January 2016 – 2

Unread works from favorite authors
21. A Fugue in Time – Rumer Godden February 2017 – 3
22. The Shuttle – Frances Hodgson Burnett June 2018 – 5
23. The Matchmaker – Thornton Wilder July 2015 – 2
24. Armadale – Wilkie Collins August 2015 – 2
25. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton July 2016 – 3
26. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury November 2016 – 3
27. Saplings – Noel Streatfeild December 2015 – 2
28. An Old-Fashioned Girl – Louisa May Alcott July 2015 – 2
29. Sapphira and the Slave Girl – Willa Cather December 2014 – 1
30. East of Eden – John Steinbeck December 2017 – 4

Around the world
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (Russia) October 2015 – 2
32. The Makioka Sisters – Junichiro Tanizaki (Japan) December 2016 – 3
33. Season of Migration to the North – Tayeb Salih (Sudan) December 2017 – 4
34. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
35. The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse (Germany) November 2015 – 2
36. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
37. My Brilliant Career – Miles Franklin  (Australia) November 2019
38. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
39. Le Grand Meaulnes – Alain-Fournier (France) October 2014 – 1
40. Bliss and Other Stories – Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand) January 2015 – 1

Classics of comedy
41. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis July 2016 – 3
42. Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome August 2016 – 3
43. Wise Children – Angela Carter
44. Angel – Elizabeth Taylor
45. The Brandons – Angela Thirkell December 2014 – 1
46. Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House – Eric Hodgins February 2016 – 2
47. My Life and Hard Times – James Thurber
48. The Towers of Trebizond – Rose Macaulay March 2015 – 1
49. Excellent Women – Barbara Pym September 2017 – 4
50. Diary of a Provincial Lady – E.M. Delafield December 2016 – 3

Random additional books – women authors
51. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
52. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley August 2017 – 4
53. Troy Chimneys – Margaret Kennedy February 2017 – 3
54. The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin October 2018 – 5
55. The Home-Maker – Dorothy Canfield Fisher December, 2014 – 1
56. My Cousin Rachel – Daphne DuMaurier April 2017 – 3
57. The Story of My Life – Helen Keller March 2019 – 5
58. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou February 2020
59. One Fine Day – Mollie Panter-Downes
60. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain

Random additional books – men authors
61. Scaramouche – Rafael Sabatini March, 2017 – 3
62. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
63. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
64. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison June, 2018 –  5
65. Ivanhoe – Walter Scott
66. Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
67. The Magnificent Ambersons – Booth Tarkington
68. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu July, 2018 – 5
69. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
70. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

Rereads from School
71. Don Quixote, Part I / Part II – Miguel de Cervantes January 2018 /July 2019
72. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
73. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl May 2017 – 3
74. The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy August 2017 – 4
75. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
76. A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf
77. Herland – Frances Perkins Gilman – February 2018 – 4
78. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
79. Parzival – Wolfram von Eschenbach
80. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne

Classical Classics
81. Histories – Herodotus
82. The Theban Plays – Sophocles
83. The Oresteia – Aeschylus
84. The Iliad – Homer
85. The Odyssey – Homer
86. Metamorphoses – Ovid
87. The Aeneid – Virgil
88. The Golden Ass – Apuleius
89. Lysistrata – Aristophanes
90. The Symposium – Plato

Poetry and Plays
91. Eugene Onegin – Alexander Pushkin
92. The Divine Comedy – Dante
93. Paradise Lost – John Milton
94. Beowulf – trans. Seamus Heaney
95. Aurora Leigh – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
96. Song of Myself – Walt Whitman
97. Faust – Goethe
98. A Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen
99. The Cherry Orchard – Anton Chekhov
100. Love’s Labour’s Lost – Shakespeare

Year 1: 9 books
Year 2: 10 books
Year 3: 12 books
Year 4: 8 books
Year 5: 5 books

Here is a massive list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read from the Guardian that helped me to make my list.

Save

Save

Save