Back to the classics

I rearranged my books last night, on the last day of a not-quite-break from work (this “break” was due to monsoons, tropical storms, holidays, and all-around existential angst). The anarchy in my shelves was—is—a wee bit too much, and it was getting fucking difficult figuring out where things were. And since it’s out of sight, out of mind, there’s less pressure to actually get cracking on my to-be-read pile. Right. Anyway. I put the classics shelves up first [click to embiggen], partly because they’re easier for me to organize, partly because I’d finally decided to join The Classics Club. [Segue win.]

Anyway. Back in 2011—because despite some of my favorite books having been written by now-dead people—I realized I needed to read more of the classics, to have them become a more integral part of my reading life. And although the rigid 2011 plan kind of tapered off, there are more classics on my shelves; and it’s become easier for me to approach these books as, well, books, and not homework. (Not that most of those books of my shelves have been read.) Enter The Classics Club, which has been going around the internet being its awesome self. It took a while for me to jump in—that Iris joined recently was a pretty major nudge—but I figured I needed a stronger nudge to get cracking on those classics shelves. Anyway. Below is a list of fifty books, and I’ll be reading them up until 2016. Yikes. Challenge accepted, Internet.

1. [1] Adams, Richard — Watership Down.
2. [2] Bradbury, Ray — Fahrenheit 451. [reread]
3. [14] Brontë, Anne — Agnes Grey.
4. Brontë, Charlotte — Shirley.
5. [3] Brontë, Charlotte — Villette.
6. Brontë, Charlotte — The Professor.
7. Brontë, Charlotte — Jane Eyre. [reread]
8. Brontë, Emily — Wuthering Heights.
9. Chekhov, Anton — The Lady with The Little Dog.
10. Conan Doyle, Arthur — The Lost World.
11. Conan Doyle, Arthur — The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
12. [4] Devereaux, Charles — Venus in India.
13. [5] Fitzgerald, F. Scott — The Great Gatsby. [reread]
14. Fitzgerald, F. Scott — The Last Tycoon.
15. Flaubert, Gustave — Madame Bovary. [reread]
16. [6] Flaubert, Gustave — Sentimental Education.
17. Fowles, John — The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
18. Hardy, Thomas — Tess of d’Urbervilles.
19. Hawthorne, Nathaniel — The Scarlet Letter.
20. [7] Isherwood, Christopher — A Single Man.
21. Kierkegaard, Søren — Either/Or.
22. Lawrence, D.H. — Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
23. Lee, Harper — To Kill a Mockingbird. [reread]
24. Nabokov, Vladimir — Lolita.
25. [8] Némirovsky, Irène — All Our Worldly Goods.
26. [9] Némirovsky, Irène — David Golder.
27. [10] Némirovsky, Irène — Snow in Autumn.
28. Némirovsky, Irène — The Ball.
29. Némirovsky, Irène — The Courilof Affair.
30. Nin, Anaïs — A Spy in the House of Love.
31. Nolledo, Wilfrido — But for the Lovers. [reread]
32. [11] Orczy, Emmuska — The Scarlet Pimpernel.
33. Orwell, George — 1984.
34. Pessoa, Fernando — The Book of Disquiet.
35. Réage, Pauline — Story of O.
36. [12] Rhys, Jean — Wide Sargasso Sea.
37. [13] Rilke, Rainer Maria — Letters to a Young Poet.
38. Shelley, Mary — Frankenstein.
39. Sterne, Lawrence — Tristram Shandy.
40. [15] Stoker, Bram — Dracula.
41. Tolstoy, Leo — Anna Karenina.
42. Updike, John — Couples.
43. [16] Vonnegut, Kurt — Slaughterhouse-Five.
44. [17] Walter — My Secret Life.
45. [18] Waugh, Evelyn — Brideshead Revisited.
46. [19] Wharton, Edith — House of Mirth.
47. Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence.
48. White, Patrick — Voss.
49. [20] Wilde, Oscar — The Picture of Dorian Grey. [reread]
50. Yuson, Alfred — The Great PHL Jungle Energy Café.

The ones with the numbers-in-blue in them are for the Classics Spin, which is an even greater nudge within the Our Classics Club community to get cracking. This means that I have to have read Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World by the first of October. Right. Laters, lovelies; there is much reading to be done.