I Join the Classics Club: 50 Classics in 5 Years

Jillian over at A Room of One’s Own has created the Classics Club, where you sign up to read 50 classics over five years.  Since I love a good book list, I thought it was worth trying to create a list of 50 classics I want to read.

I came up with this list by looking at a few “literature you must read” lists, and then looking at some of the lists of other Classics Club members, and then of course my own TBR/Challenge list.  I tried to mix up genres a little bit, though I can’t say I went too far out on a limb.  At first I thought I’d have to name a lot of re-reads to get to 50, but that wasn’t the case at all.

My list can be boiled down to: 1) books I really want to read; 2) authors I haven’t read but feel I should (like Faulkner, James, Kipling); 3) classic children’s books (Newbery winners); 4) classic science fiction; and 5) a few re-reads (like Catcher in the Rye).

For the record, I’m not going to push myself to read 50 classics in five years.  I had fun just making the list (which tells you a lot about the dorkiness level here), and it helped me generate lots of ideas about books I want to read.  Plus a lot of these are children’s books.  Ten classics a year if you include children’s books — not impossible.

Any of your favorites on this list?  Where do you think I should start?  Is there anything on this list you tried and couldn’t get through?  Do you think anything on this list (like Haruki Murakami) is too current to be considered classic?  When does a book become a classic anyway?

1. Allende, Isabel – The House of Spirits (reread)
2. Austen, Jane – Mansfield Park
3. Babbit, Natalie – Tuck Everlasting
4. Bronte, Charlotte – Jane Eyre (reread)
5. Buck, Pearl S. – The Good Earth
6. Chopin, Kate – The Awakening
7. Collins, Wilkie – The Moonstone
8. Cooper, Susan — Over  Sea, Under Stone
9. De Cervantes, Miguel — Don Quixote
10. Dickens, Charles – Bleak House or Oliver Twist
11. Dumas, Alexandre – The Three Musketeers
12. Eliot, George – Daniel Deronda
13. Faulkner, William – Light in August
14. Fitzgerald, F. Scott – Tender is the Night
15. Gaskell, Elizabeth – North and South or Wives and Daughters
16. Greene, Graham – The End of the Affair
17. Hardy, Thomas – Far From the Madding Crowd
18. Heinlein, Robert – Stranger in a Strange Land
19. Hugo, Victor – Les Miserables
20. Ishiguro, Kazuo – The Remains of the Day
21. Jackson, Shirley – The Haunting of Hill House
22. James, Henry – The Portrait of a Lady
23. Kelly, Eric – The Trumpeter of Krakow
24. Kerouac, Jack – On the Road
25. Kipling, Rudyard – Kim
26. Lee, Harper – To Kill a Mockingbird (reread)
27. Leroux, Gaston — The Phantom of the Opera
28. Lowry, Lois — Number the Stars
29. Maugham, Somerset – Of Human Bondage
30. McKinley, Robin — The Hero and the Crown
31. Miller, Walter – A Canticle for Liebowitz
32. Morrison, Toni – Song of Solomon
33. Murakami, Haruki – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
34. O’Brien, Tim – The Things They Carried
35. Paterson, Katherine — Bridge to Terabithia
36. Poe, Edgar Allen – The Raven
37. Salinger, JD – The Catcher in the Rye (reread)
38. Smith, Betty – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
39. Spark, Muriel – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
40. Stegner, Wallace – Angle of Repose
41. Steinbeck, John – East of Eden
42. Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
43. Verne, Jules – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
44. Vonnegut, Kurt – Cat’s Cradle
45. Walker, Alice – The Color Purple (reread)
46. Wells, HG – The Invisible Man
47. Wharton, Edith – The House of Mirth
48. Whitman, Walt – Leaves of Grass
49. Wilde, Oscar – The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
50. Woolf, Virginia – Mrs. Dalloway