The Classics Club

Now this is a challenge that spoke to me!  I have found myself caught up in the contemporary books of our day and I want to be sure that I don't forget to envelope a full range of culture that classic literature stimulates.  So thank you Jillian @A Room of One's Own for setting this up.

Okay, now how does this work?  Well, basically each participant is asked to make a list of 50, 100, or 200+ (or anything in between) classic books that you want to read within 5 years (set a specific goal) and start reading!  Of course track your progress through your blog (review books if you so desire) and you're welcome to link up your list at Jillian's blog and/or join The Classics Club in Goodreads that Jillian has set up.  Your reward is the experience of the project but Jillian welcomed each member to think of a personal prize for accomplishing your goal.  Overall, the idea is to have a network to encourage each other and in general inspire people to make classics an integral part of our lives.  Sounds awesome to me so I'm in!

My time line is 3/21/12 - 3/21/17. I'll be tracking my progress on my The Classics Club page.    Oh, and the prize I will give myself at the end of this journey is the absolute joy and thrill of having had my horizon immensely broaden!!

Goodness, I didn't know where to start so I enlisted help from friends for suggestions.  The following is the result.  Thanks everyone!!

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. A Farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway
3. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. All Quite on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
5. Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
6. Around the World in 80 days by Jules Verne
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
8. The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
9. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
11. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
12. Candide by Voltaire
13. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
14. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
15. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
16. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
17. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
18. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
19. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
21. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
22. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
23. Lend Me Your Ears by Shakespeare
24. Les Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
25. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
26. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
27. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
28. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
29. Middlemarch by George Eliot
30. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
31. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
32. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
33. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
34. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
35. One Hundred and One by Rabindranath Tagore
36. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
37. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
38. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
39. The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
40. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
41. Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
42. The Secret Garden by Frances H. Burnett
43. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
44. Tess of the D'Uurbevilles by Tomas Hardy
45. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
46. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
47. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
48. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
49. The Woman in White by Wilke Collins
50. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I like the flexibility of this challenge.  This list is not set in stone.  I can make changes as I see fit.  :)