BOO!
Club Dare: an old game with a new twist.
Once upon a time, the Club issued a Dare to it’s members to read and review a certain book. The participant then dared others to read and review a book of their choice. We participated in this event at the time, but it never really took off.
As a participant, we can say it was a great idea but rather tricky and complicated in practice.
Which brings us to the new and improved Club Dare 2.0.
It’s very easy.
During OCTOBER we DARE you to face your fears and get your Goth on!
Simply read a CLASSIC book from your #CClist that you classify as thrilling, a mystery, or Gothic. It could even be a book or author that SCARES you (because of it’s length, it’s topic, it’s reputation etc).
Combine it with other challenges if you wish, such as R.I.P XIV.
Do you DARE? If so:
- Let us know what you’ve DARED yourself to read during OCTOBER in the comments below.
- If you want, create a post telling us why you chose this book as your DARE. Go into all the gory details about its scare factor and link it back here!
- When you’re finished, write about the book at your blog.
- Pop back at the end of October to share your DARE.
- Link your review in our REVIEW page.
- Feeling social? Tweet, fb or instagram about your DARE.
- #ccdare
- That’s it! 🙂
As always, our aim is to help you read more books from your #CClist in a fun, friendly way. Join in as little or as much as you like, it’s up to you. But for now, we hope you DARE to DARE!
The Classics Club 
I am not a person for scary books, although I did read The Mysteries of Udolpho, which some of you mention. As well as The Woman in White and the Moonstone. I did find a scary book at the library yesterday, of a kind I usually don’t read. So what was it that made me go for this one? Because there was a reference that the book had been compared to Henry James’ The Turning of the Screw, which I love. The book is The Woman in Black by Susan Hill.
It takes place, I think, it is not clear, in the beginning of the 20th century, out in the middle of nowhere. A young lawyer is sent to this deserted place to take care of the papers and what was left of Mrs Alice Drablow’s estate. The house is situated on an island, only accessible by a short bridge during low tide. Already at the funeral the lawyer sees the woman in black.
I would say it is a little bit of a traditional ghost story; old, dark house, lots of sounds, a swamp just outside, foggy days and nights, winds, darkness and of course a vision of the woman in black. It is all very well written, creating a ghostly atmosphere. And then the ending…! Spooky! Hopefully, I don’t dream about it tonight.
It is not on my classic list, but still something which is usually outside my comfort zone! It has been filmed with Daniel Radcliffe in the lead, and it has been on the theatre scene in London for 25 years. Have you heard about it? Me not.
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Hi! I’m the person who thought up the classics club originally, and who thought up the classics spins and put them into practice for their first several months here at the club. I’m also the person who thought up the original club dare linked within this post, which wasn’t such a great idea, apparently, so I don’t always suggest the good stuff. (I thought it was a good idea!!) 😛
Anyway, I had an idea!!! WHAT ABOUT a yearlong conversation for the club: break up all the titles on our club’s current “Big Book List” into thirteen sections, and discuss them now through November 2020 for a big Classics Club face-off! As in, as a club, we pick ONE WINNING TITLE from the entire list by December 2020. Which will be crowned… our favorite book? Or possibly the book we most can’t wait to read!!
Ha ha. I realize picking one is likely IMPOSSIBLE because they’re all so different and so are we! And also, the whole list would be severely edited if we all had our way (hint, hint, where is Vera Brittain). No list is perfect. And half of us haven’t even read most of the titles on the list. But the FUN would be in the conversation. Voting for what we can’t WAIT to read (Middlemarch!). Drumming up voters for our own favorite (go thee out and vote, citizens!) Championing our own favorites among those listed on the club’s Big Book List — a list intended to be representative of our own reading. Enthusing about what we can’t wait to read on the list. Going (if you prefer) with a professional assessment of which title belongs on the Western Canon and which don’t. DEBATING IT OUT. In the nicest most polite possible way.
