11.01.2010

That's Classic

I love to read. When I have the chance I can read a book a day. Most of the time life does not accommodate that however. When I am at home, working, trying to work out, blog and have time to sleep, the reading tends to wane a bit. However, I am always looking for new books to read and time to read them. Jess, one of the bloggers I follow, suggested Booksfree, where, like Netflix, you can get as many books as you want per month for a set fee. I personally usually just go to Goodwill and get the 50 cent paperbacks. I will read pretty much anything. When I travel I read whatever I can trade at the book exchanges, which are sometimes pretty slim pickings. To see some of the really bad books I have read over the last 6 months, you can go to my Goodreads page. I also just started using LibraryThing, which even lets you get free books to read as long as you do a thorough review.

What I really would like to do is try to read more classic books. Since I am traveling it has been really hard to get good books, or any books in English for that matter. Mr. Lovely bought a computer, so I decided to downloaded the Kindle for PC, which you can download to your computer (without having an actual Kindle) and then get FREE Classic (public domain) eBooks from Amazon which you can then read right on your computer. However, I have not really been doing it. It is a pain to open the computer just to read a book. I just haven’t done it.

In trying to find out what classics I should read, I found a list on the internet at the Cincinnati Library website to give me an idea of what I am missing and what I realized is I have actually read a few of these books, more than I thought I had. Out of the 40 odd books on this list, I think I have read 14.

Have you read any of these? What did you think? Do you have any you think should be added to this list? Which is your favorite? Do you have any book lovers tips?

All Quiet on the Western Front 1929 by Erich Maria Remarque
Beloved 1987 by Toni Morrison
The Best Short Stories 1945 by O. Henry
Brave New World 1932 by Aldous Huxley
The Call of the Wild 1903 by Jack London
Catch-22 1961 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye 1951 by J.D. Salinger
The Complete Sherlock Holmes 1936 by Arthur Conan Doyle
Crime and Punishment 1886 by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Cry, the Beloved Country 1948 by Alan Paton
Don Quixote 1612 by Miguel de Cervantes
Ethan Frome 1911 by Edith Wharton
Gone with the Wind 1936 by Margaret Mitchell
The Good Earth 1931 by Pearl S. Buck
The Grapes of Wrath 1939 by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness 1902 by Joseph Conrad
Invisible Man 1952 by Ralph Ellison
Jane Eyre 1847 by Charlotte Bronte
Lord of the Flies 1954 by William Golding
Moby Dick 1851 by Herman Melville
My Antonia 1918 by Willa Cather
Native Son 1940 by Richard Wright
Nineteen Eighty Four 1949 by George Orwell
Of Human Bondage 1915 by W. Somerset Maugham
Of Mice and Men 1937 by John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea 1952 by Ernest Hemingway
Pride and Prejudice 1813 by Jane Austen
The Red Badge of Courage 1895 by Stephen Crane
Robinson Crusoe 1719 by Daniel Defoe
The Scarlet Letter 1850 by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Separate Peace 1959 by John Knowles
Silas Marner 1861 by George Eliot
The Sound and the Fury 1929 by William Faulkner
The Stranger 1946 by Albert Camus
A Tale of Two Cities 1859 by Charles Dickens
Tales 1952 by Edgar Allan Poe
Tess of the D’Urbervilles 1891 by Thomas Hardy
Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston
To Kill a Mockingbird 1960 by Harper Lee
Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe
War and Peace 1889 by Leo Tolstoy
Winesburg, Ohio 1919 by Sherwood Anderson

3 comments:

  1. That's so funny -- we're doing "rediscovering the classics" for our winter reading and discussion group! You know which one is my favorite....but I also loved To Kill a Mockingbird and both Steinbeck books. I read many of the titles on the list in school. Faulkner was interesting but HARD. Always wanted to read My Antonia, Ethan Frome, and A Tale of Two Cities. I think this list needs more diversity, though. Too many old white men. I've often thought of going back and reading all the Nobel Prize winners.

    We did a survey and the #1 book that everyone wanted to read was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I'm going to have to try it!

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  2. I am currently making my way through the Newbury Medal winners :-)
    ~Ruth

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  3. I have read these:
    The Catcher in the Rye
    Don Quixote
    Ethan Frome
    The Scarlet Letter
    The Stranger (Karl made me read this)

    But I read them all in High School.

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