Table of Contents

So here's the deal. I'm not a real "words" person. With an English major mother and very creative storywriter sister and amazing songwriter brother, I am very aware of my shortfalls when it comes to language. I enjoy reading, but have never really pushed myself to read "hard stuff". Whenever I see a movie that is based on a book, I always try to go read that book. Well, obviously everyone else has the same idea because I'm always around 346th on the hold list at the library. So, not wanting to wait that long - or shell out the bucks to buy books I might never read again - I started thinking of other books I could read.

I remember in middle school/high school when my English teachers always handed out the "Classics List", or "Must Read in Order to Call Yourself Smart List" with a bunch of books that I've always considered boring or waaaay too long. Well, the time has come for me to deal with the boring and long and so I decided to read The List. Dun dun dun (scary suspense music). My local library has all the necessary items, even including a "Smart People Read These" list which they have titled "Classics in Fiction". So, I started with Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and will go pretty much alphabetically by author from there.

My goal is to realize that what I thought was boring and long when I was a wee child will now be rewarding and enlightening, even if it is a bit challenging. And also to be able to do the Jumble with my fam without being shunned. Time will tell!

Here's the list if you want to follow along with me!

A
Alain-Fournier: The Lost Domain (also known as Le Grand Meaulnes)
Alcott: Little Women
Austen: Emma
Austen: Mansfield Park
Austen: Persuasion
Austen: Pride and Prejudice

B
Balzac: Cousin Bette
Balzac: Eugenie Grendet
Bennett: The Old Wives' Tale
Bronte: Jane Eyre
Bronte: Shirley
Bronte: Wuthering Heights

C
Camus: The Plague
Camus: The Stranger
Cather: My Antonia
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Collins: The Moonstone
Collins: The Woman in White
Conrad: The Heart of Darkness
Conrad: Lord Jim
Conrad: Nostromo
Crane: The Red Badge of Courage

D
Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
Dickens: Bleak House
Dickens: David Copperfield
Dickens: Great Expectations
Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit
Dickens: Oliver Twist
Dickens: The Pickwick Papers
Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky: The Idiot
Doyle: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas: The Three Musketeers

E
Eliot: Adam Bede
Eliot: Middlemarch

F
Fielding: Joseph Andrews
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Forster: A Passage to India
Flaubert: Madame Bovary

G
Gaskell: Mary Barton
Gaskell: North and South
Gaskell: Wives and Daughters
Gide: The Counterfeiters

H
Hardy: Far From the Madding Crowd
Hardy: Jude the Obscure
Hardy: The Mayer of Casterbridge
Hardy: Tess of the D'Ubervilles
Hasek: The Good Soldier Svejk
Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables
Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea
Henry: Short Stories
Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi)
Hesse: Siddartha
Hudson: Green Mansions
Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hugo: Les Miserables
Huxley: Brave New World

J
James: The Golden Bowl
James: Portrait of a Lady
James: The Tragic Muse
James: Washington Square
James: Wings of the Dove
Joyce: Ulysses

K
Kafka: The Trial

L
Lawrence: The Rainbow
Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
Lawrence: Women in Love
London: Call of the Wild

M
Mann: The Magic Mountain
Manzoni: The Betrothed
Maugham: Of Human Bondage
Maupassant: Short Stories
Melville: Moby Dick

O
Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Orwell: 1984

P
Poe: Short Stories
Proust: Remembrance of Things Past

R
Richardson: Pamela

S
Scott: Ivanhoe
Smollett: Roderick Random
Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck: East of Eden
Sterne: Tristram Shandy
Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift: Gulliver's Travels

T
Thackeray: Vanity Fair
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Tolstoy: War and Peace
Trollope: Barchester Towers
Trollope: The Warden
Turgenev: Fathers and Sons
Twain: Huckleberry Finn
Twain: Tom Sawyer

W
Wharton: Ethan Frome
Woolf: To the Lighthouse