Within this last week of 2021, I have completely the challenge I set out for myself of finishing 50 classics within five years, starting from April 22, 2017. If I were to include dates, it would be clear that there were vast stretches of time without any books finished, and certain intense periods when I read a number of titles quickly.
It is also apparent from the lack of hyperlinks after #30 that I no longer took time to write about the books I finished. The benefit didn’t seem to justify the time spent on them. All in all, participating in this challenge probably helped me read more than I otherwise would have in the last five years, so it was worth it over all. My next post will contain a proposal for renewing this challenge.
The list of books I completed:
- The Qur’an.
- Romola. George Eliot.
- Rosmersholm. Henrik Ibsen.
- Helena. Evelyn Waugh. (*)
- My Disillusionment in Russia. Emma Goldman.
- Metamorphoses. Ovid.
- Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen.
- The Trial. Franz Kafka.
- Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy.
- Out of the Silent Planet. C.S. Lewis.
- Apologia Pro Vita Sua. John Henry Newman.
- Felix Holt, A Radical. George Eliot.
- Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf.
- Eugénie Grandet. Honoré de Balzac.
- Kristen Lavransdatter. Sigrid Undset.
- Decline and Fall. Evelyn Waugh.
- O Pioneers!. Willa Cather.
- Three Elegies for Kosovo. Ismail Kadare.
- Adam Bede. George Eliot.
- My Name is Asher Lev. Chaim Potok.
- Remains of the Day. Kazuo Ishiguro.
- Thérèse Raquin. Émile Zola.
- Pale Fire. Vladimir Nabokov.
- The Frogs. Aristophanes.
- Letters to a Young Poet. Rainer Maria Rilke.
- Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon. Jane Austen.
- The Cyberiad. Stanislaw Lem.
- The Wild Ass’s Skin. Honoré de Balzac.
- Colonel Chabert. Honoré de Balzac.
- Comedy of Errors. William Shakespeare.
- Collected Novellas. Stefan Zweig.
- Democracy. Henry Adams.
- Washington Square. Henry James.
- Cyrano de Bergerac. Edmond Rostand.
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Muriel Spark.
- The Master and Margarita. Mikhail Bulgakov.
- Omer Pasha Latas. Ivo Andric.
- Alcibiades. Plato.
- Gorgias. Plato.
- Perelandra. C.S. Lewis.
- That Hideous Strength. C.S. Lewis.
- A Moveable Feast. Ernest Hemingway.
- The World of Yesterday. Stefan Zweig.
- Ubik. Philip K. Dick.
- A Confederacy of Dunces. John Kennedy Toole.
- Dune. Frank Herbert.
- Waiting for Godot. Samuel Beckett.
- Matilda. Roald Dahl.
- The Periodic Table. Primo Levi.
- The Vicar of Wakefield. Oliver Goldsmith.
Books from my original list that I’ve yet to finish:
- The Vulgate.
- Out of Africa. Karen Blixen.
- The Master of Hestviken. Sigrid Undset.
- Barchester Towers. Anthony Trollope.
- Doctor Thorne. Anthony Trollope.
- North and South. Elizabeth Gaskell.
- Ivanhoe. Walter Scott.
- Loss and Gain. John Henry Newman.
- Death Comes for the Archbishop. Willa Cather.
- Brighton Rock. Graham Greene.
- Nine Stories. J.D. Salinger.
- To the Lighthouse. Virginia Woolf.
- Waiting for Godot. Samuel Beckett.
- Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Anne Bronte.
- David Copperfield. Charles Dickens.
- The Idiot. Fyodor Dostoevsky.
- Demons. Fyodor Dostoevsky.
- Absalom! Absalom!. William Faulkner.
- The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe.
- Italian Journey. Goethe.
- The Portrait of a Lady. Henry James.
- Life of Johnson. James Boswell.
- Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon. (*)
- The Dubliners. James Joyce.
- Moby Dick. Herman Melville.
- Swann’s Way. Marcel Proust.
- Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck.
- Il fu Mattia Pascal. Luigi Pirandello.
- Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore. Luigi Pirandello.
- Il Gattopardo. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
- Delta Wedding. Eudora Welty.
- Pilgrim’s Progress. John Bunyan.
- The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre Dumas.
- A Train of Powder. Rebecca West.
Books I added to the list, that I am currently reading:
- A Little Larger than the Entire Universe. Fernando Pessoa.
- Ulysses. James Joyce.
vogliodio 