So much for doing my announcement post in "the coming weeks" as I said in the last post! This one is far too exciting: Jillian's Classics Club. It's perfect. All the details are here, but in short: you choose no less than fifty classics, list them on your blog, decide on the date for your deadline, then get reading and blogging about each title! I'm going to combine a few projects to compile my list. I'm not, however, simply going to put all my challenges into one page: I will use some titles from other challenges, others I may not, so you will see a few repeats from my existing lists, particularly my "ought to have been read" pile challenge.
I'm going to aim for one hundred and fifty classics in three years, starting from today, the 10th March 2012 and finishing on 10th March 2015. I'll put this exact post as a page on the top of my blog and keep track there. Here is my list:
- Adam, Richard - Watership Down
- Amis, Kingsley - Lucky Jim
- Amis, Martin - London Fields
- Amis, Martin - Dead Babies
- Anderson, Hans Christian - Fairy Tales
- Aksakov, Sergei - A Russian Gentleman
- Arnim, Elizabeth von - The Enchanted April
- Arnim, Elizabeth von - Elizabeth and her German Garden
- Augustine, St. - On Christian Teaching
- Austen, Jane - Emma
- Austen, Jane - Mansfield Park
- Bates, H. E. - The Pop Larkin Chronicles
- Baudelaire, Charles - The Flowers of Evil
- The Bible
- Blackmore , R. D. - Lorna Doone
- Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451
- Brontë, Charlotte - Shirley
- Brontë, Charlotte - Villette
- Bunyan, John - Pilgrim's Progress
- Burroughs, William S. - Naked Lunch
- Burton, Richard Francis - Tales from the Arabian Nights
- Butler, Samuel - The Way of All Flesh
- Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Cantubury Tales
- Chekhov, Anton - Plays
- Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
- Cleland, John - Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
- Colliins, Wilkie - The Moonstone
- Collodi, Carlo - The Adventures of Pinocchio
- Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
- de Balzac, Honoré - Cousin Bette
- de Cervates, Miguel - Don Quixote
- Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
- Defoe, Daniel - Moll Flanders
- Defoe, Daniel - Roxana
- Dickens, Charles - Bleak House
- Dickens, Charles - Nicholas Nickleby
- Dickens, Charles - Our Mutual Friend
- Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - The Brothers Karamazov
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor - The Devils
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor - The Eternal Husband
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor - The Idiot
- Doyle, Arthur Conan - The Hound of the Baskervilles
- Dosteovsky, Fyodor - Netochka Nezvanova
- Du Maurier, Daphne - Frenchman's Creek
- Du Maurier, Daphne - Jamaican Inn
- Dumas, Alexandre - Count of Monte Cristo
- Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
- Elliot, George - Adam Bede
- Elliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
- Eliot, George - Silas Marner
- Faulks, Sebastian - Birdsong
- Flaubert, Gustav - Bouvard and Pecuichet
- Flaubert, Gustav - Sentimental Education
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Tender is the Night
- Forster, E. M. - A Passage to India
- Forster, E. M. - Howard's End
- Fowles, John - The French Lieutenant's Woman
- Fowles, John - The Magus
- Gaskell, Elizabeth - The Cranford Chronicles
- Gaskell, Elizabeth - The Life of Charlotte Bronte
- Gaskell, Elizabeth - North and South
- Gogol, Nikolai - Dead Souls
- Gogol, Nikolai - Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
- Goncharov, Ivan - Oblomov
- Graves, Robert - I, Claudius
- Greene, Graham - Brighton Rock
- Haggard, H. Rider - She
- Hardy, Thomas - Far From The Madding Crowd
- Hardy, Thomas - The Mayor of Casterbridge
- Hardy, Thomas - The Return of the Native
- Hardy, Thomas - Satire of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reviews with Miscellaneous Pieces
- Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the D’Urbervilles
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
- Heaney, Seamus - Beowulf
- Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
- Homer - The Odyssey
- Hughes, Ted - Ted Hughes Collected Poems
- Hugo, Victor - Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Hugo, Victor - Les Misérables
- Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
- James, Henry - The Europeans
- James, Henry - What Maise Knew
- James, Henry - The Wings of the Dove
- James, Henry - Portrait of a Lady
- Kipling, Rudyard - The Jungle Book
- Kundera, Milan - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Lawrence, D. H. - The Rainbow
- Lawrence, D.H. - Sons and Lovers
- Lawrence, D. H. - Women in Love
- Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
- Leroux, Gaston - The Phantom of the Opera
- Lewis, Matthew - The Monk
- London, Jack - The Call of the Wild & White Fang
- Machavelli, Niccolo - The Prince
- Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - Love in the Time of Cholera
- Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Maugham, W. Somerset - Of Human Bondage
- Maugham, W. Somerset -The Magician
- McEwan, Ian - Atonement
- Meridith, George - The Egoist
- Milton, John - Paradise Lost
- Montgomery, L. M. - Anne of Green Gables & Anne of Avonlea
- Nesbit, E. - The Railway Children
- Nietzche, Friedrich - Beyond Good and Evil
- Orwell, George - Down and Out in Paris and London
- Orwell, George - The Road to Wigan Pier
- Parker, Dorothy - The Collected Dorothy Parker
- Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
- Poe, Edgar Allan - Tales of Mystery and Imagination
- Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
- Proust, Marcel - Within a Budding Grove
- Proust, Marcel - The Guermantes Way
- Proust, Marcel - Cities of the Plain
- Proust, Marcel - The Captive
- Proust, Marcel - The Fugitive
- Proust, Marcel - Time Regained
- Qur'an
- Radcliffe, Ann - The Italian
- Radcliffe, Ann - The Mysteries of Udolpho
- Richardson, Samuel - Pamela
- Rushdie, Salman - Midnight's Children
- Rushdie, Salman - The Satanic Verses
- Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von - Venus in Furs
- Sackville-West, Vita - The Edwardians
- Saki - The Best of Saki
- Sartre, Jean Paul - Nausea
- Scott, Walter - Ivanhoe
- Sewell, Anna - Black Beauty
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr - August 1914
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr - A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
- Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
- Stevenson, Robert Louis - Kidnapped
- Sterne, Lawrence - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
- Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Swift, Jonathon - Gulliver's Travels
- Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
- Tolkein, J. R. R. - The Lord of the Rings
- Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
- Trollope, Anthony - Barchester Towers
- Trollope, Anthony - Is He Popenjoy?
