I’m back with a new list of over 50 books to read in 5 years!
I am trying something new this time around. Every book on this list is a book I own either on my shelves or on my Kindle (except for the Anthony Trollope 2021 Readalong). Like book lovers everywhere I love buying books and I am not saying I am taking 5 years off buying them, but these really need to get read. I have owned some of them for many years and I need to know if they are keepers or to donate to make room for more. Caveat: I reserve the right to dnf any title here and substitute something else 🙂
Some of my favorite books read during the last five years came from list one. What books on this list will become favorites, I wonder?
Fiction
Louisa May Alcott
An Old-Fashioned Girl (1869)
Enid Bagnold
The Loved and Envied (1951)
Carol Ryrie Brink
Mademoiselle Misfortune (1937)
Fanny Burney
Evelina (1778)
Willa Cather
My Antonia (1918)
Agatha Christie
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
Charles Dickens
David Copperfield (1850)
Hard Times (1854)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie (1900)
George Eliot
Middlemarch (1871)
Daniel Deronda (1876)
Alice Tisdale Hobart
The Cleft Rock (1948)
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary