Monday 30 December 2013

50 Classics in 5 years





I found out about this at Worthwhile Books and thought having a goal like this would be a good challenge. Ten books a year is doable as long as they're all not as dense as The Brothers Karamazov.
Some of these are books I've been wanting to read for a while, some are (R) re-reads, (Chr) Christian classics, (C) children's classics, (A) Australian classics and a couple are books that might not yet be considered classics because they are more recent but from what I've heard might possibly be included (feel free to correct me!) Some are books I don't particularly want to tackle but think I probably should.
I probably won't be doing these in the order written but will be starting with the first one. 
My starting date is December 30th 2013 and I plan to finish by the 31st December 2018.

1) Island of the World - Michael O'Brien (Chr) a more recent book.
2) Persuasion - Jane Austen (R)
3) Adam Bede - George Eliot
4) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
5) The Keeper of the Bees - Gene Stratton-Porter
6) Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
7) A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
8) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving
9) The Winter's Tale - Shakespeare
10) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
11) Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
12) My Family & Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
13) The Napoleon of Notting Hill - G.K. Chesterton
14) Bambi: a Life in the Woods - Felix Salten
15) The Weight of Glory - C.S. Lewis (Chr)
16) Home Education - Charlotte Mason (Chr)
17) The Small Woman - Alan Burgess
18) A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
19) The Abolition of Man - C.S. Lewis
20) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (R) but a very long time ago
21) The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie
22) The Vicar of Wakefield - Oliver Goldsmith (R)
24) The Prisoner of Zenda - Anthony Hope
25) My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin (A)
26) The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens
27) Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (A)
28) Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
29) I Can Jump Puddles - Alan Marshall (A)
30) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
31) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
32) For the Term of His Natural Life - Marcus Clarke (A)
33) The Tragedy of the Korosko - Arthur Conan Doyle
34) I Find Australia - William Hatfield (A)
35) Whose Body? - Dorothy Sayers
36) The Five Red Herrings - Dorothy Sayers
37) The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
38) The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
39) My Love Must Wait - Ernestine Hill (A)
40) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving
41) Madame Bovary - Gustav Flaubert
42) A Little Bush Maid - Mary Grant Bruce (C)
43) Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
44) The Metamorphosis - Frank Kafka
45) All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque (R)
46) All's Well That Ends Well - Shakespeare
47) An Old Captivity - Nevil Shute
48) A Fortunate Life - A.B. Fahey (A) I've read an abridged children's edition which  
       was excellent; this is the unabridged version.
49) The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy (C)
50) Madame Curie by Eve Curie

Other possibilities:


I Will Repay - Baroness Emmuska Orczy
The Thirty-nine Steps - John Buchan (R)
Cover Her Face - P.D. James
The Singing Sands - Josephine Tey
The Franchise Affair - Josephine Tey
Brat Farrar - Josephine Tey
Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Sir Nigel - Arthur Conan Doyle
Train to Pakistan - Khushwant Singh
Fer-de-Lance - Rex Stout
Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank (a classic post-apocalyptic novel)
The Keys of the Kingdom - A.J. Cronin
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman - P.D. James
The House of the Four Winds - John Buchan
Seven Little Australians - Ethel Turner
The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Green Dolphin Country - Elizabeth Goudge
Surprised by Joy - C.S. Lewis
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy


7 comments:

Unknown said...

Great list! I have been meaning to read Gene Stratton Porter as well because she's from my home state!

Anonymous said...

Hallo, Hallo! :)

You happen to be listed directly below me, as I have joined tCC today!! Eek. Its filling one of my dreams of the past few years to be a Clubber officially! :) I even tweaked my list over the holidays so I could join in early January ahead of reading Wuthering Heights which will be my first Club selection! :) I too, picked contemporary selections hedging my own bet that they will become modern classics in due course! Its a bit of a guessing game, but from what I can gather in reading and publishing circles, I think I choose several quite wisely! :)

You have a lot of titles that I have picked out for myself, including one I never could finish which was Robinson Crusoe! I always give people credit for finishing that one! :( Oy!

Welcome to the Club!

Carol said...

I nearly gave up on Wuthering Heights but glad I persevered. Weird but very interesting!

Carol said...

Freckles is another of her books I loved. I couldn't find your list on the members page??

Brona said...

Great to see another Aussie in the Classics Club - welcome!
I also host an AusReading month in Nov, so you might like to save your Aust classics for then :-)
Good luck

Unknown said...

Love your list Carol. So many great books .......

Carol said...

Thanks Amy. I'm slowly making progress. The problem is I keep adding more possibilities!