I’ve gone against type and joined a club! The Classic Book Club!
I’m so excited to begin my FIVE YEAR JOURNEY reading through and blogging about 50 classic books! My goal is to read and post about a book each month.
The list below is in no particular order (though while compiling the list I’ve nearly finished War and Peace and can’t wait to write my first response post).
I’ve set my starting date as August 1, 2017 and my end date as September 1, 2022 (I think I actually have 51 books on the list and may want to sneak in a few extras).
The books with links are the ones I’ve finished and written about.
Classics Club Book List
Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rolvaag
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tom Jones Henry Fielding
Clarissa Samuel Richardson
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë
Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
A Passage to India EM Forster
A Light in August (or The Hamlet) William Faulkner
The Pursuit of Love Nancy Mitford
The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
Three Men in a Boat Jerome Jerome
Candide Voltaire
Cecilia Fanny Burney
The Life and Opinions Tristam Shandy, Laurence Sterne
The Vicar of Wakefield Oliver Goldsmith
The Nun Diderot
The Prairie James Fennimore cooper
Blithedale Romance Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
Tess of the D’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
Black Beauty Anna Sewall
The Perpetual Curate Margaret Oliphant
Lilith George Macdonald
Washington Square Henry James
Silas Marner George Eliot
The Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Ambrose Beirce
Love Stendhal
The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe
Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli
The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea Yukio Mishima
The Misanthrope Moliere
Writings on Nature John Muir
Animal Farm George Orwell
Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak
The Story of an African Farm Olive Schreiner
The General CS Forester
The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri
Lord of the Flies William Golding
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon
Kim Rudyard Kipling
Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire
Night Elie Wiesel
Moonstone Wilkie Collins
Cranford Elizabeth Gaskell (51)
Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell (52)
Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty John W. De Forest (53)
***CLASSICS I REMEMBER READING (I’ll update as I recall) BUT WON’T BE WRITING ABOUT ARE LISTED BENEATH MY LOVELY DOG’S PHOTO
Nurses Sketches Louisa May Alcott
Eight Cousins Louisa May Alcott
Rose in Bloom Louisa May Alcott
Little Women Louisa May Alcott
Ancient Greek Plays (I’ll take the time to spell them out later 🙂 )
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
Emma Jane Austen
Giovanni’s Room James Baldwin
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
The Stranger Albert Camus
My Antonia Willa Cather
The Awakening Kate Chopin
Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
Maggie of the Streets Stephen Crane
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Middlemarch George Eliot
Mill on the Floss George Eliot
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Nick Adams Stories Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
For Whom The Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway
Turn of the Screw Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
Metamorphosis Franz Kafka
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Moby Dick Herman Melville
The Anne of Green Gables Series L.M. Montgomery
Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller
Utopia Thomas More
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison
Beloved Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
Sula Toni Morrison
Plays of Sean O’Casey
1984 George Orwell
Strumpet City James Plunkett
The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque
Othello William Shakespeare
Macbeth William Shakespeare
Merchant of Venice William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare
King Lear William Shakespeare
Hamlet William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Summer Night’s Dream William Shakespeare
Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
Cannery Row John Steinbeck
The Red Pony John Steinbeck
Johnny Got His Gun Dalton Trumbo
Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde
The Little House Series Laura Ingalls Wilder
Our Town Thornton Wilder
A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams
Author Adrienne Morris 
21 responses to “MY CLASSICS CLUB BOOK LIST”
A magnificent list. Oh joy! Many decades ago I found a list of the 100 books you should read, and it took me down deliciously unknown roads, and introduced me unforgettable characters. I see many of my old friends on your book list. Have you read E.F. Benson? He is best know for his series of 1920 novels featuring Lucia and Mapp, and his cutting edge books describing the morays of society in the early 20th century. Cheers Virginia
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Yes, it’s been fun so far and already taking me places I wasn’t planning on going. i love getting new recommendations and tacking more books to the list of fifty. I will check out Benson though I’m usually more drawn to 19th century stuff. 🙂
Thanks, Virginia!
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What a beautiful blog & a lovely list. I love finding new members of The Classics Club. Did you just join? Enjoy these! 😀
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Thank you, Jillian! I joined late last year. I’ve been loving it so far but want to spend more time following other Classics Club members now that I’ve finished a big writing project. How long have you been a member and what’s your all-time favorite classic book??
