With my first Classics Club list complete, it’s time for another. This time it was easy, as I used unfinished books from my first one. So without further ado, here is my second Classics Club List with 50 books to read from November 30, 2018 to November 29, 2023!
Ancients (5000 B.C. – A.D. 400):
The Republic (380 B.C.) – Plato
Aristotle, Ethics (330 B.C.) – Aristotle
Lives (75) – Plutarch
The Twelve Ceasars (121) – Suetonius
Meditations (170-180) – Marcus Aurelius
Address to Young Men (363) – Saint Basil
Medieval/Early Renaissance (400 – 1600 A.D.):
The City of God (426) – Augustine
The Consolation of Philosophy (524) – Boethius
Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) – Bede
The Decameron (1353) – Giovanni Boccaccio
On the Imitation of Christ (1418-1427) – Thomas à Kempis
The Praise of Folly (1509) – Eramus
The Prince (1513) – Niccolo Machiavelli
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-1564) – François Rabelais
The Faerie Queene (1590-1596) – Edmund Spenser
Late Renaissance/Early Modern (1600 – 1850 A.D.):
Richard III (1592) – William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice (1596-1598) – William Shakespeare
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607-1608) – William Shakespeare
Pensées (1669) – Blaise Pascal
Tartuffe (1669) – Molière
The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) – John Bunyan
Moll Flanders (1722) – Daniel Defoe
She Stoops to Conquer (1773) – Oliver Goldsmith
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1775) – Samuel Johnson
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) – Ann Radcliffe
Ivanhoe (1820) – Sir Walter Scott
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) – Victor Hugo
Dead Souls (1842) – Nikolai Gogol
Mary Barton (1848) – Elizabeth Gaskell
Shirley (1849) – Charlotte Brontë
Modern (1850 – Present):
Moby Dick (1851) – Herman Melville
Bleak House (1852/53) – Charles Dickens
The Professor (1857) – Charlotte Brontë
The Mill on the Floss (1860) – George Eliot
Great Expectations (1860/61) – Charles Dickens
Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) – Jules Verne
Wives and Daughters (1864/66) – Elizabeth Gaskell
Crime and Punishment (1866) – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Tom Sawyer (1876) – Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn (1884) – Mark Twain
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) – Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped (1886) – Robert Louis Stevenson
Tevye the Dairyman and Moti the Cantor’s Son (1894) – Sholem Aleichem
The Good Soldier Svejk (1923) – Jaroslav Hasek
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) – John Steinbeck
The Stranger (1942) – Albert Camus
Animal Farm (1945) – George Orwell
1984 (1949) – George Orwell
The Lord of the Flies (1954) – William Golding
One Day in the LIfe of Ivan Denisovitch (1962) – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Most of the reading for my first Classics Club list was done in the first three years, however in the last two years my reading time has diminished. I’ll have to be more focussed with this list to make sure I complete it on time. Wish me luck! And for those of you who are curious about The Classics Club, please check it out! It’s helped me read many more classics than I would have without it!
So many greats on this list… you can do it!! 🙂 Commitments scare me, though I keep thinking of trying this some time, just to plough through some of the intimidating books (*cough* Crime and Punishment).
You read enough classics you should be able to do it. If it wasn’t over 5 years, it would intimidate me too. That said, some people just like to meander where the whim takes them, which can be me as well. I find a list give me balance and a little structure but they aren’t for everyone.
Looks great! Good luck 🙂
Thanks! A good dose of luck and perseverance and I hope to accomplish it!
Congratulation on completing your first list. Admire your commitment and persistence. Love your list for the next five years. I think that is what makes it more doable, plus allows for what are you in the mood for type of reads. Hubby just finished One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch and enjoyed it. Wants me to read it. Best of luck and will be following your progress.
Thanks, Robin! I enjoyed the period split the first time so I thought I’d continue it. One Day … is one of the books I’m really looking forward to. I’ll be interested to hear what you think of it if you read it. Great to chat with you again! My 52 books went out the window this year but I’m hoping to get on track for next!
That’s a good-looking list! Best of luck in enjoying those!
Yes, it will be good for my lifestyle now but I hope with my third list I can add some more obscure titles. Both you and O’s reading path is one to aspire to! 🙂
I finish my first Classics list at the end of this year & I’m going to look over my bookshelves with the aim of reading through many I already have. Of course, I suspect I’ll add in other books I don’t have yet!
That’s great that we both finished almost together! That’s a great idea to put together a list of books you own. Perhaps I’ll do this with my third list.
How did you decided your classic lists?
I split the eras into the four I have listed. I also had some authors that I was keen on reading such as Shakespeare, Zola, etc., and other authors whose works I’d read but there were other works I hadn’t. So I dumped those books/plays/poetry onto a draft list. Then I sorted through and tried to balance out the eras, filling in with extra books as I went. Of course, the ancients ended up being shorter but their works are often more difficult so I think I achieved a good balance at the end. Sounds crazy, but I’m already mulling over my third list! 😛
Hmmm…that sounds interesting…
Looks like a great list, though I do find the first half a bit intimidating…! But some good books on there and some I have on my own list. Good luck!
I don’t think it’s as intimidating as the last one. There are a few biggies on here though. I should probably get to them straight off, lol! 😀 Thanks for the wishes!