Here Goes Nothing

Let's start off by saying that I have never blogged a day in my life. Sooo...the title is fitting, eh?

First, let me define what this project entails. I will read, cover-to-cover, all the literary classics that I can determine ARE indeed "classic".

See, up to this point, I have yet to find a definitive list, nor can I find a clear definition of "classic". I think I have come pretty darn close though and will list all of the titles at the end of this post. I would love your feedback, if you think I've missed anything or feel one should be omitted. I will continue to research as well. Let's just call this list "living and breathing". In other words...subject to change.

So as I read one work after another, I will post my comments, frustrations, joys, etc. As my profile states, I am not a writer or some literary genius. I will have to consult the dictionary A LOT! But that's ok. I love to read and I love to learn.

The true test for me will be stamina. If something doesn't hold my attention I tend to move on. Guiltily. So, in the interest of integrity, I will purchase my own copy of each book and make notations in the margins on reading start and stop times, as well as things I want to remember to blog about.

There is no timeline and I'm fairly young, so I believe (and hope) that I have plenty of time to finish, if an end even exists.

Here's the Adult Classic list:


1984 - George Orwell
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
Adam Bede - George Eliot
The Aeneid - Vergil
Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Remarque
The American - Henry James
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Antigone - Sophocles
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Arms and the Man - George Bernard Shaw
Arrowsmith - Sinclaim Lewis
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
Babbitt - Sinclair Lewis
Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope
Black Boy - Richard Wright
Billy Budd - Herman Melville
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevski
Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann
The Cain Mutiny - Herman Wouk
Candide - Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
The Castle - Franz Kafka
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Cherry Orchard - Anton Chekhov
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevski
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
The Cruel Sea - Nicholas Monsarrat
Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand
Daisy Miller - Henry James
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
A Death in the Family - James Agee
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
Demian - Hermann Hesse
The Divine Comedy - Dante
Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pastemak
A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
Dr. Faustus - Christphyer Marlowe
Dubliners - James Joyce
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Emma - Jane Austen
The Emperor - Jones Eugene O'Neill
An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen
Essays - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Far From the Maddening Crowd - Thomas Hardy
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
Ghosts - Henrik Ibsen
Giants in the Earth - O.E. Rolvaag
The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams
Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
The Good Earth - Pearl Buck
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
Hard Times - Charles Dickens
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
How Green Was My Valley - Richard Llewellyn
The Human Comedy - William Saroyan
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
The Iliad - Homer
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
Inherit the Wind - Jerome and Robert E. Lee Lawrence
Intruder in the Dust - William Faulkner
Unvisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
J.B. - Archibald MacLeish
Joseph Andres - Henry Fielding
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Light in August - William Faulkner
A Long Day's Journey Into Night - Eugene O'Neill
Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
Major Barbara - George Bernard Shaw
A Man for All Seasons - Robert Bolt
The Master Builder - Henrik Ibsen
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Molly Flanders - Daniel Defoe
The Moonstone - Wilkin Collins
Mourning Becomes Electra - Eugene O'Neill
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot
My Antonia - Willa Cather
Mythology - Edith Hamilton
Native Son - Richard Wright
New Testament - The Bible
The Nine Tailors - Dorothy Sayers
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles
The Odyssey - Homer
Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Old Testament - The Bible
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
On the Beach - Nevil Shute
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
Our Town - Thornton Wilder
Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
Pere Goriot - Honore de Balzac
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Plague - Albert Camus
Plays and Sonnets - William Shakespeare
Poems - Robert Browning
Poems - Emily Dickinson
Poems - Langston Hughes
Poems - John Keats
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man - James Joyce
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Prince - Machiavelli
Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain
Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw
Rabbit Run - John Updike
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
Saint Joan - George Bernard Shaw
The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The School for Scandal - Richard B. Sheridan
The Secret Sharer - Joseph Conrad
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
She Stoops to Conquer - Oliver Goldsmith
Short Stories - Edgar Allan Poe
Siddhartha - Silas Marner
A Single Pebble - John Hersey
Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
Stories - O. Henry
The Stranger - Albert Camus
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Sword in the Stone - T.H. White
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Tom Jones - Henry Fielding
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Typee - Herman Melville
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Vanity Fair - William M. Thackeray
Victory - Joseph Conrad
Waiting for Godot - Samual Beckett
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Way of All Flesh - Samual Butler
The Wild Duck - Henrik Ibsen
Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte


This list courtesy of: http://www.wannalearn.com/Classic_Literature/