The Classics Project: A Year of Classic Literature

I've always considered myself fairly well-read. After all, I read all the time. Then I saw one of those lists. You know the ones. "100 Best Books of All Time" "100 Must Read Classic Works of Literature" Those. And while I do usually score above the "average" person, that has always felt like a really low bar. Many of these books have been influential in our society, and I'm starting to feel like I'm missing out.

So I've decided to start a project. The Classics Project. I'm going to take one year of my life and devote all of my pleasure reading to the classics. I'll give myself a pretty large selection and write a review for each one so you, my readers, can follow along in my literary journey. Honestly, it's kind of shocking which books I haven't read, but please don't judge me too harshly! After all, I'm not listing the plethora of books that I have consumed. ;-)

Here are some quick rules about the list. 1) It has to be something I haven't read. 2) It has to be fiction. I prefer novels, but I do have one or two plays on the list. 3) It has to be a work of literary importance. I honestly don't care if it was written 200 years ago or 10. If it's great, it's great. 4) I'm trying not to duplicate authors with some notable exceptions, in which case, I either really love the author or I couldn't decide which was a better representation of their work. If you think I've picked the wrong book feel free to let me know in the comments! 5) The final decision is mine. I know a lot of you have very strong opinions on what should or should not be on a list like this, but ultimately this list is for me. You can definitely make one of your own though! 6) No Dickens. Just no. I'll watch his stories on the BBC.

I don't expect to finish in one year, because let's face it, some of these books will take longer than three and half days. I do plan to continue reading and writing reviews beyond 2014, but I will no longer be limited to classics.

So without further ado....

The Classics Project:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
6. Middlemarch by George Elliot
7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
8. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
9. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
10. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
11. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13. The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells
14. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
15. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
16. Ulysses by James Joyce
17. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man  by James Joyce
18. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
19. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
21. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
22. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
23. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
24. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
25. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
26. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
27. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
28. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
29. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
30. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
31. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
32. The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
33. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
34. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
35. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
36. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway
37. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
38. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
39. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
40. The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
41. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
42. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
43. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
44. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
45. Watership Down by Richard Adams
46. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
47. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
48. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
49. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
50. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
51. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
52. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
53. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
54. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
55. The Plague by Albert Camus
56. The Bell Jar  by Sylvia Plath
57. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolf
58. My Antonia by Willa Cather
59. Native Son by Richard Wright
60. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
61. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
62. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
63. The World According to Garp by John Irving
64. Beloved by Toni Morrison
65. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
66. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
67. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
68. The Heart is a LonelyHunter by Carson McCullers
69. Blood Meridian by Cormac MacCarthy
70. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
71. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
72. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
73. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
74. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
75. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
76. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder
77. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
78. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
79. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
80. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
81. The Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie
82. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
83. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
84. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
85. Last of the Mohicans by James F. Cooper
86. Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
87. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes
88. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
89. The Thin Red Line by James Jones
90. The Source by James Michener
91. The Hunt for RedOctober by Tom Clancy
92. Babbit by Sinclair Lewis
93. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by James Ford

What do you think? Is there a book or two you think I should add? I'd like to get this list up to 100, so please comment below!


Edit: As I write a review for these books, I will change the title to a link. Check them out!