My Classics Club List

Well how can one have a blog about classics without joining The Classics Club?

The idea is to challenge yourself to read at least 50 classics in the next 5 years, so my time frame will be from November 12, 2013 to November 11, 2018.  

My list:

Ancients  (5000 B.C. - A.D. 400):

The Odyssey - Homer (end of the 8th century B.C.)  March 23, 2014
The Histories (450 - 420 B.C.) - Herodotus (because I love my Greeks!)  April 17, 2017
The History of the Pelopponesian War (431 B.C.) - Thucydides  (a very
       interesting war.  I can't wait to get Thucydides viewpoint) June 15, 2017
Oedipus Rex (429 B.C.) - Sophocles  (Sophocles is one of my favourite
      Greek playwrights)  May 25, 2014
Oedipus at Colonus (406 B.C.) - Sophocles   June 24, 2014
Antigone (441 B.C.) - Sophocles  December 28, 2014
Apology (after 399 B.C.) - Plato   December 12, 2013
The Republic (380 B.C.) - Plato  (Plato is referred to so many times when
      reading anything intellectual, that I must read at least one of his books)
Aristotle, Ethics (330 B.C.) - Aristotle
Defense Speeches (80 - 63 B.C.) - Marcus Tullius Cicero  (I've started this
      and love it!)  August 20, 2014
Metamorphoses (8) - Ovid  (I will finish this!)  March 31, 2016
Lives (75) - Plutarch  (I've always meant to read it)
The Twelve Caesars (121) - Suetonius  (he's supposed to be a little bit of
      a gossip so this might prove interesting)
Meditations (170 - 180) - Marcus Aurelius  (I think that I'll like him)
Address to Young Men (363) - Saint Basil  (my daughter read it and loved
      it)



Medieval/Early Renaissance (400 - 1600 A.D.):

The City of God (426) - Augustine  (loved Confessions and can't wait for
      this one)
The Consolation of Philosophy (524) - Boethius
The Rule of Saint Benedict (529)? - Saint Benedict  December 2, 2015
Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) - Bede

The Decameron (1353) - Giovanni Boccaccio  (I've always wanted to read
      this.)
The Canterbury Tales (1390s??) - Geoffrey Chaucer  (groan!  It intimidates
      me but I must overcome!)  November 15, 2015
On the Imitation of Christ (1418 - 1427) - Thomas à Kempis
The Book of Margery Kempe (1430) - Margery Kempe   August 1, 2014
Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) - Thomas Mallory  (this read is coming up soon!)  December 6, 2014
The Praise of Folly (1509) - Erasmus  (intimidated but curious)
The Prince (1513) - Niccolo Machiavelli (this book has always intrigued me,
      plus it's a nice short read!)
Utopia (1516) - Thomas More  (looking forward to reading a good Utopian
      novel)  December 15, 2014
Bondage of the Will (1525) - Martin Luther
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532 - 1564) - François Rabelais (this is
      supposed to be weird)
Selected Essays (1580) - Michel de Montaigne  November 30, 2015
The Fairie Queene (1590 - 1596) - Edmund Spenser


Late Renaissance/Early Modern (1600 - 1850 A.D.):

The Taming of the Shrew (1590 - 1592) - William Shakespeare  (keeping
      going through my Shakespeare plays)
Romeo and Juliet (1591 - 1595) - William Shakespeare   October 13, 2014
Richard III (1592) - William Shakespeare
Richard II (1595) - William Shakespeare   November 30, 2014
The Merchant of Venice (1596 - 1598) - William Shakespeare
Henry IV Part I (1597) - William Shakespeare  December 21, 2014
Henry IV Part II (1596 - 1599) - William Shakespeare  December 24, 2014
Henry V (1599) - William Shakespeare  June 22, 2016
Othello (1603) - William Shakespeare   October 28, 2014
Hamlet (1603 - 1604) - William Shakespeare  January 27, 2015
King Lear (1603 - 1606) - William Shakespeare  December 3, 2014
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607 - 1608) - William Shakespeare
Paradise Lost (1667) - John Milton (time to use my guide by C.S. Lewis)  February 27, 2014
Pensées (1669) - Blaise Pascal
Tartuffe (1669) - Molière
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) - John Bunyan (Next on my WEM list.  It
      calls to me! ……… and I've ignored it.)
Moll Flanders (1722) - Daniel Defoe (I loved Robinson Crusoe, so another
       Defoe it is!)
Gulliver's Travels (1726) - Jonathan Swift  (I wonder if I'll like it)   January 3, 2015
Candide (1759) - Voltaire   March 21, 2014
On the Social Contract (1762) - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
She Stoops to Conquer (1773) - Oliver Goldsmith

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour
              to the Hebrides (1775) - Samuel Johnson
Common Sense (1775 - 1776) - Thomas Paine (so rare nowadays ….. hee
       hee!)
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776 - 1789) - Edward Gibbons
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) - Ann Radcliffe
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (expand my

        horizons with poetry!)

