Sunday 31 January 2016

Joining The Classics Club

I am so happy to have found The Classics Club! Thanks to Carissa at Bookshelves and Daydreams for pointing me in the direction of this!

 

The club basics (the short version):

  • – choose 50+ classics
  • – list them at your blog
  • – choose a reading completion goal date up to five years in the future and note that date on your classics list of 50+ titles
  • – e-mail the moderators of this blog (theclassicsclubblog@gmail.com) with your list link and information and it will be posted on the Members Page!
  • – write about each title on your list as you finish reading it, and link it to your main list
  • – when you’ve written about every single title, let us know!
So those are the basic 'rules' of the club.

As I have mentioned before, my grandpa worked at Oxford University Press and I inherited his collection of Oxford classics. Plus I have purchased other copies of my own along the way.


 
This whole shelf is full of them! They are tiny books, only measuring 9.5 x 15cm. So they are actually three deep in that shelf. The printing is tiny and the pages are so fine. I used to adore reading these when I was younger (and, of course, still do - although not sure if my eyesight is still up to the task!)


So I will be selecting my list from lots of these, as well as a few modern classics.
Much as I would like to say I will read 200, or 2000!, classics in the five year timeframe, I will try to be realistic and shoot for 50. I can always add to the list later if I read faster!

My list, in no particular order, is as follows:

  1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  2. For The Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke
  3. St Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West
  4. Lancelot of the Lake
  5. Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
  6. The Golden Fleece by Padraic Colum
  7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  8. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  9. 1984 by George Orwell
  10. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  11. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  12. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
  13. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
  14. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  15. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  16. The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
  17. A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute
  18. I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall
  19. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
  20. The Sign Above The Door by William W. Canfield
  21. The Odyssey
  22. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
  23. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
  24. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
  25. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  26. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  27. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
  28. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
  29. The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
  30. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
  31. Passage To India by E.M. Forster
  32. The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell
  33. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  34. The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
  35. The Dubliners by James Joyce
  36. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
  37. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  39. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith
  40. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
  41. Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  42. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  43. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
  44. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  45. The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley
  46. Hans Anderson's Fairy Tales
  47. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  48. Watership Down by Richard Adams
  49. Little Women by Louise May Alcott
  50. Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling
And I will put my timeframe as being February 2016 to February 2021. Wow, that sounds SO far away!

I am really looking forward to all this wonderful reading - it was hard to narrow it down!

I have not chosen my first book yet. So how about we say first person to comment with a book title from the above list will be the first book I read and review? Maybe you would like to join in as well?

Maybe I am mad - but it will be fun!

7 comments:

  1. Wow that is a lot of reading. You must love novels. I used to love reading in my youth so very much but with the little ones have dropped the habit. Maybe I'll have to join you. I think my daughter has a DS book chip that has 100 classic novels. Now you may hate me for this but as a favourite classic novel to read I just can't go past "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell. I fell in love with it in year 7 and must have read it more than 5 times which is saying something as it is quite a lengthy book. If you look past all the glitz and sugar coated southern belle stereotypes, the text actually has a subtle but important sub text on human nature. If you're not up to reading some thing that long first cab off the rank, then my second choice is "I can Jump Puddles" by Alan Marshall. Hope you find time to read, knit and watch your period movies all at once.

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    1. Oh yes, Gone With The Wind is in my list! Funny as I am the same - I first read it about the same age as you and I have re-read it often. Lots of the books in my list are re-reads actually as I just love them so much.
      I know, I am going to be busy! Lucky I can knit while watching the movies and read while stirring dinner!

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    2. Forgot to say! Looks like GWTW is the first book I will be reading. Great choice!

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  2. I'd love so much to be part of this club, but you have to know that I'm a housekeeper, of course, I take care of my blog and I'm a teacher too, so sometimes I'm asked to read books out of my programs for doing some researches ... I do read so much, I love to, especially books in English and German, but it would be quite hard for me to make a program ...I'm so sorry, believe my lovely Jayne !

    May your week be blessed with joy and wonder, dearie,
    sending love to you with all my heart
    Dany

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    1. It is a lot of books - that is why I am glad it has such a long time frame for completion!

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  3. Yay! I'm so happy you're taking on the Classics Club! And I love your list. It looks both challenging and easy, a good mix of books, I'd say. I wasn't very faithful last year in reading books towards that goal, but I'm going to try and do better this year. So many books and not enough hours in the day. Sigh.

    I love your collection of classics! What a delightful and special inheritance.

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    1. They are very special - there are some pretty obscure titles in there. I need to challenge myself to read them all! Look forward to seeing how your reading is going too!

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