Pam Webb

The Perfect Club (for me)

If you have been following my blog you know I love to read, and that I especially love literature. Being a librarian at heart, teaching literature is pretty close to working in a library. Sigh, to be surrounded by books all day long, in a fairly quiet environment, where people enter in for the specific purpose of learning and reading. Dream job.

Reading. It’s what I love to do. Indeedy. I am always promoting books [see Book Boosters] and my monthly Reading Round Ups, and I am always interested in reading what others are reading. Somehow I discovered The Classics Club, and the main requirement is to create a list of at least 50 classics and set a read-by date. This club and I shall become besties, I know it. They are friendly and flexible and have all kinds of reading activities going on all the time. This is a better discovery than a new gelato flavor.  Here is my list so far, and my proposed read-by date:

Start date January 1, 2018 (they are so flexible they are okay with my list in progress)
Finish: December 31, 2019
*read and reviewed already

1. Green Willow by B.J. Chute*
2. The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli*
3. Blue Willow by Doris Gates*
4. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart*
5. Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl*
6. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl*
7. Charlie and the Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl*
8. Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson*
9. Gilead by Marilyn Robinson*
10. Princess Bride by William Goldman* (reread)
11. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf*
12. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin*
13. The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier*
14. The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan*
15. The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty*
16. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte* (reread)
17. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn*
18. Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse*
19. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce*
20. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells*
21. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisnero*
22. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken*
23. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving*
24. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury* (reread)
25. Howard’s End by E.M. Forster*
26. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines*
27. Swallows and Amazon by Arthur Ransome*
28. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
29. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver*
30. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
31. Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner
32. Persuasion by Jane Austen (reread)*
33. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (reread)*
34. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle*
35. King Solomon’s Mine by H. Rider Haggard*
36. One of Ours by Willa Cather
37. The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher*
38. The Empty World by D.E. Stevenson
39. The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner*
40. Emma by Jane Austen*
41. The Stranger by Albert Camus*
42. Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton
43. Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney*
44. Agnes Gray by Anne Bronte
45. Work by Louisa May Alcott*
46. The Fair Miss Fortune by D.E. Stevenson
47. Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner*
48. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke*
49. On the Beach by Nevil Shute*
50. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively*

Whew! It took me longer than I thought to create this list. I usually grab and go when I am at the library. We will see what happens.

UPDATE: As I gather these gems I am finding shinier ones I want read or I am discovering some titles don’t quite have the sparkle I was looking for—stay tuned for trade outs…

Any of these titles look familiar to you? What would you add to the list? Are you going to join me over at The Classics Club?

My goal date–am I ambitious?