The Classics Club List

At the start of 2026, I set a goal for myself to read 12 classics I’ve always meant to read.  I thought one classic a month was a pretty reasonable goal and would give me room to read other things of interest throughout the year.  I’ve chugged right along on that goal and have already read 11 of the 12 books on my list plus managed to read several contemporary novels in addition to the classics. 

In the course of reading about the background for one of the books on my list, I came across an even bigger classics challenge that many bloggers online have taken on for the last 14 years.

The Classics Club began as a challenge to “unite those of us who like to blog about classic literature, as well as to inspire people to make the classics an integral part of life.”  The challenge consists of making a list of at least 50 classics and then reading and writing about them over the next 5 years. 

I quickly typed up a list of 50 classics that I wanted to read, but I hemmed and hawed a bit before officially deciding to participate.  Though I read quite a bit, I feel pretty unqualified to write up a bunch of book reviews, especially for classic literature which has been analyzed to death by actual experts. 

But I do learn best by writing.  And with the focus on our declining reading rates in recent years, I thought I might do my small bit to add to the group of people trying to inspire others to explore more classic literature.

My list has a few books that I read as a child like Little Women, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, and The Hobbit.  I also read Rebecca and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in High School, and though I remember liking both, I’ve forgotten much of the stories.  Since so much time has passed, I feel like I can re-read all of these with pretty fresh eyes.  I really enjoyed re-reading a few other books from school as an adult like The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird so I’m interested to read these others again with a different perspective.  I haven’t chosen any novels to re-read that I’ve read as an adult and better remember.  I resisted the urge to add some of my favorite classics like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 to the list.  The goal is to explore new to me classics.  But I did add a couple of Ray Bradbury works to the list that I’ve never read and I also included We by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin which was the inspiration for 1984.

I tried to have a diverse mix of works, but overall, there isn’t a theme to the list other than classic books that I want to read.   You can also find the list here and I’ll update with links as I post reviews of each book. 

Sylvia Plath said, “”I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.” That’s so relatable that I’ve quoted it many times in my journal when lamenting time limitations. I maybe can’t read everything I’d like to, but I believe I can conquer this list of 50 books. So here’s to exploring lots of good stories! 

Classic Club List- Goal Completion Date December 31, 2030

1. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
6. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
7. Go Tell It on The Mountain by James Baldwin
8. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
9. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
10. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
11. Jane Erye by Charlotte Bronte
12. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
13. Kindred by Octavia Butler
14. The Stranger by Albert Camus
15. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
16. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
17. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
18. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevesky
19. A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
20. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
21. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
22. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
23. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
24. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
25. The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
26. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
27. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
28. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
29. The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling
30. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
31. It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
32. The Iron Heel by Jack London
33. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
34. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
35. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
36. Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery
37. Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers
38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
39. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
40. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
41. Dracula by Bram Stoker
42. The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien
43. Candide by Voltaire
44. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
45. The War of the Worlds by H.G Wells
46. Night by Elie Wiesel
47. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
48. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
49. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
50. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin