The Classics Club

I've decided to join the Classics Club, the idea of which is to set a goal of reading 50 classics within 5 years from the date that you start the challenge. On a higher level, "the point isn’t to challenge people to read by a strict list — but to create for ourselves a habit and a curiosity about literature". 

So what's a classic: "for the purposes of your project list, it’s your choice, really. Modern classics, ancient classics, Eastern canon, Western canon, Persophone, Virago, African literature, children’s classics… You make your own goal, and you decide what is a classic".

My challenge commences: March 2026

The Classics Club Book List 

(1831) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
(1838) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
(1847) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
(1847) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
(1847) Agnes Gray by Anne Bronte
(1848) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
(1855) North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
(1865) Force and Fraud by Ellen Davitt
(1898) The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
(1899) The Awakening by Kate Chopin
(1899) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
(1929) Passing by Nella Larsen
(1937) Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
(1939) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
(1940) The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
(1945) The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
(1948) The Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
(1949) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
(1951) My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
(1954) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
(1958) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
(1958) Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
(1959) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
(1961) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
(1961) Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
(1961) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
(1962) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l'Engle
(1964) My Brother Jack by George Johnston
(1967) Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
(1967) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(1969) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula le Guin
(1977) The Shining by Stephen King
(1977) The Silmariliion by JRR Tolkien 
(1977) Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Andersen
(1978) The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
(1981) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
(1982) Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
(1985) Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(1987) It's Raining in Mango by Thea Astley
(1989) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
(1991) Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
(1992) The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
(1994) Death of River Guide by Richard Flannagan
(1997) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
(2004) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
(2005) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 
(2006) Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
(2009) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
(2011) All That I Am by Anna Funder
(2013) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flannagan