My Classics Club List, Version 2.0
Happy New Calendar Year!
In the spirit of new beginnings and fresh starts, I decided to reorganize my Classics Club list. After participating in the Club for a few months, I realized that I definitely wanted the list to be a living, dynamic thing that incorporates my interests as they develop. I also realized that we read a ton of classics over at Unputdownables, and I want to add them to my list. Another thing you might note is that I removed most of the poetry. I found that I like to read individual poems when the spirit moves me, and rattle them around in my head for a few days. I don’t like to read them like a novel (and what does it mean to have “completed” the Complete Emily Dickinson!? No, no, no.). The only book of poetry I left on was Ginsberg’s Howl, which is of a piece and should be read at one time. I removed the Eugenides – sorry Jeffrey! I rethought it, and couldn’t put it as a classic in good conscience just yet. I’m still going to read it, of course. I got the list back down to 50, too.
I expect to do this at least once a year, maybe twice. Some of my favorite reading this year were classics that I put on my list after the fact, so I know this is a process that works with my particular brand of madness. I’ll keep annotating, changing, and breathing life into this list until I decide to do a new one in July 2013 or January 2014.
So, without further ado – here is my revamped list!
50 classics, 5 years. So, by July 15, 2017 my goal is to complete:
1. The Classic Fairy Tales – Tartar
2. Angels and Insects – Byatt
3. Babel Tower – Byatt Completed 9/16/12 Thoughts
4. Ragnarok – Byatt
5. Remembrance of Things Past: Swann’s Way – Proust
6. Don Quixote – Cervantes
7. David Copperfield – Dickens
8. Hard Times – Dickens Completed 12/20/12 Thoughts
9. Great Expectations – Dickens
10. The Plague – Camus
11. 1984 – Orwell
12. Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky Completed 4/27/13 Thoughts
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 Thoughts
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 Thoughts
28. The Virgin in the Garden – Byatt
29. The Bloody Chamber – Carter Completed 2/18/13 Thoughts
30. Tropic of Cancer – Miller
31. The Dharma Bums – Kerouac
32. The Bell Jar – Plath
33. Persuasion – Austen Completed 1/25/12 Thoughts
34. Northanger Abbey – Austen
35. Frankenstein – Shelley Completed 3/23/13 Thoughts
36. Walden – Thoreau
37. Wives and Daughters – Gaskell
38. Huckleberry Finn – Twain
39. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Doyle
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. Howards End – Forster
47. A Christmas Carol – Dickens Completed 12/16/12 Thoughts
48. The Hobbit – Tolkien Completed 11/24/12 Thoughts
49. Agnes Grey – A. Brontë
50. Rebecca – Du Maurier Completed 12/1/12 Thoughts
I haven’t read any Dickens since high school (except rereading A Christmas Carol), but David Copperfield is my favorite of those I’ve read!
I love 1984 and reread it often. I first read it before I hit double digits and it is always fresh.
Proust- well, sometimes I look up volumes of this but I can’t even figure out what the entire work is, exactly. Multiple volumes? One? I’d like to try it, but how would I start? I’ll look to you for guidance!
Proust: Remembrance of Things Past is a seven volume work, and Swann’s Way is the first volume. I was confused about that too until I looked at my physical book. The book I have is my husband’s – given to him by his friend in college when he was his best man in his wedding. It has the first two of the seven volumes in it.
I always wanted to read it for the madeleine/involuntary memories he writes about. I hope to get to it this year!
I congratulate you on the Bronte representation!
Thanks, Patty! I just counted the female authors on my list and there are 19 out of 50. I chose my list without thought of gender, but I’m glad to see that my list is naturally semi-balanced male/female.
I expect the Brontes will be a permanent fixture even if I decide to do another 5 or 10 or 20 year list! I plan to reread them over and over and over for as long as I can!