I officially signed up for The Classics Club; which I’ve participated in unofficially with the last few Classic Club Spins. If you are unaware of the challenge you can find all the ins and outs here.
The gist is you pick 50 classics you want to read over 5 years and, well read them. Simple enough, right? Right!
It took me a while to curate my list for several reasons:
- I wanted a mix of men and women (still more men than women)
- It had to consist of at least 50% authors of color (came close with 22)
- The list had to include books I already owned
| Title / Rating | Last | First | Started | Finished | |
| Things Fall Apart | 😞 | Achebe | Chinua | 1/14/19 | DNF |
| Little Women | Alcott | Louisa Mae | |||
| The Divine Comedy | Alighieri | Dante | |||
| The House of the Spirits | Allende | Isabel | |||
| How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents | Alvarez | Julia | |||
| Bless Me, Ultima | Anaya | Rudolfo | |||
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Angelou | Maya | |||
| Arabian Nights | Anonymous | ||||
| Pride & Prejudice | Austen | Jane | |||
| Giovanni’s Room | 😞 | Baldwin | James | 8/20/18 | 8/22/18 |
| The Decameron | Boccaccio | Giovanni | |||
| Fahrenheit 451 | Bradbury | Ray | |||
| Jane Eyre | Bronte | Charlotte | |||
| The Pilgrim’s Progress | Bunyan | John | |||
| The Plague | Camus | Albert | |||
| The Canterbury Tales | Chaucer | Geoffrey | |||
| The Alchemist | Coelho | Paulo | |||
| The Moonstone | Collins | Wilkie | |||
| The Enormous Room | Cummings | E. E. | |||
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Dumas | Alexandre | |||
| The Name of the Rose | Eco | Umberto | |||
| Invisible Man | Ellison | Ralph | |||
| One Hundred Years of Soliture | Garcia-Marquez | Gabriel | |||
| Jude the Obscure | Hardy | Thomas | |||
| Beowulf | Heaney | Seamus | |||
| Catch-22 | Heller | Joseph | |||
| The Outsiders | Hinton | S. E. | |||
| Les Miserables | Hugo | Victor | |||
| Jonah’s Gourd Vine | Hurston | Zora Neale | |||
| Ulysses | Joyce | James | |||
| Amerika | Kafka | Franz | |||
| The Woman Warrior | Kingston | Maxine Hong | |||
| Quicksand | Larsen | Nella | |||
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Lee | Harper | |||
| C. S. Lewis Signature Collection | Lewis | C. S. | |||
| The Prince | Machiaveli | Nicolo | |||
| Paradise Lost | Milton | John | |||
| The Tale of Genji | Murasaki | Shikibu | |||
| 1984 | Orwell | George | |||
| Frankenstein | 🤨 | Shelley | Mary | ||
| Ceremony | Silko | Leslie Marmon | |||
| The Grapes of Wrath | Steinbeck | John | |||
| Dracula | Stoker | Bram | |||
| The Joy Luck Club | Tan | Amy | |||
| Anna Karenina | Tolstoy | Leo | |||
| Cane | Toomer | Jean | |||
| The Art of War | Tzu | Sun | |||
| Tao Tei Ching | Tzu | Lao | |||
| Candide | Voltaire | ||||
| The Time Machine / The Invisible Man | Wells | H. G. | |||
| Uncle Tom’s Children | Wright | Richard |
The Broken Spine 