The Sunday Salon: Classics Club

Okay, I've tried very hard to not sign-up for any new challenges until May and when I have a few completed (which reminds me I need to see where I'm at with my challenges).  BUT this isn't a year long challenge; this is a  five year challenge to read 50+ classics.  Of course we have the her bookishness Jillian to thank for this inspiring idea and pulling it all together.  I've picked 100 books to complete in the next five years (01 March 2012 - 01 March 2017).  You may notice that there are more than 100 books (technically) listed.  All of the novels composing The Forsyte Saga (9) and Kristen Lavransdatter (3) are not individually listed.  This will give me some wiggle room in case there are books I don't care to finish.  I have "shorter works" on my list, but I've chosen to read the entire short story collection to make it count.  I do have one play, Richard III, that is the shortest work on the list. 

I also set a few rules for myself:  1) all the books had to be published prior to 1950 and 2) I can reread, but only if I've read the book once or it has been over 5 years since I read the book).  So, alas, I cannot reread Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights over over over and over again. But the good news is that I will hopefully increase my list of classics I adore.

On to the list!  Turquoise books are rereads and Greens are Viragos!

1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (completed 04/17/12)
2. The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green
3. The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins
4. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu (completed 07/29/12)
6. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
7. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
8. Doctor Thorne by  Anthony Trollope
9. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
10. Small House at Allington by  Anthony Trollope
11. Last Chronicle of Barset by  Anthony Trollope
12. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
13. Kristen Lavransdatter (all three books) by Sigrid Undset
14. Hunger by Knut Hamsen
15. No Name by Wilkie Collins
16. Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
17. The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
18. Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell
19. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
20. Adam's Breed by Radclyffe Hall
21. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
22. The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen (completed 07/01/12)
23. Howard's End by E. M. Forster 
24. The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty
25. The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang
26. Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens 
27. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 
28. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens 
29. Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens 
30. Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens 
31. Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens 
32. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens 
33. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens 
34. Bleak House by Charles Dickens 
35. Hard Times by Charles Dickens 
36. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens 
37. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 
38. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 
39. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens 
40. Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens 
41. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
42. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
43. Richard III by William Shakespeare
44. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
45. Middlemarch by George Eliot
46. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
47. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
48. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
49. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
50. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
51. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
52. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
53. The Forsyte Saga (all 9 books plus the "interludes")
54. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
55. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
56. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
57. Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith
58. No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West
59. The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault
60. Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis
61. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
62. The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
63. Lorna Doone by Richard Blackmore
64. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
65. Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
66. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
67. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
68. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
69. East Lynne by Ellen Wood
70. The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
71. The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
72. The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories
73. The Rising Tide by Molly Keane
74. Without my Cloak by Kate O'Brien
75. Harriet Hume by Rebecca West
76. Persuasion by Jane Austen
77. Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
78. Trilby by George Du Maurier
79. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
80. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
81. Passage to India by E M Forster
82. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
83. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Tales by H P Lovecraft
84. The Call of Cthlulu and Other Weird Tales by H P Lovecraft
85. The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West
86. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
87. The Three Sisters by May Sinclair
88. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
89. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
90. War and Peace by Leo Tolstory
91. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
92. A House and Its Head by Ivy Compton-Burnett
93. The Collected Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf
94. Summer will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner
95. The Judge by Rebecca West
96. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (completed 12/31/12)
97. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
98. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West
99. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
100. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

I've thought long and hard about my list.  Over three quarters of the novels are books I own.  I'm also incorporating my desire to read all of Dickens's novels in order, complete a Trollope series, and read a stack of Viragos.  My approach is that challenge success is based on making challenges work together.

Okay -- mini-rewards.  For every 5 books off of this list I read I will purchase one classic novel NOT ON THIS LIST in a nice copy.  By nice copy I mean that it isn't a ratty paperback in a thrift store bin -- it could be a vintage something in good condition, a Penguin clothbound, a newish edition with a lovely introduction.  See, I'm already prepping for 2017 onward!  At the end of my 100 books read I will have 20 new-to-me classic novels that are lovely, pristine, and will beautify my shelves, my mind, and my imagination.

I hope you'll join us in the Classics Club!  I think this will be an amazing experience.