The Classics Club: In Which I Finish My Second Classics Club List and Begin My Third

 "Read the best books first, 

or you may not have a chance to read them at all."

                ---Thoreau

What is the Classics Club? From the blog:

• Choose 50+ classics.
• List them at your blog.
• Choose a reading completion goal date up to five years in the future and note that date on your classics list of 50+ titles.
• E-mail the moderators of this blog (theclassicsclubblog@gmail.com) with your list link and information and it will be posted on the Members Page.
• Write about each title on your list as you finish reading it, and link it to your main list
• When you’ve written about every single title, let the club know.

I am now finished with my second list. I began it in May of 2019, and I finished it at the end of March of 2021. That's almost two years to complete these fifty books. 

I struggled with this list a bit. There were several books found I really didn't like. It was hard to finish these. They included classic science fiction novel We; Introduction to French Poetry; and French Fairy Tales. 

On the other hand, I read lots of great books that are now favorites. These include Moby Dick; The Girl of the Limberlost; Main Street; Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love; Tom Brown's Schooldays; and War and Peace.

Here is a list of 100+ books I plan to use to draw from to read my third Classics Club list:

TITLE	AUTHOR	PUB	GENRE	PAGE #
Adventures of the Wishing-Chair	Blyton, Enid	1937	Children's	528 pages
Agnes Gray	Bronte, Emily	1847	Novel	256 pages
All Quiet On the Western Front	Remarque, Erich Maria	1929	Novel	200 pages
Art of Eating	Fisher, M.K.F.	1954	Cooking	784 pages
Babbitt	Lewis, Sinclair	1922	Novel	432 pages
Baron in the Trees, The	Calvino, Italo	1957	Novel	320 pages
Big Sleep, The	Chandler, Raymond	1939	Mystery	277 pages
Brothers Karamazov, The	Dostoevsky, Fyodor	1880	Novel	840 pages
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West	Brown, Dee	1970	History	487 pages
Captain Fracasse	Gautier, Theophile	1863	Children's	146 pages
Complete Stories: Fairy Tales of Fear and Trembling	Kafka, Franz	1924	Short stories	487 pages
Country of the Pointed Firs, The	Jewett, Sarah Orne	1896	Novel	88 pages
Crime and Punishment	Dostoevsky, Fyodor	1866	Novel	576 pages
Custom of the Country, The	Wharton, Edith	1913	Novel	224 pages
Cue for Treason	Trease, Geoffrey	1940	Children's	305 pages
David Copperfield	Dickens, Charles	1849	Novel	624 pages
Death of the Heart, The	Bowen, Elizabeth	1938	Novel	418 pages
Diary of a Provencial Lady	Delafield, E. M.	1930	Fiction	134 pages
Decameron, The	Boccaccio, Giovanni	1353	Short stories	554 pages
Divine Comedy, The	Alighieri, Dante	1320	Poetry	857 pages
Drowned World, The	Ballard, J. G.	1962	Sci fiction	158 pages
Dubliners	Joyce, James	1914	Short stories	152 pages
Elizabeth and Her German Garden	von Arnim, Elizabeth	1898	Memoir	139 pages
End of the Affair	Greene, Graham	1951	Fiction	237 pages
Essays in Idleness	Kenko	1332	Memoir	120 pages
Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse	Pushkin, Alexander	1831	Poetry	288 pages
Fat and the Thin, The	Zola, Emile	1873	Novel	263 pages
Favorite Folktales from Around the World	Yolen, Jane, ed.	1986	Folktales	514 pages
Glass Bead Game, The	Hesse, Hermann	1943	Novel	250 pages
Glimpses of the Moon, The	Wharton, Edith	1922	Novel	336 pages
Guns of August, The	Tuchman, Barbara A.	1962	History	511 pages
Heat of the Day, The	Bowen, Elizabeth	1948	Fiction	372 pages
High Wind in Jamaica, A	Hughes, Richard	1928	Novel	283 pages
Hills is Lonely, The	Beckwith, Lillian	1959	Memoir	240 pages
History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, The	Fielding, Henry	1749	Novel	700 pages
Hunchback of Notre-Dame, The	Hugo, Victor	1831	Novel	351 pages
Hunger	Hamsun, Knut	1891	Novel	132 pages
I Married Adventure	Johnston, Osa	1940	Travel	432 pages
If This is a Man	Levi, Primo	1947	Memoir	179 pages
Invisible Man	Ellison, Ralph	1952	Novel	460 pages
Jock of the Bushveld	FitzPatrick, J. Percy	1907	Children's	475 pages
Jungle Tales	Quiroga, Horatio	1918	Children's	73 pages
