Classic Books on my Bucket List

I’ve been quietly following The Classics Club blog for some time now wishing I could join but scared of making the commitment. As per the rules, I need to commit to a minimum of 50 classic books in 5 years!!! I am unable to plan for the next 5 days properly, how on earth can I make a commitment for 5 years?

Then I went over my list of books I have read this past year, and then I read the list of books on The Classics Club page and realized…hey, I am already reading these. How hard is it to actually publish the list of books you anyway plan to read.

So, here we go…here is my very ambitious list of 50 classic books that I plan to read from now till 2017.

What do you think of the list? Do you have any suggestions on books that I can add to the list? Have you read the books on this list? Any thoughts/comments on these?

And if I am inspiring you to join up the Classics Club, please do let me know…it would be great to embark on this reading journey together 🙂

  1. Adams, Richard: Watership Down
  2. Alcott, Louisa May: Jo’s Boys
  3. Alcott, Louisa May: Little Men
  4. Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  5. Atwood, Margaret: A Handmaid’s Tale
  6. Austen, Jane: Sandition
  7. Austen, Jane: The Watsons
  8. Barrie, J.M.: Peter Pan
  9. Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot
  10. Bennett, Alan: The Uncommon Reader
  11. Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles
  12. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth: Lady Audley’s Secret
  13. Bronte, Anne: Agnes Grey
  14. Bronte, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  15. Bronté Charlotte: Villette
  16. Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
  17. Burnett, Frances Hodgson: A Little Princess
  18. Camus, Albert: Stranger
  19. Cather, Willa: Death Comes for the Archbishop
  20. Cather, Willa: My Antonia
  21. Dante: The Divine Comedy
  22. De Saint-Exupery, Antonie: The Little Prince
  23. deCervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote
  24. Dickens, Charles: The Pickwick Papers
  25. Douglass, Frederick: A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  26. Dumas, Alexandre: The Vicomte de Bragelonne
  27. Ellison, Ralph: The Invisible Man
  28. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Beautiful and Damned
  29. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: This Side of Paradise
  30. Flaubert, Gustav: Madame Bovary
  31. Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’urbervilles
  32. Hemingway, Ernest: Death in the Afternoon
  33. Hemingway, Ernest: Islands in the Stream
  34. Hemingway, Ernest: To Have and to Have Not
  35. Hesse, Hermann: Siddhartha
  36. Ibsen, Henrick: Doll’s House
  37. Irving, Washington: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
  38. James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady
  39. James, Henry: Washington Square
  40. Juster, Norton: The Phantom Tollbooth
  41. Kipling, Rudyard: Captains Courageous
  42. le Carré, John: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
  43. le Carré, John: The Spy who came in from the cold
  44. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia: One Hundred Years of Solitude
  45. Morrison, Toni: Beloved
  46. Morrison, Toni: The Bluest Eye
  47. Naipaul, V.S: A House for Mr. Biswas
  48. Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea
  49. Wharton, Edith: The Age of Innocence
  50. Wharton, Edith: The House of Mirth

I hope that by 2017, all the books in the above list have turned to links to my reviews 😀

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27 Comments

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  1. says: Cleo

    It’s funny, I seem to have read quite a few in the first half of the alphabet and very few in the second half… Good luck with your challenge 🙂

    1. says: Nishita

      @disqus_mUBrEiIQ5D:disqus thanks. Right now, the challenge is slumbering quite a bit. Have gotten pretty distracted with the new and shiny books coming my way. Hoping to get back into classics sometime next month. Let’s see 🙂

  2. says: Piyush Chourasia

    I have read 13 of the 50 books listed by you, many more are in my TBR, though I doubt I would read the unfinished Austen novels (having read the 6 novels and Lady Susan).

    1. says: Nishita

      @piyushchourasia:disqus I haven’t been very motivated to read the Classics of late though. It’s funny I read so many classics when I hadn’t planned to. But now, that I have made a plan, announced it on my blog, and put up a book list, I just can’t seem to get through it 🙁

      1. says: Piyush Chourasia

        Do let me know, if you would like to do them in a group read format, going through a classic from your list once every 2 months, I should be able to fit it in my reading schedule.

  3. says: Five-Eyed Bookworm

    I can’t commit to more challenges but I decided I’d start a personal perpetual challenge starting this 2014 to read a classic per year. That’ll probably result to reading only a few haha.

  4. Also, I’ve read Jo’s Boys and Little Men, both great books. Ibsen’s Doll’s House is one of those works which I’m not sure how I feel about.
    And One Hundred Years of Solitude is a book that everyone should read or attempt to read. It is a book for life.

    1. says: Nish

      @Udita: Good to know that Jo’s Boys and Little Men turned out good for you. I was concerned they might be a little preachy.

    1. says: Nish

      @Udita: Do, do. It’s quite an easy going group, and you can pace yourself the way you want to. That may not always be a good thing as this year my classic reading has really slumped >.<

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  6. Really interesting list 🙂 We have a few titles the same. This year I’ve read Wide Sargasso Sea and Little Women, and I really liked both. Happy reading!

    1. says: Nish

      @jessicabookworm: Really? I need to come over and look at your list. I’ve read Little Women and Good Wives, but want to finish the rest of the books in the series. I am dying to read Wide Sargasso Sea, just holding off until I finish reading my current crop of books, which somehow are not so interesting, seeing the state of mind I am in right now 🙁

  7. says: Jillian ♣

    This is a great list! I’m excited to see Anne Bronte and a couple Alcotts up there! Welcome to the club. 😀

  8. says: Tien

    Good Luck with your project 🙂
    I just read Watership Down last month and it was such a ride!
    The Handmaid’s Tale is the freak-est ever! In a very good reading way 😉

  9. says: muneer

    i think u have to include works of authors like milan kundera
    and gabriel garcia marquez

    1. says: Nish

      @muneer: I have included One Hundred Years of Solitude by GGM and plan to read it in the near future. I have read couple of other books by him – Love in the time of Cholera (which I didn’t much care for), and Chronicle of a Death Foretold (which I loved).

      You are right about Milan Kundera, I didn’t really think of him. What books by him do you suggest?