Joyfully Retired

Below is the list of books I will read over a five year period (by April 1, 2017). I started with the 55 books listed below. I expect to add a few more to the list. This is not a definitive list of The Classics. It’s simply the ones I want to read or reread.

I’ve arranged the list by the date written, although I’m not going to read them in order. As I go along I’ll add the date I finished reading each book. Also, when I’ve finished a book, I’ll post about it. Clicking on the title will take you to the posting for that book.

For more information or to join The Classics Club, click the button above.

Title and Author:                                                                                                    Date Completed:

1. The Odyssey by Homer    (8th century)                                                              April 1, 2012
2. Beowulf    (Somewhere between the 8th and early 11th centuries)                        January 18, 2013
3. Essays by Michael de Montaigne    (1580)
4. A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare    (1590s)
5. King Lear by William Shakespeare    (1603 & 1606)
6. Sonnets by William Shakespeare    (1609)
7. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes    (1612)
8. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift    (1726)
9. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin    (1790)
10. Lady Susan by Jane Austen     (1805)
11. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen     (1813)
12. Emma  by Jane Austen     (1815)
13. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte     (1847)
14. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens    (1850)
15. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman    (1855)
16. The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell   (1857)
17. The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins   (1859)
18. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens    (1861)
19. Silas Marner by George Elliot     (1861)
20. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell    (1864)
21. Poems by Emily Dickinson    (1868)
22. Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain    (1869)
23. An Old-fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott    (1870)
24. Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott     (1873)
25. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy    (1877)
26. A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain   (1889)
27. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle    (1891)
28. The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde    (1895)
29. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster  (1908)
30. Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey  (1912)
31. North of Boston by Robert Frost  (1914)
32. My Antonia by Willa Cather    (1918)                                                                   August 17,2012 
33. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway    (1920s)                                             February 28, 2012
34. The Professor’s House by Willa Cather    (1925)
35. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe     (1925)
36. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald    (1925)
37. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway   (1926)
38. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather    (1927)
39. Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder  (1927)
40. A Room of Ones Own by Virginia Woolf     (1929)
41. Cimarron by Edna Ferber    (1929)
42. Poems by Langston Hughes    (1930s)
43. The Door by Mary Rogers Rinehart  (1930)
44. The Red Pony by John Steinbeck   (1933)                                                              May 21, 2012
45. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston   (1937)
46. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier    (1938)
47. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck    (1939)
48. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith    (1943)
49. The Best Short Stories by O. Henry    (1945)
50. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis   (1950)
51. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952)                                                                  August 9, 2012
52.  Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin     (1953)
53. On the Road by Jack Kerouac  (1957)                                                                   August 16, 2012

I debated with myself on the cut-off date for the twentieth-century classics. I finally decided on 1959 – the year I graduated from high school. For me, everything prior to that date is classic. I’m giving myself permission to change that date in the future.