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath	Undset, Sigrid	1920	Novel	338 pages
Light in August	Faulkner, William	1932	Novel	480 pages
Little Tour in France, A	James, Henry	1885	Travel	255 pages
Long Day’s Journey into Night	O'Neill, Eugene	1956	Play	280 pages
Lost Horizon	Hilton, James	1933	Novel	272 pages
Love in a Cold Climate	Mitford, Nancy	1949	Novel	284 pages
Lucky Jim	Amis, Kingsley	1954	Novel	251 pages
Madame de Treymes	Wharton, Edith	1906	Novel	90 pages
Man and Superman	Shaw, George Bernard	1903	Play	208 pages
Man's Search for Meaning	Frankl, Viktor	1946	Philosophy	192 pages
Mary Barton	Gaskell, Elizabeth	1848	Novel	464 pages
Mayor of Casterbridge	Hardy, Thomas	1886	Novel	400 pages
Middlemarch	Eliot, George	1871	Novel	848 pages
Mistress Masham's Repose	White, T. H.	1946	Children's	260 pages
My First Summer in the Sierra	Muir, John	1911	Travel; Nature	146 pages
Mystery of the Yellow Room	Leroux, Gaston	1907	Mystery	236 pages
Nana	Zola, Emile	1889	Novel	387 pages
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave	Douglass, Frederick	1845	Memoir	160 pages
Native Son	Wright, Richard	1940	Novel	544 pages
Notes from Underground	Dostoevsky, Fyodor	1864	Novel	154 pages
Of Human Bondage	Maugham, W. Somerset	1915	Novel	658 pages
Oranges	McPhee, John	1967	Nonfiction	160 pages
Otterbury Incident, The	Day-Lewis, Cecil	1948	Children's	160 pages
Out of the Silent Planet	Lewis, C. S.	1943	Science fiction	160 pages
Outermost House, The	Beston, Henry	1928	Travel	222 pages
Parnassus on Wheels	Morley, Christopher	1917	Novel	108 pages
Pillow Book, The	Shonagon, Sei	1002	Memoir	416 pages
Pigeon Post	Ransome, Arthur	1936	Children's	433 pages
Pony for Jean, A	Cannan, Joanna	1937	Children's	156 pages
Portable Dorothy Parker, The	Parker, Dorothy	1944	Essays	656 pages
Prince and the Pauper, The	Twain, Mark	1881	Children's	176 pages
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero	Sienkiewicz, Henryk	1896	Historical fiction	282 pages
Razor's Edge, The	Maugham, W. Somerset	1944	Fiction	314 pages
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm	Wiggin, Kate Douglas	1903	Children's	309 pages
Scarlet Letter, The	Hawthorne, Nathaniel	1850	Novel	272 pages
Semi-Attached Couple, The	Eden, Emily	1860	Novel	208 pages
Siddhartha	Hesse, Hermann	1922	Novel	152 pages
Sound of Waves, The	Mishima, Yukio	1954	Novel	192 pages
Story of My Life, The	Keller, Helen	1903	Memoir	417 pages
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The	Stevenson, Robert Louis	1886	Novel	141 pages
Tale of Genji, The	Amano, Yoshitaka	1008	Fiction	1300 pages
Tale of Two Cities, A	Dickens, Charles	1859	Fiction	307 pages
Tales of Otogizoshi	Dazai, Osamu	1392	Novel	123 pages
Tarka the Otter	Williamson, Henry	1927	Children's	288 pages
Three Musketeers, The	Dumas, Alexandre	1844	Novel	700 pages
Thurber Carnival, The	Thurber, James	1945	Humor	448 pages
Tin Drum, The	Grass, Gunter	1959	Novel	576 pages
Travels in Asia and Africa	Battuta, Ibn	1340	Travel	270 pages
Trial, The	Kafka, Franz	1915	Novel	119 pages
Vanity Fair	Thackeray, William Makepeace	1847	Novel	628 pages
Washington Square	James, Henry	1881	Novel	248 pages
Way of All Flesh, The	Butler, Samuel	1903	Novel	360 pages
Where Angels Fear to Tread	Forster, E. M.	1905	Novel	128 pages
Wind, Sand, and Stars	de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine	1939	Memoir	239 pages
Winesburg, Ohio	Anderson, Sherwood	1919	Short stories	160 pages
Winter’s Tale, The	Shakespeare, William	1611	Play	160 pages
Wives and Daughters	Gaskell, Elizabeth	1864	Novel	583 pages
Woman in White, The	Collins, Wilkie	1959	Mystery	682 pages
Yellow Wallpaper, The	Gilman, Charlotte Perkins	1892	Novel	38 pages
Zen and Zen Classics	Blyth, R. H.	1960	Philosophy	126 pages

I tried to include a mix of adult fiction with children's fiction as well as plays, philosophy, travel, humor, mystery, science fiction, short stories, poetry, memoir, and historical fiction. The oldest book on my list is The Divine Comedy, published in 1320. I tried to include some diverse works as well as books from the traditional classics canon. Many of these books were recommendations from other bloggers, and I thank you for those.

Thoughts?