And if you have no idea what any of the titles are, SAY SO. AND VOTE ANYWAY. The messier the better!!! (I’m a fan of creative mess.) 😛 I mean, if we actually pick one single winning title, that would be hilarious, but if we have a handful, that’s still a potentially GREAT conversation. As in, there’s no way to fail at this, even if in the end we have selected twenty titles that all tie because we can’t choose. Did discussions happen? THEN WE WIN! 😀
All the club moderators would need to do is post the list each month, as broken down below, and let clubbers battle it out in the comments here each month, (as well as at their own blogs, if they’re so inclined). I’m a fan of making this as easy on the moderators as possible, so I’m thinking let people vote in the comments here at the blog (for whatever reason they please) each month, and each month announce the “winner” of the prior month along with the next month’s list. For more awesome chatter!
People could vote however they please. No judgment or snobbery here (which I feel has been proven in spades since we founded the club. We’re ALL ABOUT fun & sharing our ideas.). People could choose to read/reread one title from the month’s list and make that their vote, or they could vote for the book they most WANT to read and even say why at their blog, or they could vote for the book they know on the list and love, or they could research the matter and get all “critics say” and “impact on society” about the matter. Or they could vote and say nothing. That’s two seconds of your time! 🙂 The potential for completely different conversations could be pretty big!
I’m ALL ABOUT no rules, so I say let people vote/participate however they please, and just tally up the messy votes at the end of each month in the spirit of smiles, fun, totally subjective championing (for example, in November 2018, Little Women is an auto-win-for me because ARE YOU KIDDING.)
Also, if we get a rare non-clubber in here voting, I say that’s totally fine. We’ll go with the honor system (if you’re a clubber, you can vote once each month) and leave it at that. This will keep the moderators from having to act as referees who have to police who can and cannot vote which, to my way of thinking, could become TEDIOUS TO THE EXTREME for them. The point is to have fun and talk about these titles. Being enthusiastic and VOCIFEROUS about the classics is the point. The ONLY rule is you HAVE to choose if you’re going to vote. You can’t vote for three in a month. You have to pick JUST ONE off the list each month to champion, whether you’ve read it or not. And saying why you picked that single one title each month could make for some pretty excellent posts at your place or here — AM I WRONG.
I have enough experience in the club to realize not everyone will like this idea. I’m an ENFP and therefore eternally imprecise, which is a constant strain on the black and white thinkers among us. But m’dears, wouldn’t you like to make a black and white choice among the following titles and champion THE MOST VOTED TITLE AND THEREFORE NUMBER ONE CLASSIC AMONG THE CLASSICS CLUBBERS??? It would be like the Great American Read only without credentials. 😀
Well, it’s an idea I toss out there because I see the Big Book List sitting there ripe to be torn apart, stacked, sorted, discussed, and dears, who better to do that than the ones reading these tomes and making some wholly biased and enthusiastic conclusions about them. The whole point of the club was to go elbow-deep and enthusiastic in a topic that many of us were newbies at in 2012. LET US THEREFORE GET OUR HANDS DIRTY. And be odiously imprecise.
And literally, you can base your vote on whatever you please. JUST PICK SOMETHING AND SAY THINGS MOST INVITING about WHY you’re picking that month’s title. Including, “It’s my favorite”, “I really want to read it and that’s my one reason,” “My mom says it’s the best”, or “I don’t know but Sherwood Anderson got no votes so I’m sending him one.” You can write ALL ABOUT IT at your blog if you like (no pressure to do that whatsoever), but you have to vote here at the blog IN THE COMMENTS FOR THAT MONTH’S LIST to have your vote count. Voting for that month ends on the 28th. Next list goes up on the 1st, or something like that. You can’t post, “Here’s a link to my post where I voted” because your moderators are only human, lads, and want to quickly go down the comments in a total of two minutes and tally and THAT IS ALL. You have to say PLAINLY in the comments here at the club which title you’re voting for each month. But you can also share a link to your post for your discussion, if you like. 🙂 Also you can’t vote twenty times. Just vote once each month. Conduct most becoming.
I say, if some crazy title no one has heard of ends up winning, we should most hastily have a group readalong. Oh!!! Or, we could do a readalong of the top five!! Okay, I’m getting too excited. Let’s just worry about the initial idea, which was picking out ONE FAVORITE among the 339 books on our Big Book List. 😀 But a readalong of the winner COULD BE FUN I’M JUST SAYING.
