FINISHED
I finished my Classics Club list as of November 5, 2023!
The Classics Club is a group of book bloggers who have signed up to read at least 50 "classics" within five years. This is my list. I signed on to finish the 50 books on this list by the end of 2023.
I followed the lead of the organizers and consider a "classic" to be any book older than 50 years (at the time I read it) that is of lasting literary value. By this standard, an Agatha Christie or Josephine Tey mystery makes the list. But a random mystery that I found in a vintage edition, that has been out of print since it's first publication, doesn't make the cut.
My list is in alphabetical order by author's name. I'm reading them in any old order. As I read a book, I noted that I finished it.
Many of these books are on other book lists I'm working on. I've linked to those lists.
MY CLASSICS CLUB LIST
The Egyptologists by Kingsley Amis FINISHED
Dangling Man by Saul Bellow FINISHED
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (MLA 30) FINISHED
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs (Radcliffe’s Top 100) FINISHED
The Stranger by Albert Camus (College Board) FINISHED
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (Edgar Award) FINISHED
Cheri by Colette (French Connections) FINISHED
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1899 Top 100) FINISHED
The Stars Look Down (1935) by A. J. Cronin FINISHED
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Observer’s Top 100) FINISHED
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens (1899 Top 100) FINISHED
The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble (Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women) FINISHED
So Big by Edna Ferber (Pulitzer Prize) FINISHED
A Cordiall Water: A Garland of Odd and Old Receipts to Assuage the Ills of Man and Beast by M. F. K. Fisher (Cookbook Library) FINISHED
Tender Is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED
Rat Race by Dick Francis FINISHED
Lady Into Fox by David Garnett (James Tait Black Prize) FINISHED
Party Going by Henry Green (Anthony Burgess Favorites) FINISHED
The Wall by John Hersey (Well Stocked Bookcase) FINISHED
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley (Anthony Burgess Favorites) FINISHED
The Bostonians by Henry James (Radcliffe Top 100) FINISHED
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre (All-TIME) FINISHED
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis (National Review Top 100) FINISHED
The British Museum Is Falling Down by David Lodge FINISHED
Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes FINISHED
The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud (National Book Award) FINISHED
The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand (Well-Stocked Bookcase) FINISHED
Venice Observed by Mary McCarthy FINISHED
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller (Image Top 100) FINISHED
A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch FINISHED
Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED
Something to Answer For by Percy Howard Newby (Booker Prize) FINISHED
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell (National Review Top 100) FINISHED
Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter (Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women) FINISHED
Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell FINISHED
Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (All-TIME) FINISHED
When She Was Good by Philip Roth FINISHED
Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers FINISHED
Katherine by Anya Seton (BBC's Big Read) FINISHED
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Nobel Laureate) FINISHED
The Masters by C. P. Snow (James Tait Black Prize) FINISHED
The Red and the Black by Stendhal (Easton Press) FINISHED
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (Pulitzer Prize) FINISHED
Walden by Henry David Thoreau (College Board) FINISHED
If Morning Ever Comes by Anne Tyler FINISHED
The Poorhouse Fair by John Updike FINISHED
God Save the Mark by Donald E. Westlake (Edgar Award) FINISHED
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson (Campus Novels) FINISHED
The Man with Two Left Feet by P. G. Wodehouse FINISHED
Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats (Easton Press) FINISHED
NOTES
Updated January 7, 2024. Finished! I finished the list in November 2023. Now I'm planning ahead to my second Classics Club list.
