This is my landing page for The Classics Club challenge. I will come link my reviews of each book here once each one is read. (You can see my original blog post HERE which I posted on November 2, 2021.)
With The Classics Club challenge, you make a list of at least 50 classics that you’d like to read and set a time frame to read them in. I have certainly read a number of classics in the last few years so I think this challenge is do-able for me. This will be a goal – goal to get these books read in the time frame, goal to write a review of each one. But I have learned to say this is a goal – not an absolute. So I will be do my best to read each book and write about each one.
My classics list is longer than 50 books since this is my ever-evolving list of classics I’d like to read. I know I will likely continue to add to this list. AND I imagine I will start to read some and not like them and so set them aside. I want to leave room for the list to flex. As that list flexes, my goal for The Classics Club will be to read 50 of the classics from this list in 5 years.
Ok. So first, a few notes about my list.
- What deems a book a classic in regards to how old it is seems to be inconclusive. For me, I usually consider anything 50 years or older a classic. However, my understanding is that as long as it’s 25 years or older, it can be considered classic. So my list will have titles that are at least 25 years old.
- When I finish reading a title, I will write the finish date next to the title. I will also number them so I can keep a running total of the books I’ve read for the Challenge.
- When I finish reading a title, I will link my review of it here. Each linked review will also be added to my new Book Reviews page.
- If I give the book a star rating, I will put that star rating next to the title as well as in the review post. (See my Star Rating System Page for how I use star ratings.)
- If I DNF (do not finish) a book, it will simply be removed from the list. If I decide to do a post about why I DNF a particular book, then I will leave it on the list and link to that post.
- Some books are books I want to re-read. They are listed separately.
For now, I am just listing the books so I can get this post posted. I plan to come back and work on organizing this list more as I have time. Without further ado, here we go!
Date Started: November 1, 2021
Date to Finish By: November 1, 2026
The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton (1911)
Favorite Father Brown Stories by G. K. Chesterton (1911/1914)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859)
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (1895) [play] (Finished 1/26/22 – #6)
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895) (Finished 11/4/22 – #15)
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1897)
Our Town by Thornton Wilder (1938) [play]
My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)
O Pioneers by Willa Cather (1913)
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (1956) (Finished 8/5/22 – #14)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) (Finished 3/18/22 – #8)
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945) (Finished 2/12/22 – #7)
Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes (1943)
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)
Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667/1674)
1984 by George Orwell (1949)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (1978) [Novella]
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (1881)
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (1866)
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
The Odyssey by Homer (8th century)
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson (1759)
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1817)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943)
The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855)
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (1908)
Our Friend Manso by Benito Pérez Galdos (1882)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871)
Silas Marner by George Eliot (1861)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1862)
The Wonderful O by James Thurber (1957)
The Makioka Sisters by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1948)
A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich (1928)
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (1920)
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (1954)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë (1847)
Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim (1921)
Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier (1936)
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986) (Finished 1/24/22 – #5)
A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro (1982)
The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton (1922)
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911) (Finished 11/25/21 – #1)
The Touchstone by Edith Wharton (1900)
Summer by Edith Wharton (1917)
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (1886) (Finished 7/11/22 – #12)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (1891)
Far from the Maddening Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874)
The Trumpet Major by Thomas Hardy (1880) (Finished 5/14/22 – #11)
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy (1887)
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy (1872)
The Divine Comedy by Dante (1320)
La Reine Margot by Alexandre Dumas (1845)
The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas (1850)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy (1899)
A Dog’s Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov (1925)
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (1889)
Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1837)
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (1839)
Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore (1869)
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt (1960)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1962)
Good Morning, Miss Dove by Frances Gray Patton (1947)
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1967)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1928)
The School for Scandal by Richard Sheridan (1777)
Faust, Book I by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1808)
Everyman, a Morality Play (15th century)
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni (1827)
Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl (1948)
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy (1905)
Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis (1938)
Perelandra by C. S. Lewis (1943)
That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis (1945)
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
Greenmantle by John Buchan (1916)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown (1970)
Silas Marner by George Eliot (1861)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (1831)
Days with Sir Roger Coverley by Richard Steele (1715)
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)
A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift (1704)
Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift (1704)
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith (1766)
The Age of Revolution by Winston Churchill (1957)
The Great Democracies by Winston Churchill (1958)
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
Passing by Nella Larsen (1929) (Finished 12/5/21 – #3)
My Kinsman, Major Molineux by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1832) [Short Story]
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1835) [Short Story]
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe (1839) [Short Story]
The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe (1842) [Short Story]
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol (1842) [Short Story]
A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert (1877) [Short Story]
The Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880) [Short Story]
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant (1884) [Short Story]
How Much Land Does a Man Need? by Leo Tolstoy (1886) [Short Story]
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane (1897) [Short Story]
The Outsider by H. P. Lovecraft (1926) [Short Story]
The Colour Out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft (1927) [Short Story]
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares (1940) [Novella] (Finished 11/9/22 – #16)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (1958) [Novella]
The Pearl by John Steinbeck (1945)
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (1945)
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck (1961)
Hiroshima by John Hersey (1946) (Finished 1/15/22 – #4)
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (1st century)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886)
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (1950)
Frederica by Georgette Heyer (1965)
The Road from Home by David Kherdian (1979)
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (1964) (Finished 4/23/22 – #10)
The Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway (1937)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940)
Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway (1970)
At Mrs. Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor (1945)
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (1977)
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher (1987)
Life with Father by Clarence Day Jr. (1935)
The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green (1878)
Re-Reads
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Iliad by Homer
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869) (Finished 11/30/21 – #2)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon (1994)
The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1854)
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoevsky (1879)
The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925)
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe (1843) [Short Story]
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939) (Finished 4/18/22 – #9)
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (1954)
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien (1954)
The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien (1955)
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (1987)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
Agatha Christie Works
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
The Secret Adversary (1922)
Murder on the Links (1923)
The Man in the Brown Suit (1924)
Poirot Investigates (Short Stories) (1924)
The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
The Big Four (1927)
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)
Partners in Crime (Short Stories) (1929)
The Mysterious Mr Quin (Short Stories) (1930)
The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
The Sittaford Mystery (known in the US as: Murder at Hazelmoor) (1931)
Peril at End House (1932)
The Thirteen Problems (known in the US as: The Tuesday Club Murders) (Short Stories) (1932)
Lord Edgware Dies (1933)
The Hound of Death (not US) (Short Stories) (1933)
Murder on the Orient Express (known in the US as: Murder in the Calais Coach) (1934)
The Listerdale Mystery (not US) (Short Stories) (1934)
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (known in the US as: The Boomerang Clue) (1934)
Parker Pyne Investigates (known in the US as: Mr Parker Pyne, Detective) (Short Stories) (1934)
Three-Act Tragedy (known in the US as: Murder in Three Acts) (1934)
Death in the Clouds (known in the US as: Death in the Air) (1935)
The ABC Murders (known in the US as: The Alphabet Murders) (1936)
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Cards on the Table (1936)
Dumb Witness (known in the US as: Poirot Loses a Client, Mystery at Littlegreen House, Murder at Littlegreen House) (1937)
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (1937) (Finished 7/20/22 – #13)
Murder in the Mews (known in the US as: Dead Man’s Mirror) (Short Stories) (1937)
Appointment with Death (1938)
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (known in the US as: Murder for Christmas, A Holiday for Murder) (1938)
Murder is Easy (known in the US as: Easy to Kill) (1939)
And Then There Were None (known in the US as: Ten Little Indians) (1939)
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (Short Stories) (1939)
Sad Cypress (1940)
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (known in the US as: The Patriotic Murders, An Overdose of Death) (1940)
Evil Under the Sun (1941)
N or M? (1941)
The Body in the Library (1942)
Five Little Pigs (known in the US as: Murder in Retrospect) (1942)
The Moving Finger (known in the US as: The Case of the Moving Finger) (1942)
The Crime in Cabin 66 (Known as: The Mystery of the Crime in Cabin 66) (Short Stories) (1943)
Mystery of the Baghdad Chest (1943)
Poirot and the Regatta Mystery (Short Stories) (1943)
Poirot on Holiday (Not in the US) (Short Stories) (1943)
Problem at Pollensa Bay and The Christmas Adventure (Not in US) (Short Stories) (1943)
Towards Zero (known in the US as: Come and Be Hanged) (1944)
Death Comes as the End (1944)
The Veiled Lady and The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest (Not in US) (Short Stories) (1944)
Sparkling Cyanide (known in the US as: Remembered Death) (1945)
The Hollow (known in the US as: Murder after Hours) (1946)
The Labours of Hercules (Known as: The Labors of Hercules: New Adventures in Crime by Hercule Poirot (Short Stories) (1947)
Taken at the Flood (known in the US as: There is a Tide) (1948)
Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (not UK) (Short Stories) (1948)
Crooked House (1949)
A Murder is Announced (1950)
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (Not UK) (Short Stories) (1950)
They Came to Baghdad (1951)
The Under Dog and Other Stories (not UK) (Short Stories) (1951)
Mrs McGinty’s Dead (known in the US as: Blood Will Tell) (1952)
They Do It with Mirrors (known in the US as: Murder with Mirrors) (1952)
After the Funeral (known in the US as: Funerals are Fatal) (1953)
A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
Destination Unknown (known in the US as: So Many Steps to Death) (1954)
Hickory Dickory Dock (known in the US as: Hickory Dickory Death) (1955)
Dead Man’s Folly (1956)
4.50 from Paddington (known in the US as: What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw!) (1957)
Ordeal by Innocence (1958)
Cat Among the Pigeons (1959)
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (Not US) (Short Stories) (1960)
The Pale Horse (1961)
Double Sin and Other Stories (not UK) (Short Stories) (1961)
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (known in the US as: The Mirror Crack’d) (1962)
The Clocks (1963)
A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
At Bertram’s Hotel (1965)
Surprise! Surprise! (Not in UK) (Short Stories) (1965)
Third Girl (1966)
Thirteen for Luck! (Short Stories for Young Readers) (1961 in US)
13 Clues for Miss Marple (Not in UK) (Short Stories) (1966)
Endless Night (1967)
By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968)
Hallowe’en Party (1969)
Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)
Nemesis (1971)
The Golden Ball and Other Stories (not UK) (Short Stories) (1971)
Elephants Can Remember (1972)
Postern of Fate (1973)
Poirot’s Early Cases (known in the US as: Hercule Poirot’s Early Cases) (Short Stories) (1974)
Curtain (1975)
Sleeping Murder (1976)
Miss Marple’s Final Cases and Two Other Stories (not US) (Short Stories) (1979)
Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories (not US) (Short Stories) (1991)
The Harlequin Tea Set (not UK) (Short Stories) (1997)
While the Light Lasts and Other Stories (not US) (Short Stories) (1997)
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