(I don’t currently have a blog, ergo I probably can’t vote, but this MIGHT SPUR ME ON LADS. And others.)
The proposed break-down:
November 2019
1. Abbott, Edwin: Flatland
2. Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart
3. Adams, Richard: Watership Down
4. Aeschylus: Oresteia
5. Albee, Edward: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
6. Alcott, Louisa May: Jo’s Boys, Little Men, Little Women
7. Allende, Isabel: The House of the Spirits, Stories of Eva Luna
8. Amis, Martin: London Fields
9. Anaya, Rudolfo: Bless Me, Ultima
10. Anderson, Sherwood: Winesburg, Ohio
11. Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
12. Anonymous: Beowulf, One Thousand and One Nights
13. Apuleius, Lucius: The Golden Ass
14. Aristophanes: Lysistrata
15. Aristophanes: The Frogs
16. Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics
17. Arlt, Robert: The Seven Madmen
18. Arnow, Harriette: The Dollmaker
19. Atwood, Margaret: Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, A Handmaid’s Tale
20. Aubrey, John: Brief Lives
21. Austen, Jane: Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
22. Azuela, Mariano: The Underdogs
23. Baldwin, James: Giovanni’s Room, Go Tell it on the Mountain
24. Balzac, Honore: The Black Sheep, Eugenie Grandet
25. Barrie, J.M.: Peter Pan
26. Baum, L. Frank: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
(Little Women!!! Not to sway the vote. OH BUT AUSTEN, CANNOT CHOOSE, FAINTS. Okay, Alcott. But seriously, Austen.) 😛
December 2019
27. Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot
28. Bellamy, Edward: Looking Backward
29. Bellow, Saul: The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Seize the Day
30. Bengtsson, Frans G.: The Long Ships
31. Bennett, Alan: The Uncommon Reader
32. Bernstein, Hilda: The World that was Ours
33. Boccaccio, Giovanni: The Decameron
34. Borges, Jorge Luis: The Aleph, Ficciones
35. Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles
36. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth: Lady Audley’s Secret
37. Bronte, Anne: Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
38. Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre, The Professor, Shirley, Villette
39. Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights
40. Brooks, Terry: The Sword of Shannara
41. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: Aurora Leigh
42. Buck, Pearl S.: The Good Earth
43. Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
44. Buchan, John: The Thirty-Nine Steps
45. Bunyan, John: Pilgrim’s Progress
46. Burgess, Anthony: A Clockwork Orange
47. Burke, Edmund: A Philosophical Enquiry
48. Burnett, Frances Hodgson: A Little Princess, The Making of a Marchioness, The Secret Garden, The Shuttle
49. Burney, Frances: Evelina
50. Burns, Olive: Cold Sassy Tree
51. Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes
52. Butler, Samuel: Erewhon, The Way of All Flesh
53. Byron, Lord: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Don Juan, Manfred
(HOW DO WE PICK A BRONTE??? Oh, I love The Pilgrim’s Progress, and it WAS mighty impactful… THE SECRET GARDEN. What is The Long Ships? If someone votes for that one I demand an explanation.)
January 2020
54. Calvino, Italo: If on a Winter’s Night a Stranger, Italian Folktales
55. Camus, Albert: The Fall, The Plague, The Stranger
56. Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland
57. Cather, Willa: Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia, O Pioneers!, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Shadows on the Rock, The Song of the Lark
58. Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury Tales
59. Chekhov, Anton: The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya
60. Chopin, Kate: The Awakening, Desiree’s Baby
61. Chukovskay, Lydia: Sofia Petrovna
62. Coetzee, J.M: Youth
63. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: Rime of the Ancient Mariner
64. Colette: Chéri, Gigi, Sido
65. Collins, Wilkie: Armadale, The Moonstone, No Name, The Woman in White
66. Collodi, Carlo: The Adventures of Pinocchio
67. Confucius: Analects
68. Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim
69. Cooper, James Fenimore: The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder
70. Crane, Stephen: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage
71. Dante: The Divine Comedy
72. Darwin, Charles: The Origin of Species
73. de Cervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote
74. de Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John: Letters from an American Farmer
75. de Laclos, Choderlos: Dangerous Liaisons
76. de Quincy, Thomas: Confessions of an English Opium Eater
77. de Sade, Marquis: The 120 Days of Sodom
78. de Saint-Exupery, Antoine: The Little Prince
79. Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe, Roxana
80. Descartes, Rene: Meditations on First Philosophy
(I want to say I VOTE FOR WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS BY COETZEE BECAUSE IT SHOULD BE ON THIS LIST but that could get messy. So I say we only vote on what’s actually on the list, but at the end of all this, we can have a discussion about what titles we feel are missing for the list, in say December 2020.)
