50 Classic Books in 5 Years for My 50th Birthday

Classic Books

Since today is my 50th birthday, I thought I would start my next 50 years off right by joining the Classics Club and committing to read 50 classic novels by October 25, 2021. The idea behind the club is to read at least 50 classic books within five years, and to blog about each one.

My main purpose in this project is to read more books from my Summary of Great Books Lists and my Catholic Classics List. I’ve selected books from those two lists along with a few extras. You can see the full list below. As I finish each book I’ll write a blog post about it and link to it from this page.

As I mentioned last week, I am currently reading The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, so I’ll make that my first book for this challenge. Here’s the rest of my list:

  1. Louisa May Alcott – Little Women – Finished July 17, 2018 Review
  2. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy – Finished April 10, 2021
  3. Eric Ambler – A Coffin for Dimitrios – Finished March 22, 2020
  4. Jane Austen – Emma – Finished September 27, 2017 Review
  5. Robert Hugh Benson – Lord of the World – Finished November 12, 2016 Review
  6. George Bernanos – Diary of a Country Priest – Finished April 11, 2020
  7. Will C. Brown – The Nameless Breed – Finished February 1, 2021
  8. Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden Finished January 31, 2018 Review
  9. Willa Cather – O Pioneers! – Finished July 16, 2017 Review
  10. Miguel de Cervantes – Don QuixoteFinished May 8, 2019
  11. Louis de Wohl – The Living Wood: A Novel of St. HelenaFinished July 3, 2021
  12. Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol – Finished December 18, 2020
  13. Charles Dickens – David Copperfield – Finished October 24, 2021
  14. Charles Dickens – The Old Curiosity Shop – Finished December 31, 2019
  15. Fyodor Dostoyevski – Crime and Punishment – Finished January 20, 2020 Review
  16. Frederick Douglass – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Finished March 22, 2021
  17. Alexandre Dumas – Twenty Years After  – Finished January 13, 2018 Review
  18. Alexandre Dumas – The Vicomte de Bragelonne – Finished March 17, 2019
  19. Alexandre Dumas – Louise de la VallièreFinished March 31, 2019
  20. Alexandre Dumas – The Man in the Iron MaskFinished April 3, 2019
  21. Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo Finished September 2, 2019
  22. Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca – Finished December 6, 2017 Review
  23. Lord Dunsany – The King of Elfland’s Daughter – Finished February 2, 2020
  24. E.R. Eddison – The Worm Ouroboros – Finished November 15, 2017 Review
  25. George Eliot – RomolaFinished October 22, 2017 Review
  26. E.M. Forster – A Room with a View – Finished January 7, 2019
  27. Nikolai Gogol – Dead Souls – Finished November 25, 2017 Review
  28. H. Rider Haggard – She – Finished May 16, 2018 Review
  29. Thomas Hardy – Far From the Madding Crowd Finished April 8, 2017 Review
  30. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter – Finished October 28, 2019
  31. James Hilton – Goodbye Mr. Chips – Finished March 22, 2021
  32. William Hope Hodgson – The House on the Borderland – Finished November 3, 2016 Review
  33. Robert E. Howard – Conan: The Definitive Collection – Finished December 4, 2016 Review
  34. Victor Hugo – The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Finished August 21, 2021
  35. Franz Kafka – The Trial – Finished May 19, 2017 Review
  36. Gaston Leroux – The Phantom of the Opera – Finished August 15, 2020
  37. Richard Llewellyn – How Green Was My Valley – Finished February 11, 2017 Review
  38. George MacDonald – The Light Princess – Finished December 22, 2020
  39. George MacDonald – Lilith – Finished October 19, 2019
  40. Alessandro Manzoni – The BetrothedFinished October 31, 2016 Review
  41. Larry McMurtry – Lonesome Dove – Finished July 11, 2017 Review
  42. Baroness Orczy – The Scarlet Pimpernel – Finished April 15, 2021
  43. George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-four – Finished January 5, 2017 Review
  44. Henryk Sienkiewicz – Quo Vadis – Finished June 23, 2021
  45. Clifford Simak – CityFinished August 2, 2020
  46. Leo Tolstoy – How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories – Finished December 21, 2020
  47. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace – Finished December 30, 2020
  48. Sigrid Undset – Kristin Lavransdatter – Finished December 18, 2017 Review
  49. Horace Walpole – The Castle of OtrantoFinished December 30, 2017
  50. Thornton Wilder – The Bridge of San Luis Rey Finished November 21, 2016 Review

Deacon Nick

Nick Senger is a husband, a father of four, a Roman Catholic deacon and a Catholic school principal. He taught junior high literature and writing for over 25 years, and has been a Catholic school educator since 1990. In 2001 he was named a Distinguished Teacher of the Year by the National Catholic Education Association.

4 Responses

  1. looloolooweez says:

    Woohoo! (1) Happy belated birthday, and many healthy returns. (2) Welcome to the Classics Club! You have a great list here. I haven’t read any of those Dumas books yet, but ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ was on my list and I *loved* it — I’m super interested to see what you think of his other titles!

    • Deacon Nick says:

      Yes, The Count of Monte Cristo is fantastic. All the Dumas books on my list (except Camille) are sequels to The Three Musketeers, which I also love. They are all mammoth books (750+ pages each), so I have my work cut out for me. But I also have lots of great adventures to look forward to.

  2. Just saw this post. Happy birthday in advance, a year after your 50th. Quite a list of books. I always have a wish to read Dickens, but am never able to get through. They are so filled with unimportant details (for the story that is, not for the times), so I never manage to get through the really thick ones.
    Jane Austen and Emily Brontë are favourites. Why not Jane Eyre with Charlotte Brontë? Love Dostoyevski, Du Maurier and Hardy and a lot of the other authors.
    I have read 15 of my list of 50. It goes slowly.
    Good luck!

  3. Deacon Nick says:

    I just read Jane Eyre a few years ago or it definitely would have made this list. I hope you get through a Dickens book one of these days. The endings are so worth it!

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