50 Classics in 5 years

The Classics Club

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)

23) The Confessions of St Augustine (Chr)

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