Another year, another new reading project; but this one is for the long term. The Classics Club is a blogging initiative that works like this: make a list of at least fifty classic books (in this case, ‘classic’ means at least 25 years old; the rest is up to the selector); set yourself a deadline of up to five years; read and blog about those books in that timeframe. I first caught on to the idea when JacquiWine announced last month that she would be joining in. It sounded fun, but I was a bit reticent about taking the plunge myself: not that I couldn’t make that big a list, or read that many books in five years; it was just the idea of ‘pinning down’ my reading to that extent.

But then I started thinking about all the books I might choose; and I realised that, if I selected books in the right way, I wouldn’t be able to resist. There would be no point in (say) filling a list with all the 19th century novels I didn’t read at school, because that simply isn’t the direction I want to read in. So my list leans more heavily towards the twentieth century.

I set myself three rules: no authors I’d read before; no more than one title per author; and at least half of the books would be by women. I put the list together from books I already had; books in the local library; lists found online and elsewhere; names I’d heard recommended by trusted sources; specific recommendations from Twitter. Thanks to everyone who helped me compile this list, whether they know it or not:

  1. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
  2. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
  3. Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard
  4. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
  5. Go When You See the Green Man Walking by Christine Brooke-Rose
  6. The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy
  7. The Old Man and His Sons by Heðin Brú
  8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
  9. The Square by Choi In-hun
  10. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
  11. The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras
  12. The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
  13. Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame
  14. Sphinx by Anne Garréta
  15. Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke
  16. The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower
  17. When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head
  18. Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain
  19. Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
  20. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
  21. Ice by Anna Kavan
  22. Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata
  23. Tainaron by Leena Krohn
  24. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
  25. Nada by Carmen Laforet
  26. Passing by Nella Larsen
  27. Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
  28. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  29. A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
  30. The Shiralee by D’Arcy Niland
  31. The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain
  32. A Void by Georges Perec
  33. Berg by Ann Quin
  34. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
  35. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
  36. Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin
  37. Transit by Anna Seghers
  38. Moses Ascending by Sam Selvon
  39. Leg Over Leg by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
  40. The Crow Eaters by Bapsi Sidhwa
  41. The Palace by Claude Simon
  42. A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov
  43. The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
  44. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
  45. The Door by Magda Szabó
  46. A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor
  47. The Dark Philosophers by Gwyn Thomas
  48. Kaalam by M.T. Vasudevan Nair
  49. Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch
  50. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

I’m going to give myself the full five years to work through these (so that’s 31 December 2020); but could still finish sooner. My  plan is to choose one at random to read each month, with the option of reading more if I wish. This month will be an exception, because I already know that I’m going to start with Mrs Dalloway (and that’s because of a different project, which I’ll go into when the time comes).

I’ve created a separate page on the blog here to keep track of my progress. My hope is that this list will become a seed which enables my reading to sprout off in many fruitful directions, and I look forward to sharing the results with you in the months and years ahead.