The Classics Club

Hosted by Jillian of A Room of One's Own, The Classics Club offers a chance for those who love to read classics from all centuries challenge themselves, set some goals and find a group of people of a like mind. I've loved reading the classics since I was a teenager (a very long time ago) but there are so many books and authors I have yet to discover. There are also a lot of those classics I would love to read again. This club is going to give me the incentive to do both of those things.

Members of the club will make a list of at least 50 classics they plan to read then set their own length of time to complete reading the books. My list is actually 60 titles because I've included some short stories and some children's books so I thought I should push myself beyond the required 50. My goal is to read through the list in five years with a start date of March 15, 2012 through March 15, 2017. I'll be honest, a little part of me does wonder if I'll even still be blogging in five years...if anyone will still be blogging in five years, in which case there won't be anyone to hold me accountable. I'm shooting to average one classic a month. Here is my list:

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Portrait of A Lady by Henry James
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Moll Flanders by Daniel DeFoe
Frankenstein by Mary W. Shelley
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
My Antonia by Willa Cather
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Adam Bede by George Eliot
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Candide by Voltaire
Miss Bishop by Bess Street Aldrich
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac
The Mill On The Floss by George Eliot
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
A Room With A View by E. M. Forster


Children's  and Young Adult Books:
Daddy Longlegs by Jean Webster
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Margaret Atwater
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank
Where The Redfern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawls
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgeson Burnett
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett
Little Men  by Louisa May Alcott
The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit

Short Stories:
Rocking-Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
The Jumping Frog of Calavaras County by Mark Twain
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Plays:
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Henry IV by William Shakespeare
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde

Modern Classics:
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound & The Fury by William Faulkner
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Catcher In The Rye by John Salinger
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Possession by A. S. Byatt
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In addition to reading these books, I'm going to try to watch as many of the adaptations as I can find! I'll be starting off with The Sun Also Rises, my book club happens to be reading this one for March.