February 2020
81. Dickens, Charles: Barnaby Rudge, Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick club, ATale of Two Cities
82. Dickens, Monica: The Winds of Heaven
83. Dickenson, Emily: The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
84. Djebar, Assie: Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
85. Dorr, David: Colored Man Round the World
86. Dostoevesky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Notes from the Underground
87. Douglass, Frederick: My Bondage and My Freedom, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
88. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Complete Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Lost World
89. Dreiser, Theodore: An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie
90. Du Maurier, Daphne: My Cousin Rachel, Rebecca
91. Dumas, Alexandre: The Black Tulip, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne
92. Durak, Mary: Kings in Grass Castles
93. Eco, Umberto: The Name of the Rose
94. Edgeworth, Maria: Belinda, Castle Rackrent
95. Eliot, George: Adam Bede, Daniel Deronda, Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner
96. Eliot, T.S.: The Complete Poems, Murder in the Cathedral, The Waste Land
97. Ellison, Ralph: The Invisible Man
98. Emerson, Ralph Waldo: Essays, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
99. Endo, Shusako, The Sea and Poison
100. Equiano, Olaudah: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
101. Euripedes: Electra, Medea, Orestes
102. Faulkner, William: Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying; The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion; Light in August; Sanctuary; The Sound and the Fury
103. Faulks, Sebastian: Birdsong
104. Ferrier, Susan: Marriage
105. Fielding, Henry: Joseph Andrews, Shamela, Tom Jones
106. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, The Last Tycoon, Tales of the Jazz Age, Tender is the Night, This Side of Paradise
(Yeah, that’s a Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Emerson, Eliot, Dickens FACE-OFF. I’m curious who will win. Oh, Frederick Douglass!! That might be my vote. I wonder if Holmes will win?) 😀
March 2020
107. Flaubert, Gustav: Madame Bovary
108. Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier, Parade’s End
109. Forster, E.M.: Howard’s End, Passage to India, A Room With a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread
110. Fowles, John: The Collector, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
111. Frank, Anne: The Diary of Anne Frank
112. Frank, Pat: Alas, Babylon
113. Franklin, Benjamin: 1726 Journal, Autobiography
114. Franklin, Miles: My Brilliant Career
115. Freud, Sigmund: The Interpretation of Dreams
116. Frost, Robert: Collected Poems, New Hampshire
117. Gaines, Ernest: A Lesson Before Dying
118. Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford, Mary Barton, North and South, Sylvia’s Lovers, Wives and Daughters
119. Gibbons, Stella: Cold Comfort Farm
120. Ginsberg, Allen: Howl and Other Poems
121. Glaspell, Susan: Fidelity
122. Goethe, Johann: Faust, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings
123. Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls, The Overcoast
124. Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
125. Gordon, Lucie Duff: Letters from Egypt
126. Greene, Graham: Brighton Rock, A Burnt-Out Case, The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, The Third Man, Travels with My Aunt
127. Grossmith, George and Weedon: The Diary of a Nobody
128. Haggard, H. R.: King Solomon’s Mines
129. Hamilton, Edith: Mythology
130. Hammett, Dashiel: The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man
131. Hamsun, Knut: Growth of the Soil, Hunger
132. Hansberry, Lorraine: A Raisin in the Sun
(Wow, the only ones I’ve read are Anne Frank and Ben Franklin. This vote could be INFORMATIVE.)
