Project completed June 2020
New project started June 2022 – details of The Classics Project can be found on this page
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. There is no strict definition of what constitutes “a classic”.
For the purposes of your project list, it’s your choice, really. Modern classics, ancient classics, Eastern canon, Western canon, Persephone, Virago, African literature, children’s classics… You make your own goal, and you decide what is “a classic.”
I finished book number 50 on June 4, 2020. This is way beyond the five years the project was meant to take but who cares!
About my Classics Club list
The list of books I put together was an attempt to fill in the gaps in my reading of the great and the good from the literary world. The eagle eyed among my readers will notice that there are more than 50 titles listed here. The reason is simple: I wanted plenty of choice so I could pick a novel to suit different moods.
Some of the authors listed here are people I have never read before (mainly the non British authors like Maupassant or Voltaire).
Others are novels I feel I ought to have read but somehow never got around to it (Crime and Punishment; Washington Square for example).
There is a third category of novels I read long long ago as a teenager (Mrs Dalloway; The Plague) and frankly didn’t understand but I included them in the hope my more mature self would do better.
And for those days when I need a book that feels as comfortable as a hot water bottle, there were my old favourites of George Eliot and Jane Austen.
All titles marked ** denote that they are re-reads. The books are listed in order of publication date.
Books I read in the Classics Club Challenge
Links are to my reviews
Medea: — Euripedes about 431 BC Read Nov 2012
Electra – Euripedes about 431 BC Read Nov 2012
The Vicar of Wakefield — Oliver Goldsmith 1766. Read March 2019
Old Goriot — Honore Balzac 1835 Read October 2015
**Mansfield Park — Jane Austen 1814 Read May 2015
Old Curiosity Shop — Charles Dickens 1840 Read March 2015
Mary Barton — Elizabeth Gaskell 1848 Read May 2019
Little Dorrit — Charles Dickens 1855 read Feb-March 2013
North and South — Elizabeth Gaskell 1855 – read Oct 2012
Dr Thorne – Anthony Trollope 1858 – read February 2017
Adam Bede — George Eliot 1859 Read Nov 2015
Framley Parsonage – Anthony Trollope 1861 read May 2020
Wives and Daughters — Elizabeth Gaskell 1864 read Dec 2014
Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 read Feb-March 2013
The Fortune of the Rougons — Emile Zola 1871 Read May 2015
The Kill/La Curée – Emile Zola 1871-2 Read April 2019
L’Assommoir — Emile Zola 1877 – read March 2014
Washington Square/Daisy Miller — Henry James 1879 read January 2015
The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola — read March 2018
The Diary of a Nobody — George Grossmith 1888 read April 2017
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James 1898 Read June 2015
My Brilliant Career — Miles Franklin 1901 Read January 2019
A Room with a View — E M Forster 1915 Read March 2014
Return of the Soldier — Rebecca West 1917 Read January 2019
My Antonia — Willa Cather 1918 Read May 2017
Age of Innocence — Edith Wharton 1920 Read April 2020
**Mrs Dalloway — Virginia Woolf 1925 Read February 2016
Farewell to Arms — Hemmingway 1929 Read March 2013
All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville West 1931 Read September 2019
A Room of One’s Own — Virginia Woolf 1932 Read August 2017
Turf or Stone — Margiad Evans 1934 Read March 2020
South Riding – Winifred Holtby 1936. Read November 2018
Jamaica Inn – Daphne du Maurier 1936 Read June 2017
Of Mice and Men — Steinbeck 1937 Read April 2013
**The Power and the Glory — Grahame Greene 1940 Read December 2013
Never No More – Maura Laverty 1942 – Read January 2020
Cannery Row — John Steinbeck 1945 Read Dec 2013
**Cry, the Beloved Country — Alan Paton 1948 Finished April 2015
Heart of the Matter — Grahame Greene 1948 Finished August 2013
The Franchise Affair – Josephine Tey 1948 Finished May 2019
Love in a Cold Climate — Nancy Mitford 1949 Read August 2018
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote 1950 Read July 2019
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne – Brian Moore 1955 Read November 2019
Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe 1958 Read March 2015
The Country Girls — Edna O’Brien 1960 Read June 2013
We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson 1962 Read August 2017
The Girls of Slender Means — Muriel Spark 1963 Read Dec 2012
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — Maya Angelou 1969 – Read Nov 2012
Bottle Factory Outing — Beryl Bainbridge 1974 Read August 2013
The Human Factor — Graham Greene 1978 Read October 2017
Abandoned Books From the List
Pamela — Samuel Richardson 1740 did not finish
Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens 1859 – did not finish
The Leopard — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 did not finish
Remaining From Original List
Evelina — Frances Burney 1778
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth 1817
The Black Sheep — Honore Balzac 1842
Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol 1842
Bleak House — Charles Dickens 1852 (did not finish)
Basil – Wilkie Collins 1852
** Can You Forgive Her — Anthony Trollope 1864
Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope 1867
** Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy 1873-77
The Way we Live Now by Anthony Trollope – 1875
Daniel Deronda — George Eliot 1876
The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880
New Grub Street – George Gissing 1891
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad 1899
Anna of the Five Towns — Arnold Bennett 1902
The Secret Agent — Joseph Conrad 1907
Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett 1910
O Pioneers— Willa Cather 1913
The Voyage Out — Virginia Woolf 1915
Gone to Earth — Mary Webb 1917
**The Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf 1927
The Last September— Elizabeth Bowen 1929
Old Soldiers Never Die – Frank Richards 1933
**Frost in May — Antonia White 1933
The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck 1939
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood 1939
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith 1943
The Sheltering Sky – Paul Bowles 1949
The Quiet American — Graham Greene 1955
The Fall — Albert Camus 1956
Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1985
Gilion Dumas
Congratulations on finishing your CC list! I have until the end of 2023 to finish mine and am roughly on track I think.
