A recent call for a Classics Club Spin reminded me that I need to re-examine my Classics Club commitment. When I originally signed up for the Classics Club back in March 2014, I put together a list of just over 50 books that I pledged to read by March 1, 2019.
Well, that date has come and gone, and I’ve read fewer than half of those books. Even when I made an effort to go back and look at that list to choose the book I’d read next, I usually couldn’t find something that appealed to me. These are the books from that original list that I managed to read over the last five years:
1. Adams, Richard. Watership Down
2. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio
3. Brink, Carol Ryrie. Caddie Woodlawn
4. Burns, Olive. Cold Sassy Tree
5. Jackson, Shirley. We Have Always Lived in the Castle
6. Joyce, James. Dubliners
7. Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon
8. Masters, Edgar Lee. Spoon River Anthology
9. Miller, Walter M., Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz
10. Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Green Gables
11. Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels
12. Pym, Barbara. Excellent Women
13. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea
14. Smith, Dodie. I Capture the Castle
15. Steinbeck, John. Cannery Row
16. Steinbeck, John. Tortilla Flat
17. Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons
18. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five
19. Williams, Tennessee. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
20. Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road
I’ve simply run out of entries on that list that appeal to me any more.
Consequently, I’ve decided to scratch the original list and start over again. During the past few years I’ve filled my Kindle with about 1,300 books, most of which I chose because they sounded interesting when they came up on my daily emails of bargain offerings. When I took a look at those ebooks, I discovered many of them are literary classics.
Here, then, is my brand new Classics Club list. It includes mostly new titles, though I’ve also included a few from the original list that I still want to read.
My New clasics club list
Start date: May 1, 2019
Completion date: May 1, 2024
1. Agee, James. A Death in the Family
2. Auchincloss, Louis. Last of the Old Guard
3. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice
4. Baker, Nicholson. The Mezzanine
5. Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths
6. Bradbury, Ray. Dandelion Wine
7. Brookner, Anita. Hotel Du Lac
8. Caspary, Vera. Bedilia
9. Cather, Willa. O Pioneers!
10. Christie, Agatha. Crooked House
11. Connell, Evan S. Mr. Bridge
12. Connell, Evan S. Mrs. Bridge
13. Didion, Joan. Play It As It Lays
14. Dos Passos, John. Manhattan Transfer
15. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment
16. Eliot, George. Middlemarch
17. Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!
18. Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman
19. Greene, Graham. Brighton Rock
20. Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd
21. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls
22. Highsmith, Patricia. The Tremor of Forgery
23. Howard, Elizabeth Jane. The Long View
24. Jackson, Shirley. Just an Ordinary Day: Stories
25. James, Henry. The Ambassadors
26. James, Henry. The Beast in the Jungle
27. Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Country of the Pointed Firs
28. Kosinski, Jerzy. The Painted Bird
29. Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook
30. Lowry, Malcolm. Under the Volcano
31. March, William. The Bad Seed
32. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude
33. Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend
34. McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses
35. McEwan, Ian. Atonement
36. Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire
37. Nabokov, Vladimir. Pnin
38. Oates, Joyce Carol. With Shuddering Fall
39. O’Neill, Eugene. The Iceman Cometh
40. Piercy, Marge. He, She and It
41. Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time
42. Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time, vol. 1
43. Rendell, Ruth. The Crocodile Bird
44. Sarton, May. As We Are Now
45. Sarton, May. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
46. Stegner, Wallace. The Spectator Bird
47. Styron, William. Darkness Visible
48. Styron, William. Lie Down in Darkness
49. Tevis, Walter. The Man Who Fell to Earth
50. Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle
51. Wharton, Edith. Ghost Stories
52. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway
53. Wyndham, John. The Day of the Triffids
© 2019 by Mary Daniels Brown