April 2020
133. Hardy, Thomas: Desperate Remedies, Far From the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Return of the Native, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Woodlanders
134. Hartley, L. P.: Eustace and Hilda, The Go-Between
135. Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Blithedale Romance, The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter
136. Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
137. Hellman, Lillian: The Little Foxes
138. Hemingway, Ernest: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Moveable Feast, The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, To Have and to Have Not
139. Henry, O: Collected Stories
140. Herbert, Xavier: Capricornia, Poor Fellow My Country
141. Hesse, Hermann: Siddhartha, Hesse, Hermann: Steppenwolf
142. Holtby, Winifred: South Riding
143. Homer: The Iliad, The Odyssey
144. Horace: Satires
145. Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables
146. Hume, David: A Treatise of Human Nature
147. Hurston, Zora Neale: Dust Tracks on a Road, Their Eyes Were Watching God
148. Huxley, Aldous: Antic Hay, Brave New World
149. Ibsen, Henrick: A Doll’s House, An Enemy of the People, The Master Builder
150. Imlay, Gilbert: The Emigrants
151. Irving, John: A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp
152. Irving, Washington: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle
153. Ishiguro, Kazuo: Never Let Me Go, The Remains of the Day
154. James, Henry: The Ambassadors, The Aspern Papers, The Bostonians, Daisy Miller, The Golden Bowl, The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, The Turn of the Screw, Washington Square, What Maisie Knew
155. Jerome, Jerome K: Three Men in a Boat
156. Jewett, Sarah Orne: The Country of the Pointed Firs
157. Johnson, Samuel: Dictionary of the English Language, The History of Rasselas, The Idler, The Plays of William Shakespeare
158. Jonson, Ben: The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, Volpone
(Lol, how did John Irving get on here? Didn’t he publish in the eighties or something? WELL IT COUNTS BECAUSE HE’S ON THE LIST. I have a weird feeling Holtby and Hemingway are going to go head-to-head. OH WAIT I JUST SAW LES MIS. Hardy will probably get some votes, and Hawthorne.)
May 2020
159. Joyce, James: The Dubliners, Finnegans Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
160. Kafka, Franz: The Metamorphosis, The Trial
161. Kawabata, Yasunari: Snow Country
162. Keats, John: Complete Poems
163. Keller, Helen: The Story of My Life
164. Kempe, Margery: The Book of Margery Kempe
165. Kerouac, Jack: On the Road
166. Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
167. Kipling, Rudyard: Kim, The Man Who Would Be King
168. Knowles, John: A Separate Peace
169. Lagerlöf, Selma: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
170. Laski, Marghanita: Little Boy Lost
171. Laurence, Margaret: The Stone Angel
172. Lawrence, D.H.: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love
173. Laxness, Halldór: Independent People, World Light
174. Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
175. Lermontov, Mikhail: A Hero of Our Time
176. Leroux, Gaston: The Phantom of Opera
177. Lewis, M.G: The Monk
178. Lewis, Sinclair: Arrowsmith, Babbitt, Elmer Gantry, Main Street
179. Lindsay, Joan: Picnic at Hanging Rock
180. Locke, John: Second Treatise of Government
181. London, Jack: The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, White Fang
182. Machiavelli, Niccolo: The Prince
183. Mackail, Denis: Greenery Street
184. Mailer, Norman: Armies of the Night, The Executioner’s Song, The Naked and the Dead
(Oh, The Stone Angel looks good. WILL ULYSSES WIN? I vote Harper Lee.)
June 2020
185. Malory, Sir Thomas: Le Morte d’Arthur
186. Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain
187. Mansfield, Katherine: The Garden Party & Other Stories, The Montana Stories, Selected Stories
188. Markandaya, Kamala: Nectar in a Sieve
189. Marlowe, Christopher: Doctor Faustus
190. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia: Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude
191. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto
192. Maturin, Charles: Melmoth the Wanderer
193. Maugham, W. Somerset: Of Human Bondage, The Painted Veil, The Razor’s Edge
194. Maupassant, Guy de: Bel-Ami, Selected Stories, Une Vie
195. McCullers, Carson: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
196. Melville, Herman: Bartleby the Scrivener, Billy Budd, Moby Dick, Typee
197. Mill, John Stuart: Utilitarianism
198. Millay, Edna St. Vincent: Collected Poems
199. Miller, Arthur: All My Sons, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, A View from the Bridge
200. Milton, John: Paradise Lost
201. Mishima, Yukio: The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea
202. Mitchell, David: Cloud Atlas
203. Mitchell, Margaret: Gone with the Wind
204. Moberg, Vilhelm: The Emigrants
205. Moliere: The Misanthrope
206. Montaigne, Michel de: Selected Essays
207. Montgomery, L.M.: Anne of Green Gables, Rilla of Ingleside
208. More, Thomas: Utopia
209. Morrison, Toni: Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Home, Jazz, The Song of Solomon, Sula
210. Muir, John: Writings on Nature
(I VOTE FOR GONE WITH THE WIND. Although Montaigne is also a favorite. OH, AND MONTGOMERY. It’d be interesting to see who wins. Just saw Morrison. She might take this.) 😀
July 2020
211. Mulisch, Harry: The Discovery of Heaven
212. Murakami, Haruki: Norwegian Wood
213. Nabokov, Vladimir: Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin
214. Nesbit, E: The Enchanted Castle
215. Nichol, James W.: The Stone Angel
216. Nietzsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
217. Niland, D’Arcy: The Shiralee
218. Henry: Collected Stories
219. O’Brien, Tim: The Things They Carried
220. O’Connor, Flannery: Everything that Rises must Converge, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Wise Blood
221. O’Neill, Jamie: At Swim, Two Boys
222. Orczy, Baroness: The Scarlet Pimpernel
223. Orwell, George: 1984, Animal Farm, Homage to Catalonia
224. Ovid: Metamorphoses
225. Paine, Thomas: Common Sense
226. Pamuk, Orhan: My Name is Red
227. Panter-Downes, Mollie: One Fine Day
228. Pascal, Blaise: Pensées
229. Pasternak, Boris: Doctor Zhivago
230. Paton, Alan: Cry, the Beloved Country
231. Peake, Mervyn: The Gormenghast Trilogy
232. Pepys, Samuel: Diary of Samuel Pepys
233. Plath, Sylvia: Ariel, The Bell Jar, The Journals of Sylvia Plath
234. Plato: The Trial and Death of Socrates
235. Plutarch: Moralia, Parallel Lives
236. Poe, Edgar Allan: Collected Stories and Poems
(PLATH!!!! Because that’s the only one I’ve read. Oh, except I’ve read Thomas Paine. I VOTE PAINE!!!) 😛
August 2020
237. Pope, Alexander: Dunciad, Eloisa to Abelard, An Essay on Criticism, An Essay on Man, The Rape of the Lock
238. Pound, Ezra: Personae: The Shorter Poems
239. Powell, Anthony: A Dance to the Music of Time
240. Proulx, Annie: The Shipping News
241. Proust, Marcel: Remembrance of Things Past, Swann’s Way
242. Pushkin, Alexander: The Bronze Horseman, Eugene Onegin, The Stone Guest, The Tales of Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin
243. Pyle, Howard: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights
244. Pym, Barbara: Excellent Women
245. Rabelais, Francois: Gargantua and Pantagruel
246. Radcliffe, Anne: The Italian, The Mysteries of Udolpho
247. Rand, Ayn: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, We the Living
248. Remarque, Erich Maria: All Quiet on the Western Front
249. Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea
250. Richardson, Henry Handel: The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
251. Richardson, Samuel: Clarissa, The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela
252. Robinson, Marilynne: Gilead, Housekeeping
253. Rolland, Romaine: Jean-Christophe
254. Rossetti, Christina: The Goblin Market and Other Poems, In the Bleak Midwinter
255. Rostand, Edmond: Cyrano de Bergerac
256. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: On the Social Contract
257. Rowson, Susanna: Charlotte Temple
258. Rushdie, Salman: Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses
259. Salgari, Emilio: The Pirates of Malaysia
260. Salinger, J.D.: The Catcher in the Rye; Franny and Zooey; Nine Stories; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction;
261. Sand, George: Consuelo
262. Sappho: Poems
(Pretty sure I’d pick All Quiet on the Western Front. I still haven’t read it, but I champion it.)
September 2020
264. Schreiner, Olive: The Story of an African Farm
265. Scott, Sir Walter: The Bride of Lammermoor, The Heart of Midlothian, Ivanhoe, The Lady of the Lake, Rob Roy, Waverly
266. Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
267. Seton, Anya: Katherine
268. Shakespeare, William: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Titus Andronicus, Trolius and Cressida, Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Winter’s Tale
269. Shaw, George Bernard: Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Saint Joan
270. Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
271. Shelley, Percy Bysshe: Collected Poems
272. Shikibu, Murasaki: The Tale of Genji
273. Shirer, William: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
274. Shonagon, Sei: The Pillow Book
275. Silko, Leslie Marmon: Ceremony
276. Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle
277. Smith, Betty: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
278. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: Cancer Ward, The First Circle, The Gulag Archipelago, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
279. Sophocles: Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus Rex
280. Soseki, Natsume: Kokoro, Light and Darkness
281. Spark, Muriel: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
282. Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row, East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, The Red Pony, Tortilla Flat, Travels with Charley in Search of America, The Winter of Our Discontent
283. Stendhal: The Charterhouse of Parma, The Red and the Black
284. Sterne, Laurence: The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy
285. Stevenson, Robert Louis: Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island
286. Stoker, Bram: Dracula
287. Stoppard, Tom: Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead
288. Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
289. Strachey, Julia: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
(Wow, Shakespeare? Steinbeck? Stowe? Dracula? FRANKENSTEIN? HOW TO CHOOSE???)
October 2020
290. Strachey, Lytton: Eminent Victorians
291. Stratton-Porter, Gene: Freckles, A Girl of the Limberlost
292. Streatfield, Noel: Ballet Shoes, Saplings
293. Swift, Jonathon: Gulliver’s Travels
294. Tennyson, Alfred: Idylls of the King
295. Thackeray, William Makepeace: Vanity Fair
296. Thiong’o, Ngugi wa: A Grain of Wheat
297. Thoreau, Henry David: Civil Disobedience, Walden
298. Tieck, Johann Ludwig: Wake not the Dead
299. Tolkien, J.R.R.: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings
300. Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, War and Peace
301. Trollope, Anthony: Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Last Chronicle of Barset, The Small House at Allington, The Warden, The Way We Live Now
302. Truth, Sojourner: Narrative of Sojourner Truth
303. Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons, First Love
304. Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, The Prince and the Pauper, Pudd’nhead Wilson, A Tramp Abroad
305. Tyler, Royall: The Algerine Captive
306. Tzu, Sun: The Art of War
307. Verne, Jules: Around the World in Eighty Days, From the Earth to the Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Mysterious Island, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
308. Virgil: The Aenid
309. Voltaire: Candide
310. Vonnegut, Kurt: The Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five
311. Walker, Alice: The Color Purple
312. Walpole, Horace: The Castle of Otranto
313. Watson, Winifred: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
314. Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, A Handful of Dush, Vile Bodies
315. Webster, John: The White Devil
(Right, so that’s a vote for Tolkien.)
November 2020
316. Welch, James: Riding the Earth Boy, Winter in the Blood
317. Wells, H.G.: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds
318. Werfel, Franz: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
319. West, Nathanael: Day of the Locust, Miss Lonelyhearts
320. Wharton, Edith: A Backward Glance-Autobiography
321. Wharton, Edith: The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers, The Custom of the Country, Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, Madame de Treymes, Roman Fever, Sanctuary, Stories of Old New York, Summer
322. Whipple, Dorothy: Greenbanks, Someone at a Distance, They Knew Mr. Knight
323. White, Patrick: The Tree of Man
324. White, T.H.: The Once and Future King
325. Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass
326. Whittier, John Greenleaf: Snow-Bound
327. Wilde, Oscar: An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray
328. Wilder, Thornton: Our Town
329. Williams, John: Stoner
330. Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Sweet Bird of Youth
331. Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
332. Woolf, Virginia: Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse
333. Wouk, Herman: The Winds of War
334. Wright, Richard: Native Son
335. Wyndham, John: The Day of the Triffids
336. Xueqin, Cao: Dream of the Red Chamber
337. Yeats, William Butler: Collected Poems, Irish Faerie Tales
338. Zamyatin, Yevgeny: We
339. Zola, Emile: Germinal, Nana, Therese Raquin
(Last list! I vote WOOLF! But how to pick a title A Room of One’s Own she says accidentally. Oops, just noticed Wharton.)
