The idea of The Classics Club  is to make a list of fifty or more classics you want to read within the next five years. Modern classics and re-reads can also be included.

About this selection

Books I’ve read are in bold and link to my reviews

1. 1. Medea:  — Euripedes 431 BC Read 2012
      
   2. Canterbury Tales  —  Geoffrey Chaucer c1380 – read about a quarter so far
   3. Pamela  —  Samuel Richardson 1740 did not finish
   4. Candide  — Voltaire 1759
   5. Vicar of Wakefield  — Oliver Goldsmith 1766
   6. Evelina  — Frances Burney 1778
   7. **Mansfield Park   — Jane Austen 1814 Finished May 2015   
   8. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth 1817
   9. Old Goriot  — Honore Balzac 1835 Finished October 2015   
   10. Old Curiosity Shop  — Charles Dickens 1840 Finished March 2015
   11. The Black Sheep  — Honore Balzac 1842
   12. Bleak House  — Charles Dickens 1852 (could not finish)
   13. Basil – Wilkie Collins 1852
   14. Little Dorrit  — Charles Dickens 1855  read Feb-March 2013
   15. North and South  — Elizabeth Gaskell 1855 – read Oct 2012
   16. Dr Thorne  – Anthony Trollope 1858 – read February 2017
   17. Adam Bede  — George Eliot 1859 Read Nov 2015
   18. Tale of Two Cities  — Charles Dickens 1859 – did not finish
   19. Framley Parsonage  – Anthony Trollope 1861 
   20. Wives and Daughters  — Elizabeth Gaskell 1864 read Dec 2014
   21. ** Can You Forgive Her  — Anthony Trollope  1864
   22. Crime and Punishment  — Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 read Feb-March 2013 
   23. The Fortune of the Rougons  — Emile Zola 1871 finished May 2015
   24. The Kill/La Cur̩e РEmile Zola 1871-2
   25. ** Anna Karenina  — Leo Tolstoy 1873-77
   26. The Way we Live Now  by Anthony Trollope – 1875
   27. Daniel Deronda  — George Eliot 1876
   28. L’Assommoir  — Emile Zola 1877 – read March 2014
   29. Washington Square/Daisy Miller  — Henry James 1879 read January 2015
   30. The Brothers Karamazov  — Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880
   31. The Diary of a Nobody  — George Grossmith 1888 read April 2017
   32. New Grub Street – George Gissing 1891
   33. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James 1898 Finished June 2015
   34. Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad 1899
   35. The Secret Agent  — Joseph Conrad 1907
   36. Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett 1910
   37. A Room with a View  — E M Forster 1915 Finished March 2014
   38. The Voyage Out  — Virginia Woolf 1915
   39. My Antonia — Willa Cather 1918 Finished May 2017
   40. Age of Innocence  — Edith Wharton 1920
   41. **Mrs Dalloway  — Virginia Woolf 1925 Finished February 2016
   42. **The Lighthouse  — Virginia Woolf 1927
   43. Farewell to Arms  — Hemmingway 1929 Finished March 2013 
   44. All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville West 1932
   45. A Room of One’s Own  — Virginia Woolf 1932
   46. **Frost in May  — Antonia White 1933
   47. Jamaica Inn – Daphne du Maurier 1936 Finished June 2017
   48. Of Mice and Men  — Steinbeck 1937 Finished April 2013
   49. The Grapes of Wrath  — John Steinbeck 1939
   50. **The Power and the Glory  — Grahame Greene 1940 Finished December 2013
   51. The Pursuit Of Love  — Nancy Mitford 1945
   52. Cannery Row  — John Steinbeck 1945 Finished Dec 2013
   53. **The Plague  — Albert Camus 1947
   54. **Cry, the Beloved Country  — Alan Paton 1948 Finished April 2015
   55. Heart of the Matter  — Grahame Greene 1948 Finished August 2013
   56. The Quiet American  — Graham Greene 1955
   57. Things Fall Apart  — Chinua Achebe 1958 Finished March 2015
   58. The Leopard  — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Currently reading
   59. The Country Girls  — Edna O’Brien 1960 Finished June 2013
   60. Silent Spring  — Rachel Carson 1962
   61. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings  — Angelou, Maya 1969 – read Nov 2012.
       
   62. Bottle Factory Outing  — Beryl Bainbridge 1974 Finished August 2013
   63. The Girls of Slender Means  — Muriel Spark Read Dec 2012
       
   64. Love in the Time of Cholera  — Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1985
   65. The Infinite Plan  — Isabel Allende 1991 Read June 2014
   66. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont  — Elizabeth Taylor 2005 – read April 2014

Changes November 2016

• Removed A Parisian Affair and other stories  — Guy de Maupassant 1880s. Will find an alternative
• Removed The Charioteer by Mary Renault published 1953
• Removed The Invisible Man by H G Wells published 1897
• Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim published in 1922

Changes November 2015

• Removed The Riddle of the Sands  — Erskine Childers 1903 (started reading it and realised quickly it wasn’t going to be to my taste)
• Added Ormond by Maria Edgeworth. Meant to be one of her finest novels

Changes August 2015

• Added Basil by Wilkie Collins ( I liked most of Collins’ work but have never come across this before)
• Added All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville West . One of her most popular works
• Added New Grub Street – George Gissing 1891. One of the Guardian’s top 100 novels

Changes February 2015

• Removed The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 1967. After hearing details of this via A Year of Reading Dangerously by A Miller I decided it was definitely not my kind of book.
• Added Frost in May by Antonia White 1933. A re-read from many years ago. Will I love it as much second time around?

Changes August 2014

• Removed Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 1719
• Removed Moby Dick by H Melville

The Undecided List (titles I’m not entirely sure I want to read – but not entirely sure either that I don’t)

• Walter Scott – Waverley
• Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
• Castle of Otranto  – Horace Walpole
• Iron in the Soul – Jean Paul Sartre