Back to the Classics Challenge 2016

I’ll be giving the Back to the Classics challenge another go. The idea is the same as last year, to read a novel from each of the 12 challenges within the year. In this case, a classic is anything published over fifty years ago. I’d like to read all twelve, but even an incomplete list will garner entries for the year-end draw:

• Complete six categories, and you get one entry in the drawing
• Complete nine categories, and you get two entries in the drawing
• Complete all twelve categories, and you get three entries in the drawing

Here are the categories and my initial tentative picks. These can be changed throughout the year:

1. A 19th Century Classic: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome
2. A 20th Century Classic: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
3. A classic by a woman author: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
4. A classic in translation: Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
5. A classic by a non-white author: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
6. An adventure classic: She by H. Rider Haggard
7. A fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian classic: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
8. A classic detective novel: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
9. A classic which includes the name of a place in the title: The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
10. A classic which has been banned or censored: Animal Farm by George Orwell
11. Re-read a classic you read in school (high school or college): Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
12. A volume of classic short stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle