Announcing Twelve Months of Classic Literature: 2014

This event ended in December 2014. Thank you to everyone who participated. If you’re just joining The Classics Club, you’re of course most welcome to take part at any time. Just click a category below to check it out. All the best! 🙂 The Club.

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Original post –

Hello readers! We’re here this morning to announce our next big project:

Twelve months of classic literature.

Click to see our latest posts on this topic.

We’re going to announce a category on the first of every month in 2014 (listed below). Anyone in the club who is interested in reading from that category can participate and leave their links in the category’s comment box.

This is a reading OR writing project. If you lack time to read about a topic for a month but would like to write about it (whether you’re an expert or not) that’s certainly encouraged. Research-based posts, free-writing, emotion-based “I love this topic” journal entries, lists — all are welcome and encouraged. Some of you may be experts (or experts in progress) on some of the selected topics. Your input is highly encouraged and appreciated! Others are new to literature. For you and the experts, exploration is encouraged.

We’re posting the list early so that interested folks can get started reading if you want to begin early on a topic that especially interests you. Just wait for the post to go live and share your thoughts! 🙂

Twelve Months of Classic Literature: 2014 will happen in conjunction with events already hosted by members on our Events Page.

Twitter hashtag: #cc12months

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Here’s the list:

• January: William Shakespeare (or his contemporaries. Elizabethan England, etc)
• February: Harlem Renaissance / African-American Literature.
• March: Feminist Literature / Persophone / Virago Literature 
• April: Transcendentalist literature (or its inspirations/influence in literature)
• May: Postcolonial Literature / World Literature.
• June: World War One and/or The Lost Generation. Modernist literature.
• July: Post-Modernist literature.
• August: The Enlightenment Thinkers
• September: Romantic Literature
• October: LGBT literature
• November: Victorian Literature
• December: Freebie Month – Clearly we couldn’t cover everything in the prior eleven months. What wasn’t touched upon above that you want to explore/highlight/expand upon? Pick an author, movement or category within literature that means something to you and write or read about it to finish out the year.

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Details:

Each month on the 1st, we’ll announce the category for the month (above.) Anyone who is interested in participating that month can announce their participation at their own blog on the 1st of the month, along with whatever they’ll be reading or have read and (this would be really cool but is naturally not required) a post introducing your readers to the author/movement you intend to explore or have knowledge about that you’d like to share. (Even if you lack time to do any reading yourself.)

You’ll have the whole month (or honestly however long you want to take, because we’re hardly sticklers here for rules) to post about that month’s topic. The idea is to share your experience within a particular category, whether you’re familiar with the literary movement or just entering it. So pick something to read, or pick something to write about, or pick some pre-written posts on the topic to share with the club.

We will only post ONE page per category. You can link your involvement within the comments of that post, which will go live each month on the 1st.

So if, for example, you choose to read Charles Dickens for the month celebrating Victorian literature, you could write a post introducing readers to Charles Dickens on the 1st of the month for Victorian Month, and link that in our monthly post here at the blog. You could read a book about the Victorian era for Victorian month, or a biography, memoir, informative non-fiction, classic text, etc. You could read a little-known author who wrote in the Victorian era for Victorian Month. Or you could read post-colonial works that speak back to the Victorian writers. Or, on the first of the month when the topic is announced, you could simply share a list of the Victorian authors you have read, will read eventually, want to try but feel intimidated to try, or reasons why you will never read Victorian literature because Victorian literature is not your thing, and link that in our post. (Though it would be awesome to see some encouraging, informative, thrilled posts about the topic too!) 🙂

PLEASE feel free to be creative and think beyond our prompt. Don’t want to read the Enlightenment thinkers? Tell readers why! That’s sincerely encouraged! But, you know. There are hundreds of you. So we’re picking categories and making a skeleton frame of a project that you’re welcome to tinker to your tastes.

We don’t intend to research the topic for you. We’re just going to announce the month’s topic and allow it to be shaped to you: if you write the research, members will have it. The point is to encourage the group to read, write and explore on a variety of literary movements.

If you want to select a month early and read ahead, go for it! You can pick one topic for the whole year, pick a couple and ignore everything else, participate in everything according to schedule, or ignore this event altogether.

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We’ll also be continuing with the monthly memes, check-ins and Classic Spins in 2014.

Anybody in? Cheers and good reading!

– The Club