Having just joined The Classics Club, this is to announce the first few books of what will eventually be a list of 50 classics. My goal is to read 50 titles in 60 months...and I'm a slow reader so I'll have to get going soon. I've chosen authors more than titles at this point so please suggest works you've loved by these writers. I sense a definite 18th and 19th century French streak...not sure why, I've just wanted to read or re-read some of these authors. So here's the first stab at a list of Lescaut's classics...
1. The Red and the Black
2. Montaigne's essays
3. Just So Stories
4. The Soul of a New Machine
5. Siddhartha
6. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
7. Candide
8. Tartuffe
9. Something by Montesquieu
10. Something by Zola
11. Something by Balzac...I heard he wrote about food.
12. The Great Gatsby
13. The Reivers
14. Madame Bovary
15. Emma
16. Something by Wharton
17. All Quiet on the Western Front
18. Something by P.G. Wodehouse
19. Breakfast at Tiffany's
20. Something by Thurber
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude
22. Silas Marner
23. All Quiet on the Western Front
24. Uncle Tom's Cabin
25. Babbitt
26. Paul's Letters, New Testament
27. Augustine's writing
28. Sappho
29. Euripedes Medea
30. Plutarch's Lives
31. Hitty: Her First Hundred Years
32. The Knight's Tale in Canterbury Tales
33. Dorothy Parker
34. Simone de Beauvoir
35. The Feminine Mystique
36. The Portrait of Dorian Gray
37. Fifth Business
38. Confucius
39. The Charioteer
40. Palace Walk
41. The Adventures of Augie March
42. Zorba the Greek
43. Trinity
44. An Essay on Man
45. The Tale of Genji
46. Studs Lonigan
47. Working
48. The Water's Wide
49. Jerry Engels
50. The Tastemakers
Great list -- We overlap in a couple of places, like The Great Gatsby. I am really impressed with taking on Augustine. I remember that being a BEAR in college! I'm planning to do Edith Wharton's Ghost Stories one October.
ReplyDeleteFascinating list. I can recommend Age of Innocence and House of Mirth for Wharton. I've started Germinal by Zola but also have Nana on my list.
ReplyDeleteI recommend joining in the club readalongs and spins as a way of keeping on track with your list and making new friends - good luck!
Thank you for the recommendations. You are the second to suggest House of Mirth so it's going on the list. For Zola, there's a little known title called Pot Bouille, one in a series outlined in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Rougon-Macquart) I was thinking of trying that one -- like The Red and the Black, but 50 years later, it is social commentary on French bourgeoisie.
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