Sense and Sensibility (1811) - Jane Austen  January 25, 2015

Persuasion (1818) - Jane Austen (I have read every other Austen novel but
        this one.  For shame!)   February 21, 2015
Ivanhoe (1820) - Sir Walter Scott
The History of Napoleon Buonoparte (1829) - John Gibson Lockhart
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) - Victor Hugo (the bells!  the bells!)
Eugene Onegin (1825 - 1832) - Alexander Pushkin   December 1, 2013 & February 8, 2014
The Pickwick Papers (1836 - 1837) - Charles Dickens  (a fun read!)  November 5, 2017
Dead Souls (1842) - Nikolai Gogol (I've never read a Gogol)
Fear and Trembling (1843) - Soren Kierkegaard
Twenty Years After (1845) - Alexandre Dumas
Wuthering Heights (1847) - Emily Brönte   February 1, 2014
Mary Barton (1848) - Elizabeth Gaskell
The Communist Manifesto (1848) - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Shirley (1849) - Charlotte Brontë
David Copperfield (1850) - Charles Dickens   January 15, 2014
The Man in the Iron Mask (1850) - Alexandre Dumas

Modern (1850 - Present):

Moby Dick (1851) - Herman Melville  (I can wait a looong time to read this!)
Bleak House (1852/53) - Charles Dickens
Villette (1853) - Charlotte Brönte  March 31, 2016
The Warden (1855) - Anthony Trollope  (looking forward to starting The
      Barchestershire Chronicles)  April 8, 2014
Madam Bovary (1856) - Gustave Flaubert  (just because)   April 4, 2014
Tom Brown's School Days (1857) - Thomas Hughes (I see this mentioned
      in a number of classics)
Barchester Towers (1857) - Anthony Trollope   August 7, 2014
The Professor (1857) - Charlotte Brontë

Doctor Thorne (1858) - Anthony Trollope  September 25, 2014

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) - Jacob Burckhardt

Framely Parsonage (1860 - 1861) - Anthony Trollope  December 8, 2016

The Mill on the Floss (1860) - George Eliot  (ready for more English social
       commentary)
Great Expectations (1860/61) - Charles Dickens  (adding to my Dickens
       marathon)

The Cloister and the Hearth (1861) - Charles Reade

Fathers and Sons (1862) - Ivan Turgenev  September 19, 2014

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) - Jules Verne (another Verne
       adventure!)

The Small House at Allington (1864) - Anthony Trollope  March 31, 2017

Wives and Daughters (1864/66) - Elizabeth Gaskell (I love Gaskell and
       haven't read this yet)

Speeches and Letters (1809 - 1865) - Abraham Lincoln

Crime and Punishment (1866) - Fyodor Dostoevsky (his two crowning
       achievements and I need to read them)
The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867) - Anthony Trollope

The Moonstone (1868) - Wilkie Collins  (for a light read)  January 1, 2016
War and Peace (1869) - Leo Tolstoy  (going on and on and on ……)  August 3, 2014
Erewhon (1872) - Samuel Butler  May 16, 2015
La Curée (1871 - 1872) - Emile Zola (continuing the Rougon-Macquart
        series)  April 23, 2014

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) - Thomas Hardy (I dislike Hardy's
        novels but should include one.)  June 23, 2016

La Conquête de Plassans (1874) - Emile Zola

La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (1875) - Emile Zola

Daniel Deronda (1876) - George Eliot   February 24, 2014

Tom Sawyer (1876) -  Mark Twain 

Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876) - Emile Zola   January 31, 2014

Au Page d'Amour (1878) - Emile Zola

A Doll's House (1879) - Henrik Ibsen  July 27, 2016

Travels with a Donkey in Cévennes (1879) - Robert Louis Stevenson

The Brothers Karamazov (1880) - Fyodor Dostoevsky (I can't wait for this
        one!)  November 10, 2016
Pot-Bouille (1882) - Emile Zola
Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) - Emile Zola
Huckleberry Finn (1884) - Mark Twain
King Solomon's Mines (1885) - H. Rider Hagaard  (for adventure)
Bel-Ami (1885) - Guy de Maupassant
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883 - 1885) - Freidrich Nietzsche
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) - Robert Louis
         Stevenson

Kidnapped (1886) - Robert Louis Stevenson

The Black Arrow (1888) - Robert Louis Stevenson   November 20, 2013
Le Rêve (1888) - Emile Zola
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) - Mark Twain

L'Argent (1891) - Emile Zola  August 21, 2015
Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son (1894) - Sholem Aleichem
      (looks like fun!)

