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."

 

The Classics Club Site

 

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:

 

1. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

2. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

3. The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs

4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

5. What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge

6. What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge

7. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 

8. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson 

9. Belinda by Maria Edgeworth

10. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

11. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

12. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

13. The Divine Comedy by Dante

14. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

15. The Tempest by William Shakespeare

16. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

17. The Collected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

18. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

19. Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

20. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwski

21. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

22. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

23. A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens

24. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

25. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

26. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

27. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

28. Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot

29. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

30. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

31. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - currently reading

33. Island by Aldous Huxley

34. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

35. The Crucible by Arthur Miller

36. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

37. 1984 by George Orwell

38. Animal Farm by George Orwell

39. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

40. Collected Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (every single one!)

41. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift

42. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

43. The Art of War by Sun Tzsu

44. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

45. The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

46. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

47. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

48. The Princess Bride by William Goldman

49. Emily Climbs by LM Montgomery

50. 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.