- Trollope, Anthony - The Warden
- Tugenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
- Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Upanishads
- Waugh, Evelyn - Scoop
- Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
- Wharton, Edith - The Age of Innocence
- Wilde, Oscar - The Importance of Being Earnest
- Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Grey
- Zola, Émile - Germinal
Good list-I have read 62 of them-
ReplyDeleteI am also stopping by to personally invite you to participate in Irish Short Week Year Two Starting March 12 and actually continuing for the rest of March-full details should you be interested are on my blog
regards
Mel u
I've read 52 of the list which would be more impressive if I hadn't done a degree in English Literature. Surprised that Martin Amis' Dead Babies is there rather than Money which is meant to be his best. Personally I'm not a fan and my reaction to Dead Babies was similar to your's to Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. Also interested that Somerset Maughm's The Magician is up there. I have read it and only know one other person who has.
ReplyDeleteSo many good books! I'm happy to see the Wharton on there. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd Germinal! Ugh, that book is so good and continues to haunt me!
Such an awesome list! So happy to see Oscar Wilde there. The Importance of Being Ernest and The Picture of Dorian Gray are mind-blowing. I can't wait to see what you think of them :)
ReplyDeleteHi o! I just wanted to stop by and welcome you. I'm not at all surprised that you have so many interesting and challenging titles on your list. You do inspire me, as a reader. :)
ReplyDeleteI can't remember if I told you, but just so you know, you can edit your list throughout. I encourage that, even! I know we change and grow as we pour through literature, and I want everyone to know nothing is locked in, once they post. Just a heads up.
Cheers, and I'm excited you joined!
- jill xox
Not surprised you're joining! I want to take part too, but I am still working on putting together my list.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the titles on yours are included in mine too, but there are also many "basic" titles since I am just beginning to explore classic literature.
Honestly, just selecting titles for my reading list is making me feel a whole lot smarter already :)
Oh, and what I forgot: I tagged you! :) Here's the link http://literarystars.blogspot.com/2012/03/magical-11-blog-tag.html
ReplyDeleteThank you for following my blog.
ReplyDeleteYour blog is really lovely. I look forward to getting to know you better through reading your insights.
Impressive list! You've given me some ideas for titles to add to mine.
Blessings:)
I love this list. There are a lot of books on here I haven't seen elsewhere (at least not so far) which is fun. I came this close to including Pinocchio too, but ultimately it didn't make the cut.
ReplyDeletemel u - any other time and I would have jumped at it, but I MUST finish War and Peace - have become obsessive about finishing it on 19th!
ReplyDeleteSandy - as I said on phone, thinking of adding to this list (want some classic anthropology on there). I'll add Money :)
Allie - Can't wait to get into Wharton - she's one of the few *big* names who I am entirely unfamiliar with!
Caro - been meaning to read Picture of Dorian Gray for an absolute age! I'm not terribky keen on Oscare Wilde, it must be said, but I'll see how it goes...
Cassandra - I had fun putting together the list, too :) And I haven't forgotten tag - my blog plans are to write about Bleak House and add to my list, as well as your meme :) I've been thinking a lot about which character I most identify with! As I read War and Peace, it's probably Lady Dedlock of Bleak House ;)
Adriana - You're welcome, and glad I've given you some ideas :) I've had lots of inspiration from other members of the Classic Club :)
amanda - how come Pinocchio didn't make the cut? I must confess, one of the reasons I selected it is because someone bought it for me and I've still not read it! :)
I'm in awe of how many titles you have listed for only three years. How do you do it? Do you only read classics?
ReplyDeleteLit~Lass - Firstly, I'm editing this list, so I'm probably looking at 175 books over 4 years (just for the record). As for only reading classics - yes, I do tend to. It's not a rule, and I'm happy *not* to read them, but generally, yes, I do prefer classics. It's relatively rare for me not to :)
ReplyDeleteI have Proust on my list too! Also I was excited to see Baudelaire on your list - I adored Les fleurs du mal. You have to make sure to get a good translation though! I found a website once that compared dozens of translations of each poem in the collection, it was a great resource. I'll try to find the link for you if you're interested!
ReplyDeleteI have James McGowan's translation - it's OUP, so hoping it will be good. Been thinking of translations recently - I'm wondering if Julie Rose's translation of Les Mis is up to scratch. Sometimes it's a little jarring. I'll check out the website, I think I've seen it once before :)
ReplyDelete