The Classics Club

I'm going to do something that I'm not 100% sure about, but I'm taking the plunge.  I'm going to join The Classics Club hosted by Jillian at A Room of One's Own.

I know, you might all be rolling your eyes.  I sign up for Back to the Classics and there are few classics being reviewed here at The Scarlet Letter.  This is true.  I didn't start blogging to read a back list of classics.  In fact, I was pretty burnt out on academic reading when I did begin blogging.  But, I do have a lot of classics on my TBR, and a lot of holes in my reading, and I'm trying to get back on the wagon and feel that this might help.

So, the idea of the club is that you sign up and read at least 50 classics over the next 5 YEARS.  Yep, years.  I have to be able to do that, right?

Here is my list of 50 in some kind of arbitrary categories:

Classic Novellas:
Mary Shelley, Mathilda
Elie Wiesel, Night
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Classics in Translation:
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
Emile Zola, Nana
 
 British Classics:
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (reread)
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
John Fowles,  The French Lieutenant's Woman
George Orwell, Burmese Days
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
 

Pre-1945 American Classics:
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy
William Faulkner, Absalom Absalom
F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona
John Steinbeck, Pastures of Heaven
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons
Jean Toomer, Cane
 
Modern/Contemporary (Post-1945) American Classics:
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (short stories)
Saul Bellow, Herzog
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Don DeLillo, Libra
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast 
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (partial reread)
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin
Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
Phillip Roth, The Human Stain
Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
John Updike, The Rabbit Trilogy
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
 
Children's/YA Classics:
Louisa Mae Alcott, Little Women (partial reread)
Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (reread)
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lois Lowry, The Giver
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

That should do it.  It is heavy on the post-1945, but that is kind of what I'm into.  And the Americans.  There will be a little expanding of horizons, but not a ton.  Wish me luck!

Comments

  1. Exciting! Where are you going to start? We're doing this at The Blue Bookcase too.

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  2. I'm likely to start with the ones that are on other challenge lists this year. My book club is also going to read Pynchon this summer.

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  3. Good luck, and very best wishes to you, with your list! I'm glad you've joined. :D

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for hosting Jillian. This is awesome.

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  4. Wow, great list! I like the variety of familiar and not so familiar titles. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is amazing & remains one of my favourites ever. Enjoy & good luck :)

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    Replies
    1. My husband loves One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and has been trying to get me to read it for a while. I've read a lot of classics, but not for a while, so I'm trying to get into a few of the less familiars for sure.

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