Thursday 17 May 2012

The Classics Club

Hello everyone,

So, this is a bit of a first for me. 

I'm trying to work through some of the great classics. I figured the best way for me to do it would to commit it to paper, so to speak. The internet, I decided, is far less easily burned.

Also a place where I can collect and share my thoughts on the books I read. So, inspired by A Room With a View's Classics Clubhere is my 50 classics to read by the end of 2012 (edit: 2013).

It's a big undertaking, I know. But hey, I finish my exams in June and I have a long summer :)

Here goes...




  1. Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale
  2. Austen, Jane - Mansfield Park
  3. Austen, Jane - Northanger Abbey
  4. Balzac, Honore de - Lost Illusions
  5. Balzac, Honore de - Pere Goriot
  6. Bierce, Ambrose - The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter
  7. Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre (progress)
  8. Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
  9. Bulgakov, Mikhail - The Master and Margarita
  10. Conan Doyle, Arthur - Hound of the Baskervilles 
  11. Conan Doyle, Arthur - The Return of Sherlock Holmes 
  12. Conan Doyle, Arthur - The Valley of Fear 
  13. Conan Doyle, Arthur - His Last Bow and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
  14. Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
  15. Dickens, Charles - Great Expectations
  16. Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
  17. Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Notes from Underground
  18. Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
  19. Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Beautiful and the Damned
  20. Fitzgerald, F. Scott - This Side of Paradise
  21. Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
  22. Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
  23. Grossmith, George and Weedon - The Diary of a Nobody
  24. Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
  25. Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
  26. Hemingway, Ernest - Across the River and into the Trees
  27. Hemingway, Ernest - The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
  28. Hogg, James - The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
  29. James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
  30. Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
  31. Kafka, Franz - The Trial
  32. Kerouac, Jack - On the Road
  33. Kesey, Ken - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  34. McCarthy, Cormac - All the Pretty Horses
  35. McCarthy, Cormac - Cities of the Plain
  36. McCarthy, Cormac - The Crossing
  37. Nabokov, Vladimir - Pale Fire
  38. Orwell, George - The Road to Wigan Pier
  39. Plath, Sylvia - Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
  40. Plath, Sylvia - Letters Home
  41. Sartre, Jean Paul - Nausia
  42. Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
  43. Simenon, Georges - Maigret and the Ghost
  44. Smart, Elizabeth - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
  45. Steinbeck, John - Of Mice and Men (re-read)
  46. Stevenson, Robert Louis - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
  47. Woolf, Virginia - Mrs Dalloway
  48. Woolf, Virginia - Orlando
  49. Woolf, Virginia - The Waves
  50. Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse

Wish me luck!


10 comments:

  1. Hello, and welcome to the club, Honor!! I hope you enjoy these books. :-D

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    1. Thank you! I'm really looking forward to reading them all.

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  2. Good luck! I am not participating in the Classics Club, but I love how this is inspiring people to start a blog about their reading. I hope you enjoy your reading :)

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  3. I took the challenge in March via Jillian and have read 9 books in 10 weeks. Creating a blog was completely new but I have gotten so much in return for the effort. Kudo's to Jillian and I will follow your progress. The reading list looks great!

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  4. Welcome to the club! I've noticed several people are planning on reading "The Master and Margarita." Maybe we'll have to coordinate a readalong :-)

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    1. That sounds great, but I'm afraid I'm already halfway through it now! It's brilliant - you'll all really enjoy it :)

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  5. Welcome to The Classics Club and to book blogging :) We have a lot of similar titles on our lists (I can't wait to see what you think of Catch-22, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights). Also, good luck with your exams - I am doing mine this summer too!

    Adam :)

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    1. Thank you! I'm looking forward to reading all three. I'll head over to your list to see what else your reading as we clearly have similar taste in books. Good luck with your exams too:)

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  6. Wow, a lot of ACD there. I love Sherlock Holmes, and I encourage you to finish the list. I've made mine too, please visit if you have time. But most importantly, I'd like to read what you think about those books you read (and especially Sherlock Holmes).

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    1. Yes, me too! I've already read Sign of the Four, Study in Scarlet and Adventures and Memoirs - just thought I'd go the whole hog and put the rest of them down on my list. In fact I've just finished the Return of Sherlock Holmes (which is of course brilliant) so will write up a short review for that today or tomorrow. Heading on over to have a look at your list now :)

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