I Finished My Classics Club Challenge

In March 2012, I joined The Classics Club and pledged to read 50 books in five years.  At the time, I had just started blogging (in January) and was following The Well-Educated Mind reading list.  All of the books on the novel list were considered classics, and that was all I was reading.  Later I joined other challenges, too, and started reading three or four books at a time.  It was obvious that I would reach my goal in plenty of time; so I added twenty-five more books to my challenge.  Now I'm done!

Basically, I finished about 18 months sooner, and I could have kept going if I wanted to add another twenty-five books; but I think I am done.  Yay!

I'm glad I participated, and I had a lot of fun when I was more involved.  The best part was connecting with other book bloggers who were also reading the classics.  The Classics Club is a great challenge for people who usually do not read the classics, but would like to be encouraged to read more.

Here is a review of my list:

Titles with * are rereads.

NOVELS:

1.   Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes   Completed 3/24/12
2.  The Pilgrim's Progress * - John Bunyan  Completed 4/11/12

3.  Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift  Completed 4/28/12

4.  Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen  Completed 5/11/12

5.  Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens  Completed 5/31/12

6.  Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë  Completed 6/12/12

7.  The Scarlet Letter * - Nathaniel Hawthorne  Completed 6/29/12

8.  Moby-Dick - Herman Melville  Completed 7/18/12

9.  Uncle Tom's Cabin * - Harriet Beecher Stowe  Completed 7/31/12

10. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert  Completed 8/10/12

11. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky  Completed 9/9/12

12. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy  Completed 11/9/12

13. The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy  Completed 12/18/12

14. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James  Completed 1/27/13

15. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain  Completed 2/10/13

16. The Red Badge of Courage * - Stephen Crane  Completed 3/25/13

17. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad  Completed 4/13/13

18. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton  Completed 5/11/13

19. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald  Completed 5/30/13

20. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf  Completed 6/27/13

21. The Trial - Franz Kafka Completed 7/18/13

22. Native Son - Richard Wright Completed 8/19/13

23. The Stranger - Albert Camus  Completed 9/6/13

24. 1984 * - George Orwell  Completed 9/26/13

25. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison  Completed 11/10/13

26. Seize the Day - Saul Bellow  Completed 11/20/13

27. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez Completed 1/20/14

28. If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino  Completed 2/15/14

29. White Noise - Don DeLillo  Completed 3/26/14

30. Possession - A.S. Byatt  Completed 5/31/14

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS:

1.  The Confessions - Augustine  Completed 6/30/14

2.  The Book of Margery Kempe - Margery Kempe  Completed 7/20/14

3.  Essays - Michel De Montaigne  Completed 9/30/14

4.  The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself - Teresa of Ávila  Completed 11/25/14

5.  Meditations - René Descartes  Completed 12/20/14

6.  Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners - John Bunyan  Completed 2/6/15

7.  The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration - Mary Rowlandson  Completed 2/18/15

8.  Confessions - Jean-Jacques Rousseau  Completed 3/23/15

9.  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin  Completed 4/10/15

10. Walden * - Henry David Thoreau  Completed 5/18/15

SUPLEMENTAL LIST: These are classics that are not on the Well Educated Mind list, but I have read them in between WEM titles.  They are from my TBR list.

1.  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain Completed 3/1/13
2.  The Crucible - Arthur Miller  Completed 3/7/13
3.  The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien  Completed 4/2/13
4.  O Pioneers! - Willa Cather Completed 8/1/2013
5.  The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde Completed 8/25/13
6.  Persuasion*- Jane Austen Completed 2/20/15
7.  Frankenstein - Mary Shelley  Completed 10/28/13
8.  A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens  Completed 12/15/13
9.  Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell Completed 1/28/14
10. A Christmas Carol *- Charles Dickens Completed 12/20/13
11. Great Expectations  - Charles Dickens (2014)  Completed 2/16/14
12. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll  Completed 2/24/14
13. Candide - Voltaire  Completed 3/29/14
14. Germinal - Émile Zola  Completed 4/13/14
15. Arthurian Romances - Chrétien de Troyes  Completed 3/28/14
16. Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton  Completed 5/15/14
17. The Story of Sir Lancelot and His Champions - Howard Pyle  Completed 5/18/14
18. The Old Man and the Sea *- Ernest Hemingway  Completed 7/22/14
19. The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger Completed 8/3/14
20. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  Completed 9/23/14
21. The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur - Howard Pyle  Completed 10/28/14
22. The History of the Kings of Britain - Geoffrey of Monmouth Completed 9/29/14
23. Little Woman - Louisa May Alcott  Completed 10/31/14
24. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck  Completed 8/5/15
25. My Ántonia - Willa Cather  Completed 12/12/14
26. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy  Completed 12/28/14
27. The Fortune of the Rougons - Émile Zola  Completed 4/23/15
28. Lord of the Flies - William Golding  Completed 7/21/15
29. Beowulf - unknown/translated by J.R.R. Tolkien  Completed 1/4/15
30. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe  Completed 1/18/15
31. Dracula - Bram Stoker  Completed 10/1/15
32. East of Eden - John Steinbeck  Completed 2/23/15
33. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson Completed 6/7/15
34. The Voyage Out - Virginia Woolf  Completed 4/10/15
35. The Kill - Émile Zola  Completed 8/19/15