Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Joining the Classics Club

Well, I'm going to do it. I'm jumping into the Classics Club. As they describe at their blog, "The Classics Club is a club created to inspire people to read and blog about classic books. There’s no time limit to join and you’re most welcome, as long as you’re willing to sign up to read and write on your blog about 50+ classic books in at most five years. The perk is that, not only will you have read 50+ incredible (or at the very least thought-provoking) works in five years, you’ll get to do it along with all of these people. Join us! We’re very friendly." As I read the books on my list below, I link that blog post to the Classics Club site and hopefully get feedback from others. I love the idea of an online blogger club devoted to exploring the classics and I look forward to challenging myself. Some of the books I have listed below are re-reads (which is allowed- I've marked them with a star) and many are new reads- those books that I have always wanted to read someday but have never pushed myself to pick up. I hope that with the Classics Club challenge, I will be inspired to broaden my reading horizons like never before. Which isn't to say this is all I will be reading. I have many memoirs and biographies still to explore, as well as the fantasy and contemporary novels I also love to read. I refuse to be hemmed in by a list, especially when it comes to my reading. The list below can also change, according to the Classics Club rules. If I decide to read a different classic or want to take one off my list, I can do that. It is a living list, one that can change and adapt to my reading tastes. My blogging style or frequency will not change; rather, I view this endeavor as a personal reading challenge, but one that will hopefully bring me in contact with more literary bloggers.

Here then are my 51 classics, to (hopefully) be completed by January 23, 2018.


- My Dearest Friend: Letters of John and Abigail Adams ~John and Abigail Adams
- Things Fall Apart ~ Chinua Achebe*
- Little Women ~Louisa May Alcott*
- Moods ~Louisa May Alcott
- Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott ~Louisa May Alcott
- Journals of Louisa May Alcott ~Louisa May Alcott
- Handmaid’s Tale ~Margaret Atwood
- Persuasion ~Jane Austen
- Fahrenheit 451 ~Ray Bradbury
- Tenant of Wildfell Hall ~Anne Bronte
- Agnes Gray ~Anne Bronte
- Jane Eyre ~Charlotte Bronte*
- The Professor ~Charlotte Bronte
- Villette ~Charlotte Bronte
- Pilgrim’s Progress ~John Bunyan
- Power of Myth ~Joseph Campbell
- The Awakening ~Kate Chopin*
- Little Dorritt ~Charles Dickens
- Bleak House ~Charles Dickens
- A Christmas Carol ~Charles Dickens*
- Pickwick Papers ~Charles Dickens
- Tales of the Elders of Ireland ~Ann Dooley
- The Brothers Karamazov ~Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Middlemarch ~George Eliot
- Silas Marner ~George Eliot
- The Great Gatsby ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
- A Lesson Before Dying ~Ernest J. Gaines
- Early Irish Myths and Sagas ~Jeffrey Gantz
- Cranford ~Elizabeth Gaskell
- Wives and Daughters ~Elizabeth Gaskell
- Madwoman in the Attic ~Sandra M. Gilbert
- For Whom the Bell Tolls ~Ernest Hemingway
- Siddhartha ~Herman Hesse*
- The Church in Early Irish Society ~Kathleen Hughes
- Collected Poems ~Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Gone With the Wind ~Margaret Mitchell
- Anne of Green Gables ~L.M. Montgomery*
- Song of Solomon ~Toni Morrison
- A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf ~John Muir
- 1984 ~George Orwell
- Selected Poetry ~Ranier Maria Rilke
- Frankenstein ~Mary Shelley
- Dracula ~Bram Stoker
- Walden & Civil Disobedience ~Henry David Thoreau*
- The Hobbit ~J.R.R. Tolkien*
- Anna Karenina ~Leo Tolstoy
- The Color Purple ~Alice Walker
- Age of Innocence ~Edith Wharton
- Ethan Frome ~Edith Wharton*
- Picture of Dorian Gray ~Oscar Wilde
- Mrs. Dalloway  ~Virginia Woolf

What do you think? To me, to-read lists contain the excitement of the first day of school, Christmas, and entering a new library all rolled into one. I am excited to meet like-minded readers and hear their thoughts on what they read and I look forward to sharing my own reading experiences more fully. Here we go!

Posts on My Classics Club Books (I'm linking these as I go):
Little Women: A Piece of Myself 
Villette: In Villette
Early Irish Myths & Sagas: Bits and Pieces 
The Journals of Louisa May Alcott: Thoughts on a Journal
Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott: The End of May 
Mrs. Dalloway: Summering

11 comments:

  1. Gone With the Wind!!!!!!!

    And, I spy a Hemingway. :-)

    I'm excited you're doing this, Jillian! :)

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    1. I knew you'd be excited about Gone With the Wind... I mostly chose it so that we can discuss it someday. :) I'm excited too... I want to challenge myself, while still leaving myself free to read what feels right at the time. I want to rule the list, not the other way round. :)

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  2. Great list! I just reread Little Women and fell in love with it all over again. Also, you mentioned you wanted to grab the Classics Club button. You should be able to save the image directly from our blog and then uplaod it to your's! Good luck!

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    1. Thank you so much! I'm excited to finally be a member!

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  3. Ohh, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is fabulous. I look forward to reading your thoughts about it.
    I love Gone With the Wind. I picked it up (I, too, was inspired mainly by Mabel- I wonder how many people began to read this book because of her?) and I fell in love. It's an amazing story and it'll suck you in from the very first page. Enjoy!
    Welcome to the Club! :)

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    1. Thank you so much! I am really looking forward to meeting more "book friends" like you! I too am excited to read more Bronte.... and I felt it was time to finally dive into Gone With the Wind. I know Mabel's pretty excited about it!

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  4. I'm so glad you decided to join! I love the choices on your list! I look forward to reading your thoughts on these books. :)

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    1. Thanks joon*ann! A lot of you fellow bloggers inspired me to jump in! :)

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  5. Okay, so how do I go about joining The Classics Club? I can't really figure it out... Also, I love your book list!

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    1. Thanks Elisabeth! So far, I've really liked being part of The Classics Club... I recommend it! You get to meet so many like-minded readers. If you click the button on my sidebar for the Classics Club, it should take you to their website. From there, go to the heading tab titled "About the Club". The drop-down menu includes a tab for "Join the Club/FAQs". That should tell you all you need to know! I hope you join! :)

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