So, as far as I can tell, my last Sunday Salon was in December 2010. I was a religious Sunday Saloner, but, and this is a running theme in my life, I got lazy and a little burned out about having a non-review post each month. Now, though, I have the opposite problem. I have so many things to talk about and none of them are reviews. I’m done writing reviews about books that are just OK. Excellent books? Yes. Horrible books? Absolutely. I used to want to write a review for every book I read, but there are just some books I don’t have an original thought about. See every John Green book ever and Kavaleir and Clay.
In any case, I think I’ll reinstate my weekly Sunday Salon posts. For whatever reason, I’m currently obsessed with creating reading lists and setting myself up for failure. After all these years of blogging, I know myself. My reading lists and goals, like the recent Orange Longlist goal, are things that I would like to finish, but I never really beat myself up about it if I don’t. I don’t know that I’ve ever finished a reading challenge I set for myself (see: recent TBR Dare failure), but I’ve also never stressed out about it. So when Jillian’s Classics Club was announced… well, it was the perfect opportunity for me to make yet another list that I may or may not finish.
Essentially The Classics Club is a list of classic books you would like to read in 5 years. You need to choose 50+ classics , set an end date, and then comment on Jillian’s blog.
And now, my list! I apologize in advance: I did not alphabetize this list. I just wrote it as I thought of books I wanted to read or saw them on various other lists.
Start Date – 3/10/12
End date – 3/10/17
Rereads
1. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
2. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
4. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
5. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
6. We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
7. The Things They Carried - Tim O’Brien
8. Howl – Allen Ginsberg
9. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead – Tom Stoppard
10. Hamlet – Shakespeare
11. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – Edward Albee
Poetry
1. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas - Dylan Thomas
2. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats – W. B. Yeats
3. T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909-1962 – T. S. Eliot
4. H. D.: Collected Poems 19-12-1944 – H. D.
5. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes – Langston Hughes
6. Birthday Letters – Ted Hughes
7. Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
8. Ariel: The Restored Edition – Sylvia Plath
9. The Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay - Edna St. Vincent Millay
10. Selected Poems (William Carlos Williams) - William Carlos Williams
11. Selected Poems - Gwendolyn Brooks
Prose
Pre-1700
1. The Illiad – Homer
2. The Odyssey – Homer
3. Something by Shakespeare
4. Historia verderdera de la conquista de la Nueva España – Bernal Díaz del Castillo
1700s
1. The Monk – Matthew Lewis
2. A Vindication of the Rights of Man - Mary Wollstonecraft
3. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
4. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker – Tobias Smollett
5. The Mysteries of Uldolpho – Ann Radcliffe
1800s
1. Emma – Jane Austen
2. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
3. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson – Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
5. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
7. The Origins of Species - Charles Darwin
8. North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
9. Tess of the D’Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy
10. The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
11. The Haunted House – Charles Dickens et. al.
12. The Prince and the Pauper – Mark Twain
13. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - Mark Twain
14. Shank’s Mare (Tokaidochu Hizakurige) – Ikku Jippensha and Sadakazu Shigeta
15. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
16. The Lost World - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
17. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
18. Los pazos de Ulloa – Emilia Pardo Bazán
1900s
1. I Am A Cat – Natsumi Soseki
2. Respiración artificial - Ricardo Piglia
3. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
4. Dust Tracks on A Road: An Autobiography – Zora Neale Hurston
5. Gigi - Collette
6. La muerte de Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes
7. El aleph – Jorge Luis Borges
8. Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe
9. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids - Kenzaburo Oe
10. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemmingway
12. Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham
13. The Painted Veil – W. Somerset Maugham
14. The Razor’s Edge - W. Somerset Maugham
15. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
16. The Waves – Virginia Woolf
17. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
18. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
19. A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
20. O, Pioneers! - Willa Cather
21. My Ántonia – Willa Cather
22. Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
23. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
24. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
This list comes in at 69 books, so I’ll have to read 14 a year or so. I can see future-Lu laughing at my ambitious Spanish reading plans, but I’d like to read more books in Spanish to keep up my language skills, so this is the perfect opportunity. I’m excited to get started! And look, I just barely made this in before Sunday ended.
