The Classic Reading Challenge

Kickin' It with the Classics

If you’re just tuning in, you may not have noticed that every so often I toss in reviews of classic books.  My interest in classics dates back to ninth-grade English class with Mr. Haynes.  At the end of the school year Mr. Haynes gave us a reading list for summer break.  Most of the books on the list were classics. For some reason I kept the list and years later after high school, I looked at it and decided, what the heck, let’s give this thing a whirl.  Slowly I started reading the books and marking them off.  Each year I squeezed in a few classics between my other reading. Weird?  Maybe.  But I was curious, and it turns out they’re classics for a good reason.  So now, when some of those books are mentioned here or there, I now know what they’re talking about—without looking at Wikipedia.  As a bonus, it’s helped me in crossword puzzles too. 

It’s true, some of the classics are a little more difficult to read. The older, descriptive writing keeps me on my toes.  Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others took a little more time to read, but the more I read their styles, the more I liked them, and the easier it got. 

I don’t know what makes a book officially a “classic,” but all the books on this list have enjoyed immense popularity—regardless of when they were written. Some are older classics; some are more modern classics.  Some should probably fall off the list. Some aren’t even books; they’re plays. Some are big old whoppers while others are short novellas. The list is ever-evolving and in no way complete. Over the years it’s grown as I’ve gathered titles from other classic lists and added them to mine. It gets a little dicey when popular authors have written numerous classics.  Sometimes I haven’t listed them all.  A true and complete classic list would probably wrap around the world a few times.  Below is the list I have today.  Ask me again tomorrow, and I’m sure it will be bigger. I’ve marked the ones that I’ve read in red and a placed a link to the ones I’ve reviewed.  See how many you’ve read.  You may surprise yourself. 

Have fun!

Annette

Agee, James - A Death in the Family

Alcott, Louisa May - Little Women

Aldrich, Bess Streeter - A Lantern in Her Hand

Aldrich, Bess Streeter - A White Bird Flying

Aldrich, Bess Streeter - Spring Came on Forever

Anderson, Sherwood - Winesburg, Ohio

Angelou, Maya - I Know Why Caged Birds Sing

Asimov, Isaac - The Foundation Trilogy
Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale

Austen, Jane – Emma
Austen, Jane – Mansfield Park 

Austen, Jane - Northanger Abbey.  Click here to read review.

Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice

Austen, Jane – Sense and Sensibilities

Bagnold, Enid - National Velvet

Baldwin, James - Notes of a Native Son
Balzac, Honore de - Pere Goriot

Barrett, William - Lilies of the Field

Barrie, James - The Admirable Crichton

Bellamy, Edward - Looking Backward

Benet, Stephen Vincent - John Brown's Body

Bonnet, Theodore - The Mudlark

Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451

Bradbury, Ray - The Martian Chronicles

Bradbury, Ray - Something Wicked This Way Comes

Bronte, Anne - Agnes Grey.  Click here to read review.

Bronte,Charlotte - Jane Eyre.  Click here to read review.

Bronte, Emily- Wuthering Heights.  Click here to read review.

Brown, Dee - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Brown, Joe David - Paper Moon
Buck, Pearl - Imperial Woman

Buck, Pearl - The Good Earth

Bulgakov, Mikhail - The Master and Margarita
Burdick, Eugene and Harvey Wheeler - Fail-Safe

Burgess, Anthony – A Clockwork Orange

Burnett, Frances Hodgson - The Secret Garden

Burroughs, Edgar Rice - Tarzan of the Apes
Cain, James M. - The Postman Always Rings Twice Click here to read review.
Caldwell, Taylor - Captains and the Kings

Caldwell, Taylor - Dear and Glorious Physician

Camus, Albert - The Plague

Camus, Albert  - The Stranger

Carroll, Lewis - Alice's Adventure in Wonderland

Carroll, Lewis - Alice Through the Looking Glass

Carson, Rachel - The Sea Around Us

Cather, Willa - Death Comes to the Archbishop

Cather, Willa - My Antonia

Cather, Willa - O Pioneers

Cather, Willa - One of Ours
Cather, Willa - Shadows on the Rock

Cervantes, Miguel de – Don Quixote

Christie, Agatha - Murder on the Orient Express.  Click here to read review.

Christie, Agatha - Death on the Nile Click hereto read review.

