Over a year ago in September 2015 I posted this introduction to the Classics Club Reading Challenge. The official specifics of this challenge can be found here, but basically it means that you make a list of classics you’d like to read by a certain date. Each time you read a classic on your list you have to write about it and then link the review back to your original list.
The other day I realized that I haven’t kept this blog up to date with my progress at all since posting that first introduction. A lot has changed since then– I was just entering my freshman year of college– so I feel as though a proper update is definitely warranted.
Originally I created a list of fifty classics I wanted to read by the year 2020. Though I would certainly still love to read those specific classics, I’ve since branched out as my reading tastes have expanded in some ways and narrowed in others. Though I have read 9 classics from my original list, I have read far more in general.
Since beginning the challenge I have read the following classics:
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
- The Distracted Preacher by Thomas Hardy
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- My Antonia by Willa Cather
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- The Parish and the Hill by Mary Doyle Curran
- O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Mulligan Guard Ball by Edward Harrigan
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Light in August by William Faulkner
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Moving forward, I would like to use this challenge as a way to keep track of the literature I read. Though I will continue to use my original list as a guide, I’m more interested in keeping a record of the classics that I read in general.
Are you participating in the Classics Club Reading Challenge? Have you read any of the classics I’ve mentioned? Are there classics that I should add to my list or prioritize on my TBR? Let me know in the comments section below!
Yours,
HOLLY
Such a great list. I always struggle with Tom Hardy (I *hated* Jude the Obscure), but there’s plenty on there you’ll love – great to see One Hundred Years of Solitude on there! Has possibly my favourite ever opening chapter.
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Eeee that’s SO many books! I wanna know what you thought of Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, A Christmas Carol, and The Importance of Being Earnest. 🙂 I read Hamlet for the first time last year and knew basically nothing about it which was so much fun because I experienced it much as the same as audiences during Shakespeare’s time would have! Still don’t know how I managed to miss so many spoilers as a freaking English major, but… yeah. 😛
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That’s a lot of classics! I really want to read some Jane Austen, although last time I tried P&P I kind of got stuck. Some classics I’ve read in the last years and The Bell Jar, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher In The Rye, Hamlet (for school), 1984 (for school), Frankenstien (for school), Jane Eyre, and Peter Pan. My friend had to read My Antonia for a school project and she was emphatically NOT a fan, a haha XD
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Wow! Congrats on all the classics. I’m trying to read more classics this year. So far I’ve read 2 short stories hahahah >.<
Molly @ Molly’s Book Nook
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