read the classics

Actually, I’d like to re-read the classics, and as many as I can.

I visited NYC recently, home of the mighty Strand Bookstore.

Since “read the classics” is a slightly ill-defined goal – when does it end? – I’ve decided to consider it complete when I’ve read the Strand 80, a list Strand compiled for its 80th birthday in 2007, containing 80 titles customers voted as their favourites.

The Bookstore’s list:
http://www.strandbooks.com/app/www/p/booklist/?listid=strand80

A more copy-paste friendly version of the list is here:
http://agirlwalksintoabookstore.blogspot.com/2008/05/strand-80.html

take literature classes/read
also read on own
find stuff of interest…carry book around..let sink in…

I already have “Middlemarch” by Eliot, which I started reading a little while ago, so I’m going to finish that off, and mark that as my first book. Watch this space….

I’ve gone with the “Penguin Classics” list, which I reckon is a pretty good starting point :)

They divide their list into “The Best xxxx ever written” so I’ve stuck with that, because I think it’s cool

I’m going to start working through the list and mark each book off as it’s read, hopefully at the rate of a book a week, but we’ll see. I plan to buy the ones I know I’ll love, or that I love after I’ve read them :)

Crazies

1. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
by Ken Kesey

2. The Diary of a Madman
by Nikolai Gogol

3. Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys

4. Crime And Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

5. Notes From Underground
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sex
1. Story Of The Eye
by Georges Bataille

2. A Spy In The House Of Love
by Anaïs Nin

3. Lady Chatterley’s Lover
by D. H. Lawrence

4. Venus In Furs
by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

5. The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer

Villians

1. The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

2. Heart Of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad

3. Diamonds Are Forever
by Ian Fleming

4. The Master And Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov

5. The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad

Lovers

1. A Room With A View
by E. M. Forster

2. Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë

3. Don Juan
by Lord Byron

4. Love In A Cold Climate
by Nancy Mitford

5. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
by Tennessee Williams

Heroes

1. David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens

2. Middlemarch
by George Eliot

3. She
by H. Rider Haggard

4. The Fight
by Norman Mailer

5. No Easy Walk To Freedom
by Nelson Mandela

Tearjerkers

1. Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck

2. The Age Of Innocence
by Edith Wharton

3. Notre-Dame De Paris
by Victor Hugo

4. Jude The Obscure
by Thomas Hardy

5. The Old Curiosity Shop
by Charles Dickens

Spine-Tinglers

1. The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

2. Dracula
by Bram Stoker

3. Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley

4. The Castle Of Otranto
by Horace Walpole

5. The Turn Of The Screw
by Henry James

Minxes

1. Vanity Fair
by William Thackeray

2. Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov

3. Baby Doll
by Tennessee Williams

4. Breakfast At Tiffany’s
by Truman Capote

5. Emma
by Jane Austen

Journeys

1. On The Road
by Jack Kerouac

2. The Odyssey
by Homer

3. The Grapes Of Wrath
by John Steinbeck

4. Three Men In A Boat
by Jerome K. Jerome

5. Alice In Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll

Decadence

1. The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. Vile Bodies
by Evelyn Waugh

3. The Picture Of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde

4. The Beautiful And Damned
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

5. Against Nature
by J. K. Huysmans

Rebels

1. The Autobiography Of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X

2. The Outsider
by Albert Camus

3. Animal Farm
by George Orwell

4. The Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

5. Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo

Sci-Fi

1. The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells

2. The Man In The High Castle
by Philip K. Dick

3. The Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells

4. The Day Of The Triffids
by John Wyndham

5. We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Violence

1. A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess

2. Hell’s Angels
by Hunter S. Thompson

3. A Tale Of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens

4. Another Country
by James Baldwin

5. In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote

Highs

1. Junky
by William S. Burroughs

2. The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins

3. Confessions Of An English Opium Eater
by Thomas De Quincey

4. The Subterraneans
by Jack Kerouac

5. Monsieur Monde Vanishes
by Georges Simenon

Subversion

1. 1984
by George Orwell

2. The Monkey Wrench Gang
by Edward Abbey

3. The Prince
by Niccolò Machiavelli

4. Bound For Glory
by Woody Guthrie

5. Death Of A Salesman
by Arthur Miller

Crimes

1. Maigret And The Ghost
by Georges Simenon

2. The Woman In White
by Wilkie Collins

3. The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler

4. A Study In Scarlet
by Arthur Conan Doyle

5. The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan

Adultery

1. Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert

2. Thérèse Raquin
by Emile Zola

3. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

4. The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

5. Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy

Debauchery

1. I, Claudius
by Robert Graves

2. Hangover Square
by Patrick Hamilton

3. The Beggar’s Opera
by John Gay

4. The Twelve Caesars
by Suetonius

5. Guys And Dolls
by Damon Runyon

Action

1. Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson

2. The Iliad
by Homer

3. The Count Of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas

4. From Russia With Love
by Ian Fleming

5. War And Peace
by Leo Tolstoy

Laughs

1. Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons

2. Diary Of A Nobody
by George and Weedon Grossmith

3. The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens

4. Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh

5. Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis

My book list for the next few months:

John Wyndam: The Chrysalids
Oscar Wilde: A Picture of Dorian Gray
Charles Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby
John Steinbeck: Travels With Charley
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love In The Time Of Cholera

If I read all of these I will be pretty happy!

Wow! Just realised that I only have three books to finish, and I will have completed my ‘first set’ of ten books! (For those who don’t know, when I first added this goal I compiled a list of books and plays to read, divided into ten sets of ten—see my earlier entries.)

Now I only have Thucydides, Flaubert and Tolstoy to go. I think I’m going to allow myself to start a book from the second set as soon as I only have one book left :) (and that’s probably going to be Tolstoy as he’s so long.. :S)

I want to read more classic literature books to get better at Quiz Bowl. My goal is to read one book every week or 2 weeks.

So far I have read:

1984 by George Orwell

Currently reading:

Moby Dick

I’ve read some classics, but really would like to get my teeth into some more… first of all, something like the Iliad or Odyssey which I’ve always wanted to read.

Yay! Just been to Redruth Library and found a magnificent stack of classics—so happy! :) they even have a massive pictorial version of The Odyssey, and Ovid’s Love Poems. I also found a copy of Thoreau’s Walden, which is one of the books I’m reading at the moment, which is really good because it means I don’t have to strain my eyes reading it off a computer screen!

Gonna order in The History of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides as well, as although it costs 50p it’s totally worth it, as it’s a really long work.

Woohoo! can’t wait!! lol :)

EDIT: just realised that most of the books on my current reading list are in translation. Tolstoy, Flaubert, Homer, Ibsen, Thucydides and Rousseau.. only four of the ten actually wrote in English!