Fifty in Five Years
I was surprised and rather pleased to discover works by one of my favourite authors, Margaret Atwood on the Big Book List. However, I have included both modern classics and old favourites on my list, reflecting my diverse taste in books. In fact, I’ve gone for a real mishmash of titles in a variety of genres – a couple are rereads (also half-reads), but the majority are fresh off my TBR list.
What Constitutes a Classic?
In this instance, I will go with the official Club definition of ‘classic’:
“For the purposes of your project list, it’s your choice, really. Modern classics, ancient classics, Eastern canon, Western canon, Persephone, Virago, African literature, children’s classics… You make your own goal, and you decide what is “a classic.”
The Rules Made Simple
- Choose a minimum of 50 classics.
- Create a post in which to list them on your blog.
- Choose a completion date (up to 5 years hence) and note the date on your list.
- E-mail the Club moderator with the link to your list.
- Write a post on each title as you finish reading and create a link from your list.
- When you’ve written about every single title on your list, let the moderators know.
Start Date: 1st August 2018
End Date: 1st August 2023
Running Total: 15/50
My List of 50 Classics
- Allatini, Rose: Despised and Rejected
- Atwood, Margaret: Alias Grace ✓
- Bach, Richard: Jonathan Livingston Seagull ✓
- Baldwin, James: Giovanni’s Room
- Barnes, Djuna: Nightwood
- Beerbohm, Max: Zuleika Dobson
- Borges, Jorge Luis: Ficciones ✓
- Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451 ✓
- Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
- Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
- Calvino, Italo: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
- Capote, Truman: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
- Capote, Truman: In Cold Blood
- Colette: Chéri ✓
- Conan Doyle, Arthur: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ✓
- Dahl, Roald: Matilda ✓
- Davies, W.H.: Autobiography of a Super-Tramp ✓
- Dinesen, Isak: Out of Africa
- Drabble, Margaret: The Millstone ✓
- Du Maurier, Daphne: My Cousin Rachel ✓
- Fallada, Hans: The Drinker
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby
- Gautier, Théophile: Mademoiselle de Maupin
- Gibbons, Stella: Cold Comfort Farm
- Gide, André: The Immoralist
- Gissing, George: New Grub Street
- Grahame, Kenneth: The Wind in the Willows ✓
- Greene, Graham: Brighton Rock
- Hemingway, Ernest: The Old Man and the Sea
- Henry, O.: The Gift of the Magi
- Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World ✓
- Jackson, Shirley: The Haunting of Hill House ✓
- Jackson, Shirley: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- Jerome, K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat
- Kafka, Franz: The Trial
- Lee, Laurie: Cider with Rosie
- Lindgren, Astrid: Pippi Longstocking
- Mansfield, Katherine: The Garden Party & Other Stories
- Miller, Arthur: The Crucible
- Plath, Sylvia: The Bell Jar
- Prichard, Caradog: One Moonlit Night ✓
- Sackville-West, Vita: No Signposts in the Sea
- Smith, Dodie: I Capture the Castle
- Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island ✓
- Tolstoy, Leo: The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- Townsend Warner, Sylvia: Lolly Willowes
- Wells, H.G.: The Invisible Man
- West, Rebecca: The Return of the Soldier
- Wiesel, Elie: Night
- Williams, John: Stoner