BookerTalk
Good for you – I was way behind schedule with my target date
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Chris Wolak
I like how you list the changes you’ve made to your list by year. I just revised my list for the second time and color-coded it a bit, but during the first revision, I didn’t keep notes. Sad to see you’ve removed Moby Dick. I hope he gets back on your list one of these days.
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The Long Victorian
A v good list (I do The Classics Club as well). I saw the “did not finish” by Tale of Two Cities, haha – an honest reader 🙂 I have a few of those myself (Moby Dick, Midnight’s Children and Ulysses, come to mind). I’ll keep an eye on your blog.
BookerTalk
I have tried on more than one occasion to get through Tale of Two Cities but it just doesnt resonate with me at all
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BookerTalk
I thought i would have been getting to these books much quicker but there are so many new books this year that are calling for my attention
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Teresa pitt
Just googled it and I am right, it’s Old Goriot. I read it fifty years ago so I wasn’t sure, but it appears in this instance my memory didn’t fail me!
BookerTalk
oops, i should learn not to type on an iPad.It make me all fingers and thumbs
Teresa pitt
I’m pretty sure it’s Old Goriot by Balzac, not Old Gariot!!
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Bellezza
I love Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov and The Master and Margarita…well, I guess I love Russian literature. The Tale of Two Cities had an ending I’ll never forget, but it is tough getting there. As Bleak House was a bit tough going.
BookerTalk
The tale of two cities is one book I absolutely cannot get through and I struggled with bleak House so much I’m not sure I will finish it. Brothers Karamazov does have an attraction for me though.
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bookwormsammi
Great list you have here, we have some of the same books on our lists.
I really look forward to reading your review of North & South, not sure yet whether I”ll read it before or after I read the book myself.
kheenand
Hello ‘Book Cellar’ (clever name for your blog!). I’ve posted a review of North and South already but am lax in actually putting the link into my Classics Club list. Sorry about that.Here is the review –
I don’t tink there are any spoilers in it though there could be in some of the comments. Hope you enjoy it
kheenand
I thought I’d replied but now I can’t find it. Anyway I did post the North and South review – here it is if you’re still interested. http://allthingsbooker.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/north-and-south-review/
How is your own classics list reading?
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Tara Stych
Karen, please please please read Half of a Yellow Sun very soon! I saw Chimamanda at the Hay Festival. She is well worth travelling to see. Something very magical about her, she’s totally delightful! It has opened my eyes to Nigeria and sparked (another) interest. I haven’t read Achebe’s Things Fall Apart yet but have just started his latest novel which tells the history of the Biafran War which is the backdrop of Half of a Yellow Sun. Without a shadow of a doubt it is the book that has probably had most influence on me 🙂
kheenand
How can I resist faced with this level of endorsement?? Only problem is that I don’t have it on my shelves and the shops are now all closed!
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Dragonflydaydreams
We share lots of the same titles…but you are the only other person, so far, that has Silent Spring on their list as well.
kheenand
I love being different don’t you!. It’s been on my shelf for a long time – I keep dipping into it periodically and though i don’t understand a lot of the science, the beauty of her writing is astonishing. Karen Heenan-Davies
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Christine
I have Gaskell on my list as well – somehow I’ve never read anything by her. Unfortunately, I just finished The Moonstone – the day before I signed up for the challenge. 😉
kheenand
Moonstone could still count – I don’t think anyone is paying that close attention!
The only Gaskell I have read is Cranford which I found rather insubstantial but others who know her work better tell me that North and South has much more depth Karen Heenan-Davies
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swright
This seems like a good list, got a bit of everything. 50 classics in 5 years, would be like 10 a year — sounds maybe manageable eh? I’m considering whether join the club as well. I’m a bit on the fence
kheenand
I’ve no idea whether I can do 10 a year to be perfectly honest, particularly since I’m also doing a Booker prize challenge and studying for a children’s lit degree. But I thought I would give it a go on the basis that if I read 40 or 30 its still more than I would have done without the challenge. Give it a go – you may be surprised. Karen Heenan-Davies
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The Classics Club
Welcome to the club! The Quiet American is on my list as well.
kheenand
anything else I am supposed to be doing??