The Classics Club



Back in March of 2012, Jillian from A Room of One's Own set up The Classics Club. At the time, she said about it:

The Classics Club is a club created to inspire people to read and blog about classic books. There’s no time limit to join and you’re most welcome, as long as you’re willing to sign up to read and write on your blog about 50+ classic books in at most five years. The perk is that, not only will you have read 50+ incredible (or at the very least thought-provoking) works in five years, you’ll get to do it along with all of these people. Join us! We’re very friendly.
Since then the club has grown hugely to over 200 members and has evolved to a website of it's own, which can be found here. Jillian is right - they are very friendly! Since its' move the club has developed all kinds of new exciting ways to interact with each other. They have a monthly meme question, a featured post of the month, a list of classics inspired reading events, and a list of all the reviews submitted by members. I would seriously recommend joining, if only for the fact that you get to make an awesome list and meet some awesome bloggers!

I've just revamped my list to reflect the changes in my life (I've had two babies and started my own business as well as working part time since originally signing up!). The list below is my new list, for which the finish date is 27th August 2019. My original list can be found below it - I'm keeping it as inspiration for my next list! 


The List

20th Century 


1. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
2. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
3. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
5. Charlotte's Web * by E.B White
6.Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
7.Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
8.Forever by Judy Blume 
9.For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
10.Gone with the Wind * by Margaret Mitchell
11.Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
12.Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
13.Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H Lawrence
14.Let the Circle Be Unbroken * by Mildred D. Taylor
15.Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winnifred Watson
16.Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm * by Kate Wiggins Douglas
17.Robin Hood by Henry Gilbert
18.Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry * by Mildred D. Taylor
19.Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
20.Tell me the Truth About Love by W.H Auden 
21The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
22.The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
23.The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

24.The Bell Jar * by Sylvia Plath
25.The Cocktail Party by T.S Eliot
26.The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
27.The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
28.The Great Gatsby * by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
30-37.The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House in the Big Woods *, Little House on the Prairie *, On the Banks of Plum CreekBy the Shores of the Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years, & The First Four Years)
38.The Outsiders by S.E Hinton
39.The Marvellous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum  

40.The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
41.The Road to Memphis * by Mildred D. Taylor
42.The Stranger by Albert Camus
43.Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

19th Century


44.A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
45.Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
46.Grimms' Fairytales by Jacob & Willhelm Grimm

48.Nights with Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris
49.Quo Vadis? * by Henryk Sienkiewicz

50.Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
51.The Awakening by Kate Chopin 
52.The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
53.The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
54.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
55.Walden by Henry David Thoreau

17th Century

56.Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault


1st Century B.C (approx)

57.The Aeneid by Virgil

8th Century B.C (approx)

58.The Odyssey by Homer 

The Original List

Titles I own are in bold; ones I have read are struckthrough with a link to the review, if I've got around to it!

20th Century

1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
2. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
3. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
4. Alice Through the Looking Glass * by Lewis Carroll
5. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
7. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
8. Charlotte's Web * by E.B White
9.Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
10.Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
11.Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
12.Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
13.Forever by Judy Blume
14.For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
15.Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
16.Gone with the Wind * by Margaret Mitchell
17.Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
18.Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
19.Kid by Simon Armitage
20.Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H Lawrence
21.Let the Circle Be Unbroken * by Mildred D. Taylor
22.Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winnifred Watson
23.Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
24.My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
25.Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm * by Kate Wiggins Douglas
26.Robin Hood by Henry Gilbert
27.Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry * by Mildred D. Taylor
28.Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
29.Tell me the Truth About Love by W.H Auden 
30. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
31.The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
32.The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
33.The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

34.The Bell Jar * by Sylvia Plath
35.The Cocktail Party by T.S Eliot
36.The Collected Poems, 1909 - 1962 by T.S Eliot
37.The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
38.The Enormous Room by E.E Cummings
39.The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
40.The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
41.The Great Gatsby * by F. Scott Fitzgerald
42.The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
43. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
44.The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
45-58.The James Bond Series by Ian Fleming (Casino Royale *, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds are Forever, From Russia with Love, Dr. No *, Goldfinger, For Your Eyes Only, Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, You Only Live Twice, The Man with the Golden Gun, & Octopussy and the Living Daylights )
59.The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
60-67.The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House in the Big Woods *, Little House on the Prairie *, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of the Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years, & The First Four Years)
68.The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bugakov
69.The Outsiders by S.E Hinton
70-83.The Oz Series by L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz *, The Marvellous Land of Oz *, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Tik- Tok of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, Rinktink in Oz, The Lost Princess of Oz, The Tin Woodman of Oz, The Magic of Oz, & Glinda of Oz)

84.The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
85.The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
86.The Road to Memphis * by Mildred D. Taylor
87.The Silmarilion by J.R.R Tolkien
88.The Story of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting
89.The Stranger by Albert Camus
90-102.The Swallows and Amazons Series by Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazons *, Swallowdale *, Peter Duck *, Winter Holiday, Coot Club, Pigeon Post, We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea, Secret Water, The Big Six, Missee Lee *, The Picts and the Martyrs: Or Not Welcome at all, Great Northern?, & Coots in the North)
103.The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
104.This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
105.Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
106.Ulysses by James Joyce
107.Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M Forster

19th Century


108.A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
109.Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
110.Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
111.Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant
112.Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
113.Grimms' Fairytales by Jacob & Willhelm Grimm
114.Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
115.Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
116.Nights with Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris
117.North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
118.Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
119.Quo Vadis? * by Henryk Sienkiewicz
120.Shirley by Charlotte Bronte

121.Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
122.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
123.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
124.The Awakening by Kate Chopin
125.The Children of the New Forest * by Captain Marryat
126.The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
127.The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G Wells
128.The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
129.The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
130.The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
131.The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
132.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
133.The Time Machine by H.G Wells
134.The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley
135.Villette by Charlotte Bronte

136.Walden by Henry David Thoreau
137.War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy


18th Century
138.Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

17th Century

139.Macbeth by William Shakespeare
140.Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault


1st Century B.C (approx)

141.The Aeneid by Virgil

8th Century B.C (approx)

142.The Odyssey by Homer
143.The Iliad by Homer


* = re-reads (some so distant I only barely remember that I've ever read the book, and not at all what it was about!)


So that's the list, I'm also going to use this page to link up my answers to the monthly meme and other related things.
August Meme Answer
September Meme Answer
January Meme Answer

1 comment:

  1. I may have made my list too hard. Mine has The Faerie Queen on it! I don't want to read that!! :) Does the bold & asterisk mean you are going to reread Gone with the Wind? That's a piping good novel! (I tried to follow responses on this, but the little check box doesn't work.) :-)

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