I picked the classics on this list because they are books I particularly wanted to read, were on my TBR shelves, and were most likely on some list I'm working on. But I often read other books that qualify as a classic under The Classics Club guidelines. Other classics I've read since I started this list:
War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Lord Peter: The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse
The Prince and Betty by P. G. Wodehouse
In Search of a Character: Two African Journals by Graham Greene
Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
French Ways and Their Meaning by Edith Wharton
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Trouble For Lucia by E. F. Benson
Lucia's Progress by E. F. Benson
Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
Mapp & Lucia by E. F. Benson
The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Holy Bible, King James Version
The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier
The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade
The Man Who Was Thursday by G. H. Chesterton
Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
The Wasteland and Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
The King's General by Daphne du Maurier
Waverley by Sir Walter Scott
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
The Big Four by Agatha Christie
The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
The Intrusion of Jimmy by P. G. Woodhouse
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
The High Window by Raymond Chandler
The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
The Underdog and Other Stories by Agatha Christie
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Beautiful Cassandra by Jane Austen
The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie
Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie
At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Little Big Man by John Berger
These Ruins are Inhabited by Muriel Beadle
The House in Good Taste by Elsie de Wolfe
Hope of Heaven by John O'Hara
A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym
Lolly Willowes by Silvia Warner Townsend
The Scandal of Father Brown by G. H. Chesterton
The Secret of Father Brown by G. H. Chesterton
Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh
My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis
Peril at End House by Agatha Christie
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie
Funerals are Fatal by Agatha Christie
The Incredulity of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton
BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O'Connor
Passage to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie
Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Jeeves in the Offing by P. G. Wodehouse
The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald
The Wisdom of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dead Cert by Dick Francis
Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
Three Men on a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
The Valley of Fear by Sir Author Conan Doyle
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
Not Now, But NOW by M. F. K. Fisher
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Stars Look Down by A. J. Cronin
The Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie
Room at the Top by John Braine (Burgess list)
The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
The Unmaking of a Mayor by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Shackle by Colette
The Vagabond by Colette
Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers
Gigi by Colette
The Last of Cheri by Colette
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
The Professor's House by Willa Cather
The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Heart-Keeper by Francois Sagan
Something Special by Iris Murdoch
Uneasy Money by P. G. Wodehouse
The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall
Endless Night by Agatha Christie
To Let by John Galsworthy
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot
In Chancery by John Galsworthy
The Man of Property by John Galsworthy
The Poorhouse Fair by John Updike
A Look Around the Estate: Poems by Kingsley Amis
A Case of Samples: Poems by Kingsley Amis
A Woman of Means by Peter Taylor
Agents and Patients by Anthony Powell
The Day of the Scorpion by Paul Scott
The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
Welcome! Looks like a fun list & I'm very much looking forward to what your thoughts are.
ReplyDeleteNice to see you joining he Classics Club. So many interesting books on your list. Have fun with the challenge!
ReplyDeleteGreat list that you cherry-picked from several lists of books available in the internet!
ReplyDeleteIt makes your reading so varied.
John Hersey The Wall is one of the books I want to read.
So Big...was wonderful.
Looking forward to your reviews with hashtag #CCBookReviews
Yeah! congrats for joining! You need to read Robinson Crusoe BEFORE reading The Moonstone, you will see why! I just finished the Moonstone and am preparing my review. My list is here: https://wordsandpeace.com/2016/01/01/the-classics-club-2016-2020/ Just 8 more to go (before end of 2020). I'm hoping to be done soon and start a new list!
ReplyDeleteReese: Thank you! And congratulations again on winning the Jet Setter Prize in the 2018 European Reading Challenge! Good luck in the 2019 Challenge!
ReplyDeleteChristina: Thank you -- I have been meaning to sign up forever and finally had time and bandwidth to pull my list together. I'm excited.
Nancy: Yes, the lists I pulled from are all lists I've been keeping track of here on Rose City Reader. SO reading my CC books will help me make progress on some of my other lists! I can't resist a list!
Emma: Thanks for the tip on RC and Moonstone! Will do! I love storyline serendipity, so I will try to read those early on and find out the secret.
You have quite a few on your list I haven't even heard of but also some favourites: Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Abolition of Man (which I found heavy going but extremely interesting), Assignment in Brittany. I've read a couple of A. J. Cronin books but not the one you mentioned. My favourite so far of his has been 'Keys of the Kingdom.'
ReplyDelete