Wednesday, May 21, 2014

the Classics Club!

Something that I will hopefully definitely stick with to help me get back in to reading regularly, is joining the Classics Club! Thanks to the wonderful lady-blogger over at Fig and Thistle for educating me further about the blogging world.
I'm very intrigued by the Classics Club because I haven't really read all that many books that people would consider "classic". I guess you could say that I am scared of them- scared that I won't understand the language or that I will think a book is atrocious that everyone else loves. Maybe it is time to set aside these fears for the purpose of some literary-self-improvement.

The ultimate goal of the Classics Club? To read every classic on your list at your blog, and write about each one at your blog. So the purpose of this project is to improve your blogging skills and to read more books! You can never go wrong with more books.
So what is on my list of 50 books to read over the next 5 years (5/21/2014-5/21/2019)? Some re-reads, but mostly books that I have never read, along with some short story collections, series', and novels:
  1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  3. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - (Update 1)(Update 2)(Final Update)
  5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  6. Wurthering Heights by Emily Brontë
  7. 1984 by George Orwell
  8. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein
  9. The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein
  10. The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkein
  11. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein
  12. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  13. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
  14. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
  15. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  16. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  17. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
  18. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  19. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
  20. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  21. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  22. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone
  23. Silas Marner by George Eliot
  24. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  25. Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
  26. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  27. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol
  28. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol
  29. A Tale of Two Cities by Charlies Dickens
  30. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
  31. The Sketch Book by Washington Irving
  32. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
  33. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  34. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  35. Middlemarch by George Eliot
  36. Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  37. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  38. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
  39. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
  40. Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu
  41. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
  42. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  43. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
  44. The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterson
  45. Moll Flanders by Daniel Dafoe 
  46. Dracula by Bram Stoker
  47. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
  48. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  49. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  50. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
There are many of these books that I could start with, but I'm going to start with a re-read to get my brain in order. TKAMB was my favorite book that I was forced to read in high school, and now that I have grown and become more of an adult, I believe that I will enjoy it more now than I did then.

Wish me luck!



8 comments:

  1. YAY!!!!! I"m doing an excited Kermit the Frog dance in my office!

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    1. I would be dancing too, but I'm at the front desk! Booo!

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  2. Welcome to the club! You have a great list of books.

    My list of 50 can be found here.

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  3. Welcome! So many good picks! My personal favorite is Gone with the Wind. I hope you like it when you get to that one. :-)

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    1. Thank you! I watched the movie in eighth grade but don't remember much. I am looking forward to it!

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  4. What wonderful choices! The Count of Monte Cristo is particularly good! Welcome to the club.

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    1. Thank you so much! Monte Cristo is one of the ones I'm going to read next!

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