Hello everyone!
I’ve always wanted to read the books considered the “classics” by the literary world. Its an ambitious quest and I know the desire comes from being an English Lit major. I love stories and want to read as many of them as I can. I’ve challenged myself to read the 100 novels Penguin Random House considers to be classics. I’ll link the list I’m using down below.
So, what makes a classic? None of these books on the list are from the 21st century and they’re mostly written by men. I’m hoping that after reading all 100 I’ll have a better understanding of why these stories are considered classics. From what I’ve gathered so far, these stories seem to follow the literary trends of the 19th and 20th centuries and have themes and plots that reflect the lives of the people in their stories.
That being said, this is going to be a huge project. I don’t anticipate finishing it before the year ends, but I’m going to try and read as many as possible, while still reading the other books on my tbr. This series of posts will be a little different than my monthly reading recaps. I will mention each book that is read during the month and give a little blurb about it, but the in-depth analysis, opinions and rating will come in the specific recaps of the classics; every 10 books will get a recap. They are not going to be read in any particular order, I’m just starting with the books I have and working away. My plan is to read what I own and supplement the missing titles with Project Gutenberg , the library and purchasing novels if I must. In case you didn't know, Project Gutenberg provides free ebooks as a means to digitalize books to make them more accessible to everyone. They currently provide over 60,000 titles through their website for download.
I’m really excited to start this challenge and hope to persuade you to read more classics as well.
Until the next post!
Links:
List of 100 books: https://www.quora.com/Can-someone-create-a-list-of-books-that-are-considered-the-classics-of-our-century
The Gutenberg Project: https://www.gutenberg.org/
Once you're done with all 100, will you be making a top 10 list of your favorites? Ya know, for those of us who do not have the will power to read all 100?