I do not make new year resolutions; I do not believe in them. when I want to get something done, I get it done! So, since my blog has recently turned three, this is as good a time as any to make a resolution.
I read a lot of Classics as a child, I read the abridged versions initially; and later on in life I read the unabridged versions in full. Somewhere along my reading journey, other genres of books took over. There was fantasy, crime, magic realism, historical, philosophical and all sorts of other ‘phases’ of my reading life.
Last year, when V gifted me a Kindle, and I found scores and scores of Classics for free, two of the biggest problems were instantly solved. Those of weight and price! I re-read a few books and it reminded me of how much I loved reading Classics. So this is a list of 36, picked from The Big Book List, that I hope to read in the next three (hopefully) or four (realistically) years. I have been meaning to read some of these books for the longest time, and until I put this down and make it real, I’m not going to end up reading them. So here goes…
- Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart
- Allende, Isabel: The House of the Spirits
- Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- Aristophanes: Lysistrata
- Arnow, Harriette: The Dollmaker
- Borges, Jorge Luis: Ficciones
- Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451
- Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights
- Camus, Albert: Stranger
- Chekov, Anton: Cherry Orchard
- Dickens, Charles: The Old Curiousity Shop
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
- Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
- Eco, Umberto: The Name of the Rose
- Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land
- Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake
- Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Marlowe, Christopher: Doctor Faustus
- Mishima, Yukio: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
- Morrison, Toni: Jazz
- Nabokov, Vladimir: Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
- Nietzsche, Friedrich: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Scott, Sir Walter: Lady of the Lake
- Scott, Sir Walter: Waverly
- Shikibu, Murasaki: The Tale of Genji
- Spark, Muriel: Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
- Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
- Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace
- Trollope, Anthony: The Warden
- Twain, Mark: A Tramp Abroad
- Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass
- Williams, Tennessee: A Streetcar Named Desire
- Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse
- Yeats, William Butler: Irish Faerie Tales
Good luck! 🙂
I had to read C & P in high school (years and years ago) and while it took a little time to get into, I remember it was a great read. Great list, enjoy your classics 🙂