Classics Club Challenge

The Classics Club is an online group dedicated to reading and blogging about classic novels. To join, you must create a list of at least 50 classic titles that you plan to read and blog about within the next five years. To keep an accurate record of your progress, you also must create a special blog entry listing all of the novels you plan to read, crossing them off and linking your reviews as you go.

As this appeals to my love of classics, reading challenges, and lists in general, I'm going to give it a try. My list is below. I've divided it up into different sections, although that is not a requirement. I just wanted to make sure I covered a wide variety of classics.

Update: I finished this challenge in November of 2021! To read my overall thoughts on the experience, you can check out my Classics Club Wrap Up post.

 

1. The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1590) - Completed February 2019

2. Julius Caesar (c. 1599) - Completed August 2021

3. Hamlet (c. 1600) - Completed April 2021

4. King Lear (c. 1606) - Completed February 2017

5. The Tempest (c. 1610) - Completed July 2021

6. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) - Completed March 2017
7. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962) - Completed February 2019
8. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963) - Completed February 2017
9. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) - Completed August 2019
10. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (1987) - Completed July 2019

11. The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes (1934) - Completed February 2018
12. Native Son by Richard Wright (1940) - Completed October 2019
13. Black Boy by Richard Wright (1945) - Completed February 2020
14. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953) - Completed August 2019
15. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970) - Completed July 2020
16. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981) - Completed November 2020
17. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982) - Completed May 2019
18. The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor (1982) - Completed November 2019
19. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (1985) - Completed January 2021
20. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989) - Completed March 2019

21. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (1877) - Completed January 2017
22. Heidi by Johanna Spyri (1881) - Completed February 2018
23. Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1886) - Completed March 2020
24. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) - Completed January 2019
25. The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932-1943)

• Books 1-4: Completed March 2020
• Books 5-9: Completed March 2020

26. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (1934) - Completed July 2017
27. Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (1943) - Completed February 2019
28. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961) - Completed January 2018
29. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin (1968) - Completed January 2019
30. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (1975) - Completed June 2019

31. The American by Henry James (1877) - Completed March 2018
32. Germinal by Emile Zola (1885) - Completed March 2017
33. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895) - Completed May 2019
34. The Octopus by Frank Norris (1901) - Completed November 2019
35. The Financier by Theodore Dreiser (1912) - Completed February 2020
36. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (1913) - Completed August 2020
37. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (1920) - Completed January 2021
38. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1922) - Completed April 2018
39. The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton (1922) - Completed May 2020
40. The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck (1961) - Completed April 2017

41. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864) - Completed January 2017
42. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896) - Completed April 2019
43. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937-1955) - Completed June 2020

• The Hobbit - Completed June 2017
• The Fellowship of the Ring - Completed June 2020
• The Two Towers - Completed June 2020
• The Return of the King - Completed June 2020

44. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (1959) - Completed March 2018
45. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1963) - Completed April 2017
46. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (1963) - Completed December 2019
47. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) - Completed October 2017
48. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (1971) - Completed May 2017
49. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (1983) - Completed February 2021
50. Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984) - Completed March 2019

• Count Zero by William Gibson (1986) - Completed March 2019
• Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson (1988) - Completed April 2019
• Burning Chrome by William Gibson (1982) - Completed April 2019

51. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1837-1839) - Completed April 2019
52. The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall by Anne Brontë (1848) - Completed March 2020
53. Shirley by Charlotte Brontë (1849) - Completed December 2019
54. The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855) - Completed September 2020 
55. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (1864) - Completed March 2021
56. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (1864-1866) - Completed July 2020
57. Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy (1872) - Completed March 2021 
58. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876) - Completed April 2021
59. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890) - Completed September 2017
60. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) - Completed October 2017

61. The Odyssey by Homer (c. 8th century BCE) - Completed June 2017
62. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-1615) -  Completed June 2019
63. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1837) - Completed December 2019
64. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1847-1848) - Completed July 2021
65. Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854) - Completed October 2018
66. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855) - Completed August 2020
67. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1862) - Completed October 2021
68 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869) - Abridged version completed July 2017, Unabridged version completed November 2021
69. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922) - Completed December 2018
70. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973) - Completed August 2021

71. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814) - Completed September 2018
72. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) - Completed August 2019
73. Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell (1853) - Completed December 2019
74. The Reef by Edith Wharton (1912) - Completed May 2018
75. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (1913) - Completed March 2020
76. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927) - Completed March 2021
77. Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928) - Completed October 2021
78. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) - Completed May 2017
79. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943) - Completed April 2017
80. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) - Completed June 2018

81. White Jacket by Herman Melville (1850)  - Completed January 2020
82. House of the Seven Gables by Nathanial Hawthorne (1851) - Completed September 2019
83. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851) - Completed April 2020
84. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (1889) - Completed June 2019
85. Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton (1927) - Completed May 2021
86. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936) - Completed May 2021
87. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (1945) - Completed March 2019
88. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) - Completed May 2021
89. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (1961) - Completed January 2018
90. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (1962) - Completed November 2020

91. Venus in Furs by  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1870) - Completed January 2019
92. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (1873) - Completed January 2018
93. The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson (1878) - Completed September 2017
94. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (1891) - Completed June 2021
95. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (1908) - Completed June 2017
96. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (1915) - Completed April 2020
97. The Lost Girl by D.H. Lawrence (1920) - Completed May 2020
98. Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rølvaag (1924-1925) - Completed June 2018
99. Night by Elie Wiesel (1955) - Completed January 2019
100. Island by Aldous Huxley (1962) - Completed October 2019