The following is my completed Classics Club List. I've been working on it off and on since September, but finally it's more or less together. I imagine it may alter slightly as the years pass, but it's good to go for now.
The one thing that concerns me about this list is that many titles are exceptionally LENGTHY. My reading plans for 2016 involve reading a number of books on the Classics Club List, but many other books as well.
1. The Last of the Mohicans by James
Fenimore Cooper
2. Persuasion
by Jane Austen
3. Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
4. Doctor
Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (rereading because I last read it when I was barely 15 years of age) Winner, Nobel Prize 1957
5. Flush:
A Biography by Virginia Woolf
6. Dr.
Finlay Stories—Omnibus by A.J. Cronin (Scottish)
7. Wives
and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
8. The Professor’s
House by Willa Cather
9. The
First Circle OR The Cancer Ward by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
10. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
11. German Classic Heinrich
Boll
12. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles
Dickens
13. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol finished 09/2015
14. The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
15. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
16. Kristin
Lavransdatter Vol. 2 The Bride by Sigrid Undset
17. Kristin
Lavransdatter Vol. 3 The
Cross (I read Vol. 1 fifteen years ago—excellent!)
18. Snow
by Orhan Parmuk (Modern Turkish Classic)
19. Vanity
Fair Thackeray
20. Poldark
by Winston Graham
21 The Adventures
of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
22. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
23. Shirley Jackson
Short Stories
24. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
by Henry D. Thoreau done 10/2015
25. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
26. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
27. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
28. Beowulf award-winning translation by Seamus Heaney 11/2015 in progress
29. Red Badge of Courage by Stephen
Crane
30. *The Painted Veil or Short Stories by W. Somerset Maugham
31. Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek by Annie
Dillard (American classic)
32. Kamouraska by
Anne Hebert Canadian Classic Quebecois
33. O
Pioneers! by Willa Cather
34. The
Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg First vol. of Swedish classic (trilogy)
35. Winesburg,
Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
36. The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
37. The
Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
38. The
Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
39. The
Golden Notebooks by Dorris Lessing (South African—English)
40. The
Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
41. The
Storm by Margriet de Moor (Dutch
classic about historic storm in early 1950s)
42. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
43. Franny
and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
44. The
Things They Carried and other Stories by Tim O’Brien
45. And
Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov Soviet Russian classic (Reading Vol. 1 of 4) .
46. The
Harp in the Park by Ruth Park (1948 Australian classic)
47. Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
48. Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
49. Home of the Gentry by Ivan Turgenev
(heard about fr. Danielle)
50. Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala
Markandaya published 1954
51. Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer
Jhabvala Booker Prize 1975.
I really like your list, I've read 19 of them. Let me know when you want to read Red Badge of Courage.
ReplyDeleteKatrina,
DeleteI will indeed. I'm working such long hours this week, last week, and the week before that, that I'm in despair about when I'll have time to move forward with books!
A little lull this weekend, I think!!! Super excited. I need to choose my next Classics Club read. But you know I have so many books I want to read this year.
I went through the list and tried to "pick" which ones you might have read.
There is one trilogy I know for sure you would like, but you may have read it: Sigrid Undset, the Norwegian writer and Nobel-prize winner author of Kristin Lavransdatter. I loved the first volume so much! I think you would, too. But I don't want to curse you with more books on your list.
I haven't read anything by Sigrid Undset.
ReplyDelete2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 33, 36, 45, 47, 48 are the ones I have read.
I'm saving the list of the ones you've read. I guess the ones that surprised me most were that 1)you haven't read Dickens's Bleak House or Tale of Two Cities, and 2) that you read Solzhenitsyn. With the latter, my surprise signifies that I'm forgetting your interest in Russian literature.
DeleteThe Charles Dickens novels I've enjoyed in the past are Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and The Christmas Carol, and...is that all the Dickens I've actually read? Perhaps it is. What about you?
I dodge Dickens, I did try him when I was at school and wasn't enamoured, despite reading a lot of classics then. After I heard about how he treated his poor wife - I was put off him completely! I've read The Christmas Tree to get me in the mood for the season in the past. I read Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s, when he was in the news a lot, mainly before he got out of the USSR.
DeleteI must note down "The Christmas Tree." And, just curious, do you recall if you enjoyed the Solzhenitsyn you read. Perhaps "enjoyed" is the wrong word entirely! Was it illuminating at the least? I know the 1970s was a very long time ago. Just curious about your thoughts.
DeleteJ.
Yes enjoy isn't the word but as I recall I found them a fascinating glimpse into another world. I read Cancer Ward, Gulag Archipelago and August 1914. BTW, J is a big Orhan Pamuk fan but I haven't read any, maybe we could do a Snow readalong.
DeleteKatrina,
DeleteWow! I only just now recalled that he wrote August 2014. I'm in awe that you read those three. That's Solzhenitsyn in depth, I'll say.
I started reading Snow years ago and was captivated by the first 40 pages, but I had to drop it due to all the reading I was doing for work.
I'd love to do a readalong of Snow.