2020-11-21

The Classics club

 
 
"The Classics club : a community of classics lovers", how could I resist ? I love classics ! Old classics, modern classics, golden age mysteries, everything goes.

I happened upon this blog and this Goodreads group through Emma at Words and peace. 

To enter this club, you have to make a list of 50 classics (whatever kind of books you name classics) to read in 5 years. The complete list of instructions on how to join is here.
 
During this year 2020, I have read/re-read 57 novels and short stories - each title is linked to the review :
 
- Ray Bradbury : The machineries of joy
- Anne Brontë : Agnes Grey
- Charlotte Brontë : The professor
- Emily Brontë : Poems, Wuthering heights
- Frances Hodgson Burnett : The secret garden
- Wilkie Collins : The haunted house
- Dinah Craik : Olive
- Daphne du Maurier : The doll
- Elizabeth Gaskell : The life of Charlotte Brontë
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman : The yellow wall-paper
- George Gissing : The odd women
- Anna Katherine Green : The affair next door
- Gerald Manley Hopkins : As kingfishers catch fire
- James Joyce : Dubliners
- Lucy Maud Montgomery : Anne of Green Gables
- Barbara Pym : Excellent women
- Mary Shelley : Frankenstein
- Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure island
- Bram Stoker : Dracula
- Jonathan Swift : A modest proposal
- J.R.R. Tolkien : The Hobbit, The lord of the rings
- Mary Wesley : The camomille lawn
- Rebecca West : The return of the soldier
- P.G. Wodehouse : Jeeves and the feudal spirit
- Virginia Woolf : Londres (in French)
- Emile Zola : Germinal

Next, I would like to read/re-read (those books are on my physical shelf, mostly) - I linked the titles to their Goodreads pages :
 
- Beaumarchais : Le mariage de Figaro
- Ray Bradbury : Dandelion wine
- Pearl Buck : East wind, west wind
- Samuel Butler : The way of all flesh
- Albert Camus : Caligula
- Jean Cocteau : La machine infernale
- Corneille : Polyeucte
- Charles Dickens : Great expectations
- Daphne du Maurier : The loving spirit, My cousin Rachel
- Elizabeth Gaskell : North and south, Mary Barton
- Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary
- Elizabeth Goudge : The city of bells, Island magic
- George and Weedon Grossmith : The diary of a Nobody
- Ernest Hemingway : To have and have not 
- Victor Hugo : Hernani
- Henry James : Portrait of a lady 
- Joseph Kessel : Vent de sable, Le lion
- Mme de la Fayette : La princesse de Clèves
- Mishima : Dojoji
- Nietzsche : Aphorisms 
- Dorothy Richardson : The tunnel, Honeycomb
- Angela Thirkell : Wild strawberries
- J.R.R. Tolkien : The Silmarillion
- Patricia Wentworth : Outrageous fortune, Nothing venture

Phew ! Linking was a long job ! 
 
These are the classic titles that I will read next, but they probably won't be the only ones : I have several complete works on my kindle : Oscar Wilde, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, Elizabeth Von Arnim and so on. And I'm currently re-reading all of the Brontës, Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier. No special reason other than I just love them. 
I applied to the Goodreads group last evening, I intend to join the blog and each time I'll publish a review of a book on this list, I will link it with this logo :
 
This is going to be just great ! I intend to read all these before 2025 (probably before the end of 2021...)

8 comments:

  1. Two fabulous lists!
    Welcome to the Classics Club!

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  2. Thanks Brona, I'm so happy to have joined !

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  3. wow, you arwe devouring these comme des petits pains, lol !
    The Secret Garden is so amazing. I read tons of Goudge in my early 20s, I should check, but maybe I won't like this style any longer. So many great French classics of course. And I'm going to look into Dodoji. Thanks for sharing

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    1. The secret garden is so great ! And I too fear I won't like Elizabeth Goudge any more, which is why I want to find out. Half of me tells me I will have outgrown her books, the other half claims that I'll be missing out on her novels :)

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  4. Funny, I was looking all over the place for Dodoji, then realized it was Dojoji! Adding it to my list for the upcoming Japanese Literature Challenge (January-March). Thanks!!

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    1. Lol ! That Japanese literature challenge is tempting me, I'm trying to resist but I probably won't :/ You're welcome Emma !

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  5. Sorry for the 3rd comment. So glad I helped you discover The Classics Club!

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    1. Please don't apologize, and thanks again for that wonderful link :)

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