Thursday, January 9, 2014

Classics Club

I've decided to join the Classics Club, which is a good reason to read some of the many books I've bought, many of which I've started, then gotten distracted and never finished, through no fault of their own (that I'm aware of). Plus a few this gives me an excuse to pick up.

My goal is to finish them by December 31, 2018. I'd say it would easily go much faster, but it depends on how distracted I continue to get, so I'm playing it safe.

Postscript: I have changed this list many times, which I feel guilty about, even though it's perfectly fair according to the rules. I had barely begun when fascinating classics began throwing themselves at me, and I could neither pass them up, nor resist reviewing them. There are so many amazing books! Rest assured that what I've bumped off the original list is now hovering on the follow-up list, just waiting for me to finish this one.

My List:
  1. Grant Allen: The Type-Writer Girl
  2. Asser: Life of King Alfred 
  3. William Baldwin: Beware the Cat (etext link) (link to modern paraphrase)
  4. James Boswell: Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763
  5. Hall Caine: The Manxman
  6.  Ernest Cline: Ready Player One
  7. Jeanne Delavigne: Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans 
  8. Maitreya Devi: It Does Not Die  
  9. Charles Dickens: Dombey and Son 
  10. Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
  11. John Donne: Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions 
  12. Arthur Conan Doyle: The Lost World 
  13. Lord Dunsany: The Curse of the Wise Woman
  14. Mircea Eliade: Bengali Nights 
  15. Henry Fielding: Shamela 
  16. Masanobu Fukuoka: The One-Straw Revolution
  17. Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford
  18. George Gissing: New Grub Street 
  19. Francis Godwin: The Man in the Moone 
  20. Eliza Haywood: Adventures of Eovaii 
  21. Eliza Haywood: Anti-Pamela
  22. Frank Herbert: Dune  
  23. Yoshido Kenko: Essays in Idleness
  24. Frances Parkinson Keyes: Crescent Carnival 
  25. Rudyard Kipling: Kim 
  26. Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird 
  27. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise 
  28. J. Sheridan Le Fanu: The Cock and Anchor 
  29. J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Willing to Die 
  30. Gaston Leroux: The Phantom of the Opera
  31. Arthur Machen and A.E. Waite: The House of the Hidden Light
  32. Claude McKay: Amiable with Big Teeth
  33. Florence Nightingale: Her Diary and "Visions"
  34. L'Abbe du Prat: Venus in the Cloisters
  35. J.B. Priestley, Benighted 
  36. Pu Songling: Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
  37. Samuel Richardson: Pamela 
  38. The Saga of Grettir the Strong
  39. Charlotte Smith: Celestina 
  40. Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle 
  41. Tobias Smollett: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
  42. Riccardo Stephens: The Mummy
  43. Bram Stoker and Valdimar Ásmundsson: Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula
  44. Snorri Sturluson: The Prose Edda
  45. Johannes Trithemius: In Praise of Scribes 
  46. Anthony Trollope: Can You Forgive Her?
  47. Henrik Wergeland: The Army of Truth: Selected Poems 
  48. Edith Wharton: The Buccaneers 
  49. Ellen Wood: East Lynne 
  50. Emile Zola: The Ladies' Paradise

3 comments:

  1. I struggled with Kim, but I love To Kill a Mockingbird!

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  2. Funny, Kim is one of the things I'm reading right now! And I think To Kill a Mockingbird is actually the weirdest thing on the list, just because I almost never read American Lit. But I'm told it's really good. :)

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