My Reading List for The Classics Club

Some of you will be very familiar with The Classics Club, but if it’s new to you, there’s some more information about it here. It’s a way of uniting people who like to read and write about classic literature as part of the range of books they cover on their own blogs.

Classics Club members are invited to put together a list of at least 50 classics they intend to read and blog about at some point within the next five years. The structure allows for some flexibility – each member can set their own end date provided it’s within five years. Also, the definition of what constitutes a “classic” is fairly relaxed – as long as the member feels the book meets the guidelines for their list, he or she is free to include it. All books need to be old, i.e. first published at least twenty-years ago – apart from that, the definition is pretty flexible.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a list of fifty classics that I would like to read by December 2018. (I’ll be reading other books as well, so this list will run alongside my other reading choices.) Most of these books having been hanging around on my shelves for a few years, but I’ve also added a handful of new ones to freshen things up a little. There are twenty-five classics by women writers on my list, which gives me a 50:50 split between male and female authors. All the titles on my list are 20^th-century classics as these are the books I tend to enjoy the most.

Here is my list (A-Z by author). I’ve tried to include a few translations alongside British and American Classics, plus some short story collections and classic noir for a bit of variety. None of these books are rereads.

1. Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
2. They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy + an additional post on the politics and history
3. A Legacy by Sybille Bedford
4. The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
5. Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain
6. The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
7. My Ántonia by Willa Cather
8. The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate
9. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
10. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
11. An Evening with Claire by Gaito Gazdanov
12. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
13. Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
14. The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
15. Vain Shadow by Jane Hervey
16. Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith
17. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes
18. The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue
19. Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
20. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
21. The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata
22. The Adventures of Sindbad by Gyula Krudy
23. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
24. Passing by Nella Larsen
25. The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning
26. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
27. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
28. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
29. One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
30. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
31. Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
32. Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth
33. A Certain Smile by Françoise Sagan
34. Improper Stories by Saki
35. The Widow by Georges Simenon
36. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
37. The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
38. The Gate by Natsume Soseki
39. Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb
40. A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
41. A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
42. Spring Night by Tarjei Vesaas
43. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
44. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
45. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
46. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
47. Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
48. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates
49. The Burning of the World by Béla Zombory-Moldován
50. Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig

Do you have any thoughts on my list? Have you read any of these books?

Update – March 2016: I keep coming across more books that will fit my definition of a ‘modern classic’ so I’m going to add them to the list as I read them:

• Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler
• Eve’s Hollywood by Eve Babitz
• An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge
• The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
• Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
• Marie by Madeleine Bourdouxhe
• The Hotel by Elizabeth Bowen
• King of a Rainy Country by Brigid Brophy
• A Start in Life by Anita Brookner
• Providence by Anita Brookner
• Death in the Tunnel by Miles Burton
• The High Window by Raymond Chandler
• Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze
• The Executioner Weeps by Frédéric Dard
• Les Belles Amours by Louise de Vilmorin
• The White Album by Joan Didion
• The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
• Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
• The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald
• The Widow’s Children by Paula Fox
• Football in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
• Schlump by Hans Herbert Grimm
• Craven House by Patrick Hamilton
• Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
• The Hireling by L. P. Hartley
• The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith
• Anderby Wold by Winifred Holtby
• The Long View by Elizabeth Jane Howard
• Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes
• The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes
• Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• After Midnight by Irmgard Keun
• The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun
• The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
• A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin
• Jill by Philip Larkin
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
• School for Love by Olivia Manning
• The Man of Feeling by Javier Marías
• Tea at Four O’Clock by Janet McNeill
• Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
• The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán
• Campton Hodnet by Barbara Pym
• Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym
• No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym
• Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
• Tigers Are Better-Looking by Jean Rhys
• The Left Bank and Other Stories by Jean Rhys
• All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
• Aimez-vous Brahms… by Françoise Sagan
• Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan + additional thoughts on the translation
• A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
• Last Night by James Salter
• The Wine-Dark Sea by Leonardo Sciascia
• Red Lights by Georges Simenon
• Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
• Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
• At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor
• Hester Lilly by Elizabeth Taylor
• The Blush by Elizabeth Taylor
• The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor
• Rasputin and Other Ironies by Teffi
• High Rising by Angela Thirkell
• Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• The Boarding-House by William Trevor
• Christmas at Thompson Hall & Other Christmas Stories by Anthony Trollope
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• Summer by Edith Wharton
• Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
• A Good School by Richard Yates
• A Special Providence by Richard Yates
• Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates
• Liars in Love by Richard Yates
• Miss Mole by E. H. Young