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I actually founded the club, so I’ve been a member since I thought it up — March 2012. 🙂 My favorite classic is DEFINITELY Gone with the Wind. You? 🙂
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Oh my!!!! I bow before the creator! What a GREAT idea. Thank you!
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You’re welcome! Hardly anyone blogged classics back then. Now it’s an explosion, which is awesome to see. 😀
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I dutifully read modern fiction for a while but I think that I belong in late 19th century America.
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SO DO I!!!!
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Favorite classics are War and Peace, Middlemarch, The Little House books and Anne of Green Gables. We actually named our farm Middlemay Farm because my husband knew I liked Middlemarch and we were married in May. 🙂
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I adore the Little House books! And my personality is (according to my mother, who is my Marilla) EXACTLY like Anne Shirley. It’s one of my favorite books as well. I have a strong feeling Middlemarch will prove a favorite when I read it. 🙂
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My best friend is definitely Diana Barry to my Anne Shirley but we weren’t as perfect. 😉
So glad to meet you. Gotta go feed some sheep…
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My best friend is Elinor Dashwood. (Okay, bye!) 🙂
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This is a great list – Good Luck! We’ve got some in common too.
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Hi Jane! Can’t wait to dig into more books soon! I hope summer allows some time for tons of bookish pleasures for you.
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Tried to comment on the historical books page but “something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?”
Different war, if war was what Crook was about, but The Pictorial Fieldbook of the Revolution in two volumes by Benson Lossing written in the 1860s is a gem, a real gem.. The man wandered the east and down south going to battle sites and scouring the land for old soldiers — sometimes extremely old soldiers — who gave first hand accounts of their actions. Once in a while he arrives too late, he is that close to losing all those first hand tales. He strays into pre-Revolutionary War detail and a bit of landscape travelogue too. The 1100 woodcut illustrations are a joy on their own; the stories themselves are breath-taking and the longevity, complexion and demenanour of those clean living centenarian farmers is a marvel to behold a fact that Lossing remarks upon more than once (no processed food and 10,000 steps a day I am guessing).
I have a hard copy which is easier to read, but hurrah, it’s on Gutenburg.org at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/49351/49351-h/49351-h.htm for vol 1.
Go there and get lost for an hour or a day or a week and enjoy the way that history can cease to be a foreign country when it’s just some old guy (and occasional woman) telling you what he did when he was young
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That sounds right up my alley. I’m researching my grandfather who fought with his 2 sons in the American Revolution. He lived to be over 100 years old. He fought Indians before fighting the Brits and married a bunch of times. His first marriage was to a much older woman (I’m going to guess for her money). A real character!
hope you are doing well, my friend and thanks so much for the link!
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You’re welcome! Tell me if I am not 100 per cent right about the book. I have to admit Ihaven’t read it for years, but when I decluttered my books they were two that volumes I kept. I know he goes into such local detail about how he gets to where he gets to (stage, canal, local guides who do not know their way etc), that I bet he covers your bit of real estate. The indian wars do get quite extensive coverage too so maybe your family gets a namecheck.. Enjoy!
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What a splendid project. So many good books out there. I do occasionally try to fit in one of the classics and just reread A Tale of Two Cities. So worthwhile — so much truth, and so beautifully written. Hope you really enjoy this book club. Also just finished a great book that is not well enough known to make such a list, but still considered something of a classic — Giants in the Earth — about the Norwegian immigrants who settled South Dakota. Astonishing what people went through to try to improve their lives. Alas, there are more good books than there is time to read them all–but a problem sufficiently universal that there is actually a word for it in Japanese — tsundoku — having more books than one can read in a lifetime.
Happy reading.
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Oh! I love that! And so true! I’m so into reading about US history that I really have to push myself to read a classic, but then I wonder why I waited. In general I prefer classic literature to modern, but that leaves so many good books out. I love doing too many things! It’s a real problem. LOL. The Norwegian immigrant books sounds intriguing. I’m going to look it up right now.
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It’s funny how certain things are well known among different groups. I just learned about Giants in the Earth last year, but recently, I met several people who were at least partly Norwegian, and they all knew and had read the book. “Of course! Great book!” But yes — so many good books. Happy reading.
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