I’ve joined The Classics Club!

August 4, 2012

The main reason I started this blog is so that I could participate in The Classics Club!

Millions of hearts to The Classics Club! I am so enamored of the idea of people from all over coming together to read wonderful books and share ideas in such a friendly manner. I appreciate the cohesive yet not rule-bound approach they are taking to studying literature!

The way I’m choosing to participate is 50 books, 5 years. So, by July 15, 2017 my goal is to complete these titles:

1. The Classic Fairy Tales – Tartar

2. Angels and Insects – Byatt

3. Babel Tower – Byatt Completed 9/16/12 Review

4. Ragnarok – Byatt

5. Remembrance of Things Past: Vol I Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove – Proust

6. Don Quixote – Cervantes

7. David Copperfield – Dickens

8. Hard Times – Dickens Completed 12/20/12 Review

9. Great Expectations – Dickens

10. The Plague – Camus

11. 1984 – Orwell

12. Crime and Punishment  – Dostoyevsky

13. The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoyevsky

14. The Professor – C. Brontë

15. Jane Eyre – C. Brontë

16. Villette – C. Brontë

17. Howl and Other Poems – Ginsberg

18. The Importance of Being Earnest – Wilde   Completed 8/19/12 Review

19. Hamlet – Shakespeare

20. Macbeth – Shakespeare

21. King Lear – Shakespeare

22. Much Ado About Nothing – Shakespeare

23. The Tempest – Shakespeare

24. Twelfth Night – Shakespeare

25. As You Like It – Shakespeare

26. War and Peace – Tolstoy 

27. Wuthering Heights – E. Brontë Completed 10/25/12 Review

28. The Marriage Plot – Eugenides

29. The Bloody Chamber – Carter

30. Tropic of Cancer – Miller

31. The Dharma Bums – Kerouac

32. The Bell Jar – Plath

33. Colossus – Plath

34. Complete Poems – Dickinson

35. Frankenstein – Shelley

36. Walden – Thoreau

37. Leaves of Grass – Whitman

38. Huckleberry Finn – Twain

39.  The Complete Poems – Sexton

40. Moby Dick – Melville

41. The Poisonwood Bible – Kingsolver

42. Mrs. Dalloway – Woolf

43. Orlando – Woolf

44. The Rainbow – Lawrence

45. Pale Fire – Nabokov

46. Ham on Rye – Bukowski Removed 8/19/12 replaced by Howards End – Forster

47. Rimbaud Complete Works – Rimbaud

48. The Ambassadors – James

49. Poems Published in 1820 – Keats

50. Written on the Body – Winterson Removed 8/19/12 replaced by Rebecca – Du Maurier Completed 12/1/12 Review

51. The Hobbit – Tolkien Added 11/5/12 I couldn’t bear to take anything off my list! Completed 11/24/12 Review

52. A Christmas Carol – Dickens Added 12/5/12 Again, I couldn’t bear to take anything off my list! Completed 12/16/12 Review

Some of these titles are a little unconventional. A few have been released as recently as this year! How in the world could they be considered classics, you ask? What I’m using as my definition of classic is closely aligned to what Calvino thought of as a classic. I also couldn’t help but look up classic in the OED (yes, I’m that kind of nerd), and the recurring theme of the definitions relate to acknowledged excellence or importance. Most of the definitions relating to age or time were marked “rare” but the definitions relating to quality and value are the most vital uses.

The other thing I wanted to note before I am immersed in reading and thinking is that I want this to be an exercise in quality instead of quantity (which is why I didn’t pick more titles, even though I will most likely read hundreds of books in the next five years).  I would like each of these books to generate a flurry of biography, letter, journal article, etc. etc. etc. reading, and the writing of a thoughtful piece.

I am so excited to be participating. Many thanks to Jillian and the moderators who make The Classics Club possible!

Written by jackiemania Posted in The Classics Club