Chopin, Kate - The Awakening  

Clark, Walter Van Tilburg - The Ox-Bow Incident

Clark, Walter Van Tilburg - The Track of the Cat

Cleary, Jon - The Sundowners

Collins, Wilkie - The Moonstone

Collins, Wilkie – The Woman in White

Conrad, Joseph - The Heart of Darkness

Cooper, James Fenimore - The Deerslayer

Cooper, James Fenimore, - The Last of the Mohicans

Costain, Thomas - The Silver Chalice

Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage

Crichton, Michael - The Andromeda Strain

Cronin, A. J. - The Keys of the Kingdom

Dahl, Roald- Kiss, Kiss.  Click here to read review.

Dahl, Roald - Switch Bitch.  Click here to read review.

Dahl, Roald - My Uncle Oswald.  Click here to read review.

Dana, Richard, - Two Years Before the Mast

Day, Clarence - Life with Father. Click here to read

review.

Day, Clarence - Life with Mother

Defoe, Daniel -  Moll Flanders

Defoe, Daniel -  Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - David Copperfield

Dickens, Charles - Great Expectations

Dickens, Charles - Oliver Twist

Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities

Dinesen, Isak  (Real name, Karen von Blixen-Finecke) – Out of Africa

Dos Passos, John - Manhattan Transfer

Dos Passos, John -  U.S.A. Trilogy

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor -  Crime and Punishment

Douglas, Lloyd. C., -  The Robe

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan - The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan - The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy

Dreiser, Theodore - Sister Carrie

Du Maurier, Daphne - Jamaica Inn

Du Maurier, Daphne - Rebecca.  Click here to read

review.

Dumas, Alexander - Camille

Dumas, Alexander - The Count of Monte Cristo

Dumas, Alexander - The Three Musketeers

Ibsen, Henrik -  Peer Gynt
Edmonds, Walter - Drums Along the Mohawk

Eliot, George – Adam Bede

Eliot, George – Daniel Deronda

Eliot, George - Middlemarch

Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss

Eliot, George - Silas Marner.  Click here to read review.

Eliot, T. S. - Murder in the Cathedral

Ellison, Ralph – Invisible Man

Esquivel, Laura - Like Water for Chocolate
Faulkner, William - Absalom! Absalom!

Faulkner, William - Intruder in the Dust

Faulkner, William – The Sound and the Fury

Ferber, Edna - Cimarron

Ferber, Edna - Giant

Ferber, Edna - Show Boat

Ferber, Edna - So Big

Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby. Click here to read review.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Tender is the Night

Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary.  Click here to read review.

Forbes, Esther - Johnny Tremain

Forbes, Kathryn - Mama's Bank Account

Forester, C.S. - Captain Horatio Hornblower

Forester, C.S. - The African Queen

Forester, C.S. - The Good Shepherd

Forster, E.M. - Howard's End

Forster, E.M. – A Passage to India
Forster, E.M. – A Room with A View

Fowles, John – The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Frank, Anne - The Diary of a Young Girl

Frank, Pat, Alas - Babylon

Franklin, Benjamin - Ben Franklin Autobiography

Freedman, Benedict & Nancy - Mrs. Mike

Garcia Márquez, Gabriel – One Hundred Years of Solitude

Garcia Márquez, Gabriel – Love in the Time of Cholera. Click here to read review.

Gaskell, Elizabeth - Cranford

Gilbreth, Frank B. & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey - Cheaper by the Dozen.  Click hereto read review.

Gilbreth, Frank B. & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey -  Belles on

Their Toes

Golding, William - Lord of the Flies

Goldman, William – The Princess Bride

Goudge, Elizabeth - Green Dolphin Street

Green, Hannah - I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Greene, Graham - A Burnt-Out Case

Greene, Graham - The Power and the Glory

Griffin, John Howard - Black Like Me

Haggard, H. Rider - King Solomon's Mines

Haley, Alex - Roots
Hammett, Dashiell - The Thin Man

Hammett, Dashiell - The Maltese Falcon

Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Hart, Moss & Kaufman, George - The Man Who Came to Dinner

Hart, Moss & Kaufman, George - You Can't Take It With You

Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The House of Seven Gables

Heinlein, Robert - Stranger in a Strange Land

Heller, Joseph - Catch-22  Click here to read review.

Hellman, Lillian - The Children's Hour

Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms.  Click here to read review.

Hemingway, Ernest - For Whom the Bell Tolls

Hemingway, Ernest - The Green Hills of Africa

Hemingway, Ernest - The Old Man and the Sea.  Click here to read review.

Hemingway, Ernest - The Sun Also Rises

Henry. O – Gift of the Magi and Other Short Stories.  Click here to read review.

