TREEKEEPING
B. L. DRAPER
The Classics Club
This entire premise is lifted from my old blog here. I will try again as I didn't get too far way back in the tweenies. Let's see if I have more success now that I'm more mature in the twenties.
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Recently, a friend of mine joined The Classics Club, and it piqued my interest. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the classics – memories of being forced to wade through dry, boring texts at school war with memories of passionate readings of Treasure Island and The Three Musketeers.
Deciding I needed a new challenge for (2014) 2022 (and beyond) I’ve decided to join the site and challenge myself to read and review at least fifty classics over the next five years.
"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."
I decided to start off slowly and compile a list of fifty classics that I want to read or re-read. This seemed a daunting number when I began, but as I started researching, reading other’s lists and making notes, it was surprisingly easy to compile the list. In fact, it was tempting to make it longer.
So…my list of fifty classics to read and review before (2019) 2027 is upon us (that seems so far away) consists of the following:
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Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
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Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
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The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs
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Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
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What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge
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What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge
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Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
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Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
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The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
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The Divine Comedy by Dante
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The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
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The Tempest by William Shakespeare
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The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
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The Collected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
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The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
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Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwski
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
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Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
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A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens
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The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
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The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
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Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot
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Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
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Lord of the Flies by William Golding
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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - currently reading
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Island by Aldous Huxley
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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The Crucible by Arthur Miller
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The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
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1984 by George Orwell
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Animal Farm by George Orwell
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The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
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Collected Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (every single one!)
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Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift
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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
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The Art of War by Sun Tzsu
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Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
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The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
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The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
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A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
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The Princess Bride by William Goldman
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Emily Climbs by LM Montgomery
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The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Some of these will be re-reads and some will be new, but I’m looking forward to all of them.