Red Badge of Courage (1895) - Stephen Crane (I don't think I'll like it but I'll
       try it)
The Time Machine (1895) - H.G. Wells  January 11, 2016

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) - Oscar Wilde  September 18, 2014

The Well at the World's End (1896) - William Morris  October 5, 2016

Dracula (1897) - Bram Stoker  (scary ….. not my favourite genre)  October 19, 2015
The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) - Sigmund Freud
The Heart of Darkness (1899) - Joseph Conrad  (I tried but didn't get it …. if

         at first you don't succeed ………)

The Cherry Orchard (1904) - Anton Chekov

The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) - G.K. Chesterton  (love Chesterton!)  August 20, 2014

Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories (1904 - 1911) - M.R. James
          November 13, 2013

Tales of Ghosts and Men (1910) - Edith Wharton

Ethan Fromme (1911) - Edith Wharton  May 11, 2015

O Pioneers! (1913) - Willa Cather (I loved My Antonia & Death Comes
          for the Archibishop, so why not another!)

Swann's Way (1913) - Marcel Proust

The Custom of the Country (1913) - Edith Wharton (Wharton's writing is
          fantastic!)

We (1921) - Yevgeny Zamyatin

 The Great Gatsby (1925) - F. Scott Fitzgerald (double groan.  Since the
          first time I read this was in high-school, I need to do a re-read to
          confirm that I despise it)   January 2, 2014
The Waves (or other) 1931) - Virginia Woolf  (great title for her style of
          writing)
The Good Soldier Svejk (1923) - Jaroslav Hasek
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) - Virginia Woolf   January 13, 2014
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933) - C.S. Lewis  (I think this is a more simpler
          Lewis) {No - this was incredibly complex!} November 30, 2013
Murder in the Cathedral (1935) - T.S. Eliot
The Bucanneers (1938) - Edith Wharton

Out of the Silent Planet (1938) - C.S. Lewis  (love his Space Trilogy - a re-
          read)  September 19, 2014
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) - John Steinbeck

The Robe (1942) - Lloyd C. Douglas  (have been trying to get to for years)

The Stranger (1942) - Albert Camus

Perelandra (1943) - C.S. Lewis   October 22, 2014

Animal Farm (1945) - George Orwell  (interesting social commentary, I'm
         sure)

That Hideous Strength (1945) - C.S. Lewis

The Great Divorce (1945) - C.S. Lewis (fascinating plot)  June 15, 2014

God in the Dock (1970) - C.S. Lewis

Brideshead Revisited (1945) - Evelyn Waugh

Seven Story Mountain (1948) - Thomas Merton  (looking forward to it)  March 15, 2014

1984 (1949) - George Orwell

East of Eden (1952) - John Steinbeck  (I hated Mice & Men but I will attempt

          to keep an open mind with this one)   February 17, 2015

The Silver Chalice (1952) - Thomas Costain  (looks interesting)

The Lord of the Flies (1954) - William Golding  (I hated it in school but I
         have a feeling that I'll really like it now)
Atlas Shrugged (1957) - Ayn Rand  (another ugh, but I must …)

To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) - Harper Lee  April 5, 2016

Droll Stories (1961) - Honore Balzac

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1962) - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Slaughterhouse Five (1969) - Kurt Vonnegut

Invisible Cities (1972) - Italo Calvino
If On A Winter's Night A Traveler (1979) - Italo Calvino
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (1978) - Barbara
        Tuchman

The Name of the Rose (1980) - Umberto Eco (I tried this once and felt like

         braining Eco.  However I know there is more to this novel than I allowed

         myself to see so another try is needed)
How to Think About The Great Ideas (2000) - Mortimer J. Adler

  

   Wow, this list looks long.  I'm not even going to attempt to count the books since not knowing numbers will make it easier to attempt as well as easier to add or delete books.  I read at least 35 classics last year, so if I can keep at the same pace, it might be possible to finish on time (cough, choke, splutter ….).

So without further ado, I am off to read!

~~ last updated January 19, 2014 ~~

(Once and Future King by T.H. White removed from list)