Current Challenges

Back To The Classics Challenge 2012

Sarah Reads Too Much is hosting a reading challenge next year, and I thought I’d join in and get some of those classics off my to-read pile. The challenge is to read one book that covers each of the nine categories she’s specified.

Here are my tentative choices, suggestions always welcome:

  • Any 19th Century ClassicThe Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
  • Any 20th Century ClassicNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. I read half of this in high school and didn’t finish. While I was never a model student, I did at least enjoy the readings. This is the one book I didn’t finish, and it’s haunted me ever since.
  • Reread a classic of your choiceThe Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This was also assigned reading in high school, but I think I might have burned through it a little too quickly. I didn’t find it that memorable, but this seems to be listed as a favourite of many well-read people, so it’s probably worth a revisit.
  • A Classic PlayThe Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare.
  • Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime FictionThe Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
  • Classic RomancePride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
  • Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your languageSolaris by Stanisław Lem (translated from Polish).
  • Classic Award WinnerAs I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (Nobel Prize in Literature). I tried this once years ago and didn’t get far. I shall try it again.
  • Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetimeHeart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Congo Free State).

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