The Classics Club

Oh my gosh!  I just discovered the Classics Club!

(I hear ya. . . This is supposed to be a blog where I am encouraging myself in my housework, organization and crafts--not an outlet for my book obsession.    Well, I am doing that!  I'm just doing this too!)

Here are the basic rules of The Classics Club:

• choose 50+ classics
  I have choosen 50; the ones denoted with an asterisk are rereads.
• list them at your blog
  Tada!
• choose a reading completion goal date up to five years in the future and note that date on your classics list of 50+ titles
  I'm setting the goal to have read my 50 by 6 July 2018, which is less than one classic a month.  The Classics Club stresses that this is a "living list/goal" and as such it the list can grow, the goal date can be extended. . . the point is to read and grow with the classics. 
• write about each title on your list as you finish reading it, and link it to your main list
  The point of this is not to write reviews (which is good, as I got so burnt out reviewing), but to initiate discussion by writing about "your reading thoughts".

They also do an occasional (monthly?) "lucky spin".  Members are invited to make a numbered list of 20 of the books still to be read.  A number is given, and members read the book that corresponds to that number.  I like that idea too.


update: I have begun to add more to the list as I think of them, increasing my list from the original 50.  My goal is still the same, though: to read 50 of these before 6 July 2018.  I am making good progress, but don't want to change my goal date in case I can't keep on at this pace.  


Here's my list of classics that I've somehow missed, planned to read but just never did, or that I am longing to reread:

1. Flatland by Edwin Abbott
2. Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott*
3. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
4. Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake*
5. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury 
6. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury  (my discussion)
7. The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan  (my discussion)
8. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote*  (my discussion)
10. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain
11. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
12. The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper
13. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel deFoe
14. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
15. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
16. The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot*
17. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
18. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore
19. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
20. Allan Quartermain by H. Rider Haggard
21. She by H. Rider Haggard
22. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
23. Iliad by Homer*
24. Odyssey by Homer*
25. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
26. Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu
27. Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
28. Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis*
29. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
30. At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald*
31. The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
32. The Four Feathers by AEW Mason
33. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
34. Anne of Windy Poplars by Lucy Maud Montgomery
35. Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery
36. Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery
37. Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell  (my discussion)
38. Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov
39. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
40. Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger*
41. Nine Stories by JD Salinger
42. "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour: an Introduction" by J.D. Salinger
43. Flame and Shadow by Sarah Teasdale*  (my discussion)
44. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien*
45. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole*
46. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
47. Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne
48. The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
49. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
50. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
51. The Island of Doctor Moreu by HG Wells
52. The Time Machine by HG Wells*
53. East Lynne by Ellen Wood
54. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
55. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
56. Beau Geste by P.C. Wren
57. Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss