Current Challenges

The Classics Club – Round Two!

I’ve decided to join The Classics Club for another round. That’s another fifty classic novels read in the next five years, with a completion date of April 12th, 2022 (starting a few days back to include my current read).

This is just a tentative list. I like to read on a whim, so it will change dramatically by the time I’m finished, as the previous list did. I don’t understand how people follow TBR lists that span a month, let alone five years, so I’m not even going to try. But this is what I would currently like to read, having scanned my shelves and Audible wishlist.

I would like to incorporate more classics from outside of America and England, which are the countries I mostly read from despite not being American or English, so I’d love any recommendations. My only criteria for what constitutes a classic is that most people would describe it as quite old. I’m a simple man.

  1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
  2. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (1623)
  3. The Tempest by William Shakespeare (1623)
  4. Candide by Voltaire (1759)
  5. Emma by Jane Austen (1815)
  6. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
  7. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
  8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
  9. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
  10. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
  11. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
  12. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859)
  13. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)
  14. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1864)
  15. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)
  16. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
  17. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson (1879)
  18. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
  19. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (1888)
  20. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (1889)
  21. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope (1894)
  22. Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum (1990)
  23. Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome (1900)
  24. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (1904)
  25. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (1908)
  26. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton (1908)
  27. My Man, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (1919)
  28. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (1926)
  29. The Land of Mist by Arthur Conan Doyle (1926)
  30. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (1933)
  31. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (1934)
  32. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
  33. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)
  34. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946)
  35. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1949)
  36. The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler (1950)
  37. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
  38. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (1951)
  39. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952)
  40. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (1953)
  41. The Seeds of Time by John Wyndham (1956)
  42. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957)
  43. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
  44. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
  45. Travels with Charley in Search of America by by John Steinbeck (1962)
  46. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)
  47. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (1964)
  48. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark (1965)
  49. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
  50. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (1968)

16 Comments

    • Rob

      Hah, War and Peace is on my someday list, but realistically it probably won’t happen soon. Too intimidated by that one!

      Completing the last list really helped me get in the habit of picking up more classics. I feel like now it’s just part of my reading actually, which is great.

  • Jillian

    LOVELY to see a second list from you! (I’m the girl who started the club, forever ago. I’ve had nothing to do with it since beyond my own reading, but I wished you luck on your first list, I think, several years ago. Very best wishes again.) 🙂

    I can strongly recommend Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee (South African author.) Waiting For the Barbarians isn’t “quite old,” though. It was published in 1980. However, Coetzee is a Nobel prize-winner, so maybe you could try his novel as a side venture, ha! However, since I founded the club, I say it counts as a classic. Especially since a lot of world literature came along in the post-colonial era.

    Okay, for really old, how about some Michel de Montaigne. I haven’t read his entire collection of essays, but I’ve read about half. He pretty much invented the essay genre. I can strongly recommend his work.

    Cheers, and very best of luck!

    • Rob

      Yes, I remember actually. Thanks for starting the club!

      I hadn’t heard of Waiting for the Barbarians, but I did really like Disgrace, so I’ll definitely keep an eye out for a copy of that. I have Life and Times of Michael K on my shelf now and was planning to read that soon too.

      I’ve been looking for a good edition of Michel de Montaigne’s essays. I’ve always been quite curious about his writing, so it’s great to see it highly recommended!

  • Silvia

    What a fabulous list!, I love many titles in it, some I have read and loved, others I want to read, and others are new to me and intriguing. I am most definitely looking forward to your reviews.
    From this book lists and classics lover, best wishes.
    (I recommend you a Moliere’s play, they are short and very humorous, Tartuffe, The Miser, any of his, really. And my latest reading of Candice by Voltaire, was super short and funny beyond belief. These old French men knew satire to a T. Jillian, I will be reading Montaigne).

    • Rob

      Thanks! I’m completely unfamiliar with Moliere, so I’ll be sure to read up on him now.

      Not knowing anything about Voltaire, I always assumed his writing to be stuffy for some reason. Hearing that it’s funny has definitely piqued my interest more.

      • Silvia

        I thought the same about Voltaire, and Moliere, and I was not surprised, but shocked when I listened to the 2 and a 1/2 hours of Candide. These two quotes should show you (these are from Candide):

        “‘Alas! My dear,’said she, ‘unless you have been raped by two Bulgarians, stabbed twice in the belly, have had two castles destroyed, two fathers and mothers murdered before your eyes, and have seen two of your lovers flogged in an auto-da-fe, I do not see how you can surpass me; moreover, I was born a Baroness with seventy-two quarterings and I have been a kitchen wench.'” Chapter 10, pg. 39

        “‘Imagine the situation of a Pope’s daughter aged fifteen, who in three months had undergone poverty and slavery, had been raped nearly every day, had seen her mother cut into four pieces, had undergone hunger and war, and was now dying of the plague in Algiers.'” Chapter 12, pg. 46

        I found an audio book of it at either my library or Hoopla. It’s possible you find it on audio too. It was the best surprise of the year.

        Moliere, I already knew he was great for plays, so funny and modern, both these men. And to think for many years I ignored them as stuffy and probably boring French, LOL. That’s to me the best thing about classics, they always surprise me and amuse me, they are inimitable.

        • Rob

          Yeah, I’ve been constantly surprised by the classics I’ve read, by how readable they often are and how well they hold up to modern readers. They’re classics for a reason, I guess!

          Excited to check out Voltaire and Moliere now. I’ll have a look at the audio version of Candide. Thanks!

  • Ruthiella

    I second Candide. I read it in college for a class and as I recall, it was very readable and funny.

    You certainly have some chunksters on your list. I would be most interested to hear your opinion on Dune. It blew me away when I first read it in my 20s. I listened to it again a few years ago and was slightly more critical of it, but sill think it is a masterpiece of SFF.

    • Silvia

      That happened to me with a book by Asimov, The End of Eternity. I loved it in my 20’s, I reread it last year, for a classic you read in high school or college, and it was not as remarkable, but still great. I love Dune the movie. I started on the book and got sidetracked, but it’s great sff, yes.

    • Rob

      I really need to get to Dune. It’s been on my list for so long now, and I feel like a bit of a failed nerd having not read it yet.

      There are definitely some chunksters on here, but I reserve the right to edit this list as I go… 🙂

  • Claudia

    You have certainly set yourself quite a challenge! I frequently begin to read a classic and find it slow going, due to writing style, then don’t finish. But there are happily some surprises among them.

    • Rob

      I’m constantly surprised by how readable I’ve found most of the classics I’ve read, although there certainly are some that just don’t grab me at all.

  • Jane

    I don’t have any recommendations I’m afraid, but this looks like a great list,we’ve got a few authors in common but different titles, so I’m looking forward to reading your reviews! I know what you mean about reading outside of the US and UK, I’m starting to think about that being a new challenge too.

    • Rob

      Thank you!

      I’ve seen a few people post Around the World challenges where they try to slowly read at least one novel from every country around the world, and that always seemed like a fun idea to me. I might eventually do something similar (possibly with a retroactive list. 🙂 ).

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