From 2014 to 2019 I participated in the Classics Club challenge to read and post about 50 books from a self-determined list of classics in five years. You can see the results of that project on my former blog, The Emerald City Book Review, here.
All the books from that list were worth reading, but here are the ten I enjoyed most:
- The Mark of the Horse Lord – Rosemary Sutcliff
- East of Eden – John Steinbeck
- Excellent Women – Barbara Pym
- Troy Chimneys – Margaret Kennedy
- My Cousin Rachel – Daphne DuMaurier
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
- Scaramouche – Rafael Sabatini
- Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
- The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
- Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
After completing that goal, I decided to become more informal about my classic reading goals. But I still enjoy keeping track of my progress, so I’m going to list classic books here as I read them, rather than making up a list ahead of time.
I’ve decided to exclude rereads of children’s and YA classics here, a decision I may later regret, but I tend to do a lot of this as comfort reading and that seems to me a different sort of activity. And I may choose to list only my favorite books by a prolific author, or the ones I consider the most important.
2020
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- The World I Live In by Helen Keller
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Jill the Reckless by P.G. Wodehouse
- Act One by Moss Hart
2021
- Malafrena by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Dance to the Piper by Agnes de Mille
- Lilith by George MacDonald
- The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
- The Snow-Woman by Stella Gibbons
- Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating
- Der Räuber Hotzenplotz by Otfried Preußler
- Myself When Young by Daphne Du Maurier
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
- Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp
- Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
- The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
- Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
- Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons – Reread
- Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
- L’étranger by Albert Camus
- Die Kleine Hexe by Otfried Preußler
- True Grit by Charles Portis
- Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hahn
- In the Mountains by Elizabeth von Arnim
- Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
- Orsinian Tales and Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. Le Guin:
- Venetia by Georgette Heyer,
- Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
2022
- Phantastes by George MacDonald
- The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
- Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis
- A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge
- Midstream: My Later Life by Helen Keller
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
- The Country Child by Alison Uttley
- The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
2023
- All Quiet on the Western Front
- Autobiography of a Yogi
- Kindergeschichten
- Krabat
- Voyage au centre de la terre
- Thomasina
- The Story Girl