So each month, everyone votes ONCE within the comments at the club site. The moderators list the previous month’s winner when they post the next month’s list.
Or something like that. In December 2020, moderators list the final thirteen (or so, ties may happen) so clubbers can VOTE FOR THE #1 book!! Battle them out!! This is your club people!!!!! *sniffs her smelling salts*
In January 2021 moderators announce the final winning title(s) from the finalists or whatever ties we might have had, and open a discussion about which titles / authors we feel are missing our Big Book List (bearing in mind the list’s original purpose was not to make a declaration about what SHOULD be read, but merely to reflect the titles clubbers had actually selected to read in 2012 when the club began.)
If moderators want to then add some of those titles to our Big Book List, that’s encouraged, but this idea is in no way intended to create work for our moderators. A link to our discussions/debates about all these awesome titles on our Big Book list, as well as our final discussion about what’s missing from the list, would be mighty fine. 🙂
Obviously this is going to be a messy, personally biased discussion and the “winner” will be a reflection of who took part, who has read what, etc. But it would be SO FUN and could really inspire some great posts, discussions, arguments, and participation. In the words of 1994’s Jo March, “Let’s try it, shall we?”
(If no one likes this idea just stoically shake your head. I’ll take the hint.)
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I am referring to this list: https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/book-list/
I meant to link it above, but I guess the link didn’t work. 🙂
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* I meant 339 AUTHORS, (By the way, we’d be voting on titles, not authors. So if you favor Austen for November 2019’s list, you’d still have to pick a FAVORITE AUSTEN. I know. TOO HARD. Except Sense and Sensibility.)
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At the rate I’m going, I don’t know if I could commit to one a month! But this definitely seems like a great conversations starter.
I love the enthusiasm!
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Hi Max! Thanks! 😄 (I sense you know this, but in case ratification is necessary: I wasn’t anticipating people read a title each month from the lists above, unless they want to for a personal goal. I’m only suggesting we chat in the comments here each month about titles in that month’s section, & vote on the ONE we most want to read from that list — or the one from each month’s list we most love or recommend.)
I wouldn’t have the time to read one each month either. But if people wanted to that would be inspiring! ☺ I hope your studies are going well!
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Lol, predictive text!
*ratification=CLARIFICATION
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I honestly read the word “ratification” without a second thought about its appropriateness. But thank you for the clarification!
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😁
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I only just now saw this, but it sounds fun!
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My favorite Gothic novel is DEFINITELY The Mysteries of Udolpho. SCARY AND ATMOSPHERIC AND FILLED WITH MUCH UNPRECEDENTED FAINTING.
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I’m in! Am reading The Mysteries of Udolpho right now, though not sure about posting it at the end of October.. 😦
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I’m going with In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, not a mystery or thriller, but still fits the feel I think.
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Can I change my mind? I don’t think I’m up to In Cold Blook right now. Maybe Double Indemnity?
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Unfortunately you cannot change your mind. You are doomed to In Cold Blood. FOR ALL TIME.
(Just kidding. :P)
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That sounds terrible. 😉
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I’m already reading Dracula for R.I.P. so I’m in with that (and several other spooky classics)https://100greatestnovelsofalltimequest.blogspot.com/2019/09/rip-spook-inspired-reading-challenge.html
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I do have The Woman in White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins still on my list, so I DARE myself to read one of these gothic classics in October. Not sure I will finish by the end of month though, because I think they’re pretty long and I still have my Spin result Persuasion by Jane Austen to re-read first. But we’ll see how we go! Happy, spooky reading everyone! 🙂
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Hmm! I don’t really have any Goth or mysteries left on my classics club list so the only scary ones are the long ones. Might have to be the Decameron…
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The only relevant CC book I have is Sir Walter Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor,” which as far as I know has at least one murder in it, plus a bride driven to madness. So I’ll have to read that!
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