In this post, I spoke about my New Year’s Resolution: to read 30 classic novels—or at least attempt to read them—in order to work through my bookshelf. Collecting books is a beautiful thing, but that’s only half the fun; the magic is in reading them!
I said I would post my reading list when it was assembled, however there has been a change.
The original plan was to read 30. While planning my reading list, I took into account the length of some of these books and the time I will have available. I also reminded myself that, following the death of my grandmother, I’ve been having problems sitting down to focus on a book.
The number has therefore been lowered to 25, and I’m not going to beat myself up over it if I can’t read them all. The point is to be trying.
I have already finished the first book on the list—it was The Mayor of Casterbridge, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. A post about the novel will follow. I took copious notes of the first chapters but stopped halfway through, when the book became too gripping to jot my thoughts every ten pages.
Here, then, is the list. The books are to be read in no particular order, and I have chosen these titles on the basis of owning them; there is no theme, even though you can tell classic literature is my favorite category. Also, some of these books are novellas or anthologies; they are thick books I haven’t gotten through yet.
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Dubliners by James Joyce
- Heart of Darkness & Other Stories by Joseph Conrad
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- The Sagas of Icelanders (anthology of folklore)
- Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- Tess of the d’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
Russian Fairy Stories (anthology of folklore)The Story of King Arthur and His Knights- The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
- Sons and Daughters by D.H. Lawrence
- Adam Bede by George Eliot
- My Antonia by Willa Cather
- The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- TBA
I have left one spot empty because I know myself, and I know a classic will pop up sometime in July or September that should be in this list.
I am not limiting this year’s reading to the books listed above. I’m positive there are other lighter works that will provide modern respite. The point of this challenge, in the end, is to make progress, know literary history, and develop my vocabulary. Most of all, I look forward to doing something I enjoy. Reading old books has always been a favorite pastime of mine.
Have you set any goals this year? What are they?
Mariella Hunt 
6 thoughts on “The 2019 Reading List”