Hersey, John - A Bell for Adano

Hersey, John - Hiroshima

Hersey, John - The Child Buyer

Herzog, Maurice - Annapurna

Heyerdahl, Thor - Aku-Aku

Heyerdahl, Thor - Kon-Tiki

Hilton, James - Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Hilton, James - Lost Horizon.  Click here to read review.

Hilton, James - Random Harvest

Hinton, S.E. – Rumble Fish

Hinton, S.E. - That Was Then, This is Now

Hinton, S.E. - The Outsiders

Hudson, W.H. - Green Mansions

Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hugo, Victor - Les Miserables

Hunt, Irene - Across Five Aprils

Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World

Huxley, Aldous - Crome Yellow
Ibsen, Henrik - Peer Gynt
Irving, Washington - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Jackson, Helen Hunt – Ramona
Jackson, Shirley - The Lottery
Jackson, Shirley - We Have Always Lived in the Castle

James, Henry - Daisy Miller
James, Henry - Turn of the Screw
Jerome, Jerome K. - Three Men in a Boat
Joyce, James - Ulysses

Kafka, Franz – The Metamorphosis.  Click here to read review.

Kaufman & Hart - The Man Who Came to Dinner
Kaufman & Hart - Once in a Lifetime
Kaufman & Hart - You Can't Take It With You
Kesey, Ken - One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Keyes, Daniel - Flowers for Algernon

Kipling, Rudyard - Captains Courageous

Kipling, Rudyard - Kim

Kipling, Rudyard - The Man Who Would Be King

Kleist, Heinrich von - The Earthquake in Chile
Knebel, Fletcher - Night of Camp David

Knebel, Fletcher - Seven Days in May

Knowles, John - A Separate Peace

La Farge, Oliver - Laughing Boy

Lawrence, D.H. - Lady Chatterley's Lover.  Click here to read review.

Lederer, William & E. Burdick - The Ugly American

Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird

Leroux, Gaston - Phantom of the Opera
Levin, Ira - The Stepford Wives
Lewis, C.S. – The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt

Lewis, Sinclair - Main Street

Lindbergh, Charles - The Spirit of St. Louis

Lipsyte, Robert - The Contender 

Llewellyn, Richard - How Green Was My Valley

London, Jack - Call of the Wild

MacInnes, Helen - Above Suspicion

Mailer, Norman - The Executioner's Song
Malamud, Bernard - The Assistant

Maugham, W. Somerset - The Moon and Sixpence
McCullers, Carson - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

McCullers, Carson - The Ballad of the Sad Café

Melville, Herman – Moby-Dick. Click here to read review.

Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Benito Cereno
Michener, James - Bridges at Toko-Ri

Michener, James - Centennial

Michener, James - Hawaii

Michener, James - Sayonara

Michener, James - Tales of the South Pacific

Miller, Arthur - All My Sons

Miller, Arthur - A View From the Bridge

Mitchell, Margaret - Gone with the Wind.  Click here to read review.
Mitford, Nancy- Pursuit of Love

Montgomery, L.M. - Anne of Green Gables.  Click here to read review.     

Moody, Ralph - Home Ranch

Moody, Ralph - Little Britches

Moody, Ralph - Men of the Family

Morrison, Toni - Beloved

Neihardt, John - Black Elk Speaks

Nabokov, Vladimir - Lolita

Nordhoff, Charles & Hall, J. - Men Against the Sea

Nordhoff, Charles & Hall, J. - Mutiny on the Bounty

Nordhoff, Charles & Hall, J. - Pitcairn's Island

Norris, Frank - Octopus

O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night

O'Neill, Eugene - The Iceman Commeth

Orwell, George - 1984

Orwell, George - Animal Farm

Parks, Gordon - The Learning Tree

Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Pennington, James - Fugitive Blacksmith

Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar

Poe, Edgar Allan – Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

Porter, Katherine Anne - Ship of Fools

Portis, Charles - True Grit

Proulx, E. Annie - The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn – Atlas Shrugged

Rattigan, Terence - The Winslow Boy

Rawlings, Marjorie - The Yearling.  Click here to read review.

Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front

Renault, Mary - The Bull From the Sea

Renault, Mary - The King Must Die

Richter, Conrad - Light in the Forest

Rinehart, Mary Roberts - The Circular Staircase

Roberts, Kenneth - Northwest Passage

Rostand, Edmund - Cyrano de Bergerac

Sabatini, Raphael - Scaramouche

Salinger, J.D. - Catcher in the Rye

Sandburg, Carl - Abe Lincoln: Prairie Years

Saroyan, William - Human Comedy

Saroyan, William - My Name is Aram

Schaefer, Jack - Shane

Scott, Sir Walter - Ivanhoe

Scott, Sir Walter - Quentin Durward

Sewell, Anna - Black Beauty

Shakespeare, William - As You Like It

Shakespeare, William - Hamlet

Shakespeare, William – King Lear

Shakespeare, William - Macbeth

Shakespeare, William – Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare, William – Midsummer Night’s Dream

Shakespeare, William – Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare, William - Othello

Shakespeare, William – Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare, William - The Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare, William – Any Others Not Mentioned Here

Shaw, George Bernard – Pygmalion.  Click here to read review.

Shaw, George Bernard - Caesar and Cleopatra

Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein.  Click here to read review.

Shute, Nevil - On the Beach

Shute, Nevil - A Town Like Alice

Sienkiewicz, Henryk - Quo Vadis

Skinner, Cornelia & Kimbrough, Emily - Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

Smith, Dodie - I Capture the Castle
Smith, Betty - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Steinbeck, John - Cannery Row

Steinbeck, John - Of Mice and Men.  Click here to read review.

Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck, John - The Pearl

Steinbeck, John - The Red Pony
Steinbeck, John - The Winter of Our Discontent

Stevenson, Robert Louis - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Other Short Stories

Stevenson, Robert Louis - Kidnapped
Stevenson, Robert Louis - The Master of Ballantrae

Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island

Stoker, Bram - Dracula

Stone, Irving - The Ecstasy and the Agony

Stone, Irving - Love is Eternal

Stone, Irving - The President's Lady

Strout, Elizabeth - Olive Kitteridge
Stowe, Harriet - Uncle Tom's Cabin

Swarthout, Glendon - Bless the Beasts and Children

Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels

Synge, J.M. - Riders to the Sea

Tarkington, Booth - The Magnificent Ambersons
Tarkington, Booth - Monsieur Beaucaire

Tarkington, Booth - Penrod

Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry - Walden

Thurber, James - Thurber Carnival

Tolkien, J.R.R. - Lord of the Rings

Tolkien, J.R.R. - The Hobbit

Tolstoy, Leo - Anna Karenina

Tolstoy, Leo – War and Peace
Toole, John Kennedy - A Confederacy of Dunces

Twain, Mark –The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Twain, Mark - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Twain, Mark – A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Twain, Mark - Life on the Mississippi

Twain, Mark – The Prince and the Pauper

Twain, Mark - Puddn'head Wilson. Click here to read review.

Twain, Mark - Roughing It.  Click here to read review.

Ullman, James Ramsey - Banner in the Sky

Updike, John - The Witches of Eastwick
Uris, Leon - Exodus

Uris, Leon - QB VII

Verne, Jules - An Antarctic Mystery
Verne, Jules - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Verne, Jules- Around the World in 80 Days.  Click here to read review.

Verne, Jules - Journey to the Center of the Earth

Vonnegut, Kurt - Slaughterhouse-Five

Walker, Alice – The Color Purple

Watson, Winifred - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Waugh, Evelyn - Brideshead Revisited

Waugh, Evelyn - The Loved One

Wells, H.G. - The Invisible Man

Wells, H.G. - The Island of Dr. Moreau

Wells, H.G. - The Time Machine

Wells, H.G. - The War of the Worlds

Wescott, Glenway - The Pilgrim Hawk

West, Jessamyn - Friendly Persuasion

Wharton, Edith – Age of Innocence

Wharton, Edith - Ethan Frome.  Click here to read review.

Wharton, Edith – The House of Mirth

Whitely, Opal - The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow

Whitman, Walt – Leaves of Grass

Wibberley, Leonard - The Mouse that Roared
Wilde, Oscar - The Canterville Ghost

Wilde, Oscar- The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Click here to read review.

Wilde, Oscar - The Importance of Being Earnest. Click here to read review.

Wilder, Thornton - Our Town

Wilkerson, The Rev. David - The Cross and the Switchblade

Williams, Tennessee - A Streetcar Named Desire
Wodehouse, P.G. - The Code of the Woosters
Wojciechowska, Maia - Don't Play Dead Before You Have To

Wolfe, Tom - Bonfire of the Vanities
Woolf, Virginia - A Room of One's Own

Woolf, Virginia - Mrs. Dalloway

Wouk, Herman - The Caine Mutiny

Wren, Christopher - Beau Geste

Wright, Richard - Black Boy

Wyss, Johann - The Swiss Family Robinson