The Classics Club: List Revision

“The Classics Club was created for all those who have a love for, or would like to read more Classics. This isn’t a challenge but instead a project where like-minded people can get together, all you need to do is make a list of 50+ Classics you’d like to read in the next five years. The club has been such a huge success that it now has its own site and staff, please check it out here.

For my Classics Club list I decided to keep things simple. My list focuses on novels, novellas and short story collections that I have not read before. I am leaving my list open to alteration, so as my mood and experiences change as a reader I will be able to add or take-away books from the list. My aim is just to read 50 books off my list however long or short it might become”

I am now almost a year into my Classics Club project and have successfully read 10 books which means I am well on my way to my target of reading 50 books from my list. Recently I have been thinking about my list and I feel they are a few things I would like to change due to my mood, my experience from what I’ve read so far, and from reading what other clubbers have been reading. Here are the changes I propose:

ABC = Titles I’ve Read
ABC = Titles to be Removed
ABC = Titles to be Added

• Aesop’s Fables – Aesop
• Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
• Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales
• Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
• Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L Frank Baum
• Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
• The Tenant of Wildfel Hall – Anne Brontë
• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
• The Professor – Charlotte Brontë
• Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
• Villette – Charlotte Brontë
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
• Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Sign of the Four – Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Valley of Fear – Arthur Conan Doyle
• Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
• A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
• A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
• Bleak House – Charles Dickens
• David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
• Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
• Little Dorrit – Charles Dickens
• The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens
• Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
• The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
• The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
• The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
• North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
• Wives and Daughters – Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales
• The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Little Princess – Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
• Kim – Rudyard Kipling
• The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
• Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold – C S Lewis
• The Great Divorce – C S Lewis
• Out of the Silent Planet – C S Lewis
• Perelandra – C S Lewis
• That Hideous Strength – C S Lewis
• The Children of the New Forest – Frederick Marryat
• Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne du Maurier
• Jamaica Inn – Daphne du Maurier
• My Cousin Rachel – Daphne du Maurier
• Five Children and It – E Nesbit
• The Railway Children – E Nesbit
• Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
• Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
• Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
• Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
• Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
• The Time Machine – H G Wells
• War of the Worlds – H G Wells

Let’s talk about those I want to remove from the list first. I know it is quite dramatic to remove all my titles by C S Lewis and Daphne du Maurier completely from my list, especially as they are author’s I love. However that is part of the reason I am removing them. Lewis and Maurier are two authors whom I am very keen to read everything they have ever written! In which case I don’t really need them on my Classics Club list to encourage me to read them, leaving room for more older books which I do perhaps need more encouragement to read. So never fear Lewis and Maurier fans just because their not on the list anymore doesn’t mean I won’t be reading them.

Now for what books I want to add to my list. In hindsight I can’t believe I didn’t add any of Jules Verne novels to my list to begin with but I’ve remembered now, and so have picked the three titles of his I thought were the most beloved. I am looking forward to having some more classic science fiction on my list. Then we come to The Wind and the Willows by Kenneth Grahame I didn’t include this originally as I thought I’d read it as a child but the more I think about it the more I think I didn’t. Instead I think I just watched the film!

So big changes going on hopefully though all for the good of the project and my reading pleasure

Have you read any of these books?

About these ads