10 years ago, on my book blog, I wrote a list of classic books that I wanted to complete in 5 years. If I’m not mistaken, it was this challenge by the Classics Club that inspired me to start a book blog in the first place.
The Classics Club is an online community where readers all over the world participate in challenges, memes and events revolving around reading the classics as well as share their reviews of the books they read. As a nerdy book lover, I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Now, a decade later, while I have read several classics I wouldn’t have otherwise, I still haven’t finished the challenge. I didn’t realize it had been so long since that first list!! I did write a 2.0 version back in 2018 and I was supposed to complete it in 2023. However, I haven’t been keeping up with it. This year, I want to revisit it one more time and give it another try! Classics Club List 3.0!
This list has books that I’ve been wanting/needing to read for years, re-reads just for fun or because I didn’t appreciate them the first time, and books that have been on my shelves but haven’t been touched. The titles vary – chunky, short, landmark, foreign, etc.. I’m looking forward to digging into classic books again- it’s been too long!
Alright, enough with the preamble. Here we go!
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(alphabetized by author)
- Little Women//Louisa May Alcott (re-read)
- An Old-Fashioned Girl//Louisa May Alcott (re-read)
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings//Maya Angelou
- Persuasion//Jane Austen (re-read)
- Pride & Prejudice//Jane Austen (re-read)
- The Handmaid’s Tale//Margaret Atwood
- Go Tell it On the Mountain//James Baldwin
- Fahrenheit 451//Ray Bradbury
- Jane Eyre//Charlotte Bronte (re-read)
- The Pilgrim’s Progress//John Bunyan
- The Good Earth//Pearl S. Buck (re-read. My mom had me read this when I was probably in junior high and I didn’t appreciate it. I want to give it another chance!)
- The Awakening//Kate Chopin
- The Red Badge of Courage// Stephan Courage
- David Copperfield//Charles Dickens
- Crime and Punishment//Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Count of Monte Cristo//Alexandre Dumas
- Middlemarch//George Eliot
- Invisible Man//Ralph Ellison
- The Great Gatsby//F. Scott Fitzgerald
- This Side of Paradise//F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Room with a View//E.M. Forster
- North and South//Elizabeth Gaskell
- Lord of the Flies//William Golding
- A Raisin in the Sun//Lorraine Hansberry
- The Scarlett Letter//Nathaniel Hawthorne (re-read. I haven’t read this since high school!)
- Catch-22//Joseph Heller
- For Whom the Bell Tolls//Ernest Hemingway
- The Sun Also Rises//Ernest Hemingway
- Les Miserables//Victor Hugo
- Portrait of a Lady//Henry James
- The Story of My Life//Helen Keller
- To Kill a Mockingbird//Harper Lee
- Moby Dick//Herman Melville
- Paradise Lost//John Milton
- Anne of the Island//Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Beloved//Toni Morrison
- 1984//George Orwell
- Animal Farm//George Orwell
- Common Sense//Thomas Paine
- The Catcher in the Rye//J.D. Salinger
- Twelfth Night//William Shakespeare (this is my favorite Shakespeare but I’ve never actually read the play all the way through. My copy has been sitting untouched for too long!)
- Pygmalion//George Bernard Shaw
- The Jungle//Upton Sinclair
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn//Betty Smith
- Civil Disobedience//Henry David Thoreau
- Anna Karenina//Leo Tolstoy
- Huckleberry Finn//Mark Twain
- The Color Purple//Alice Walker
- Ben Hur//Lew Wallace (re-read. I read this in 8th grade and hated it. I like the movie but I think I was too young to appreciate the book. I want to give it another try)
- A Room of One’s Own//Virginia Woolf
If you’re interested in looking into any of these titles, you can check out my complete list on Amazon And if you want to find out more about the Classics Club and how the challenge works, checkout the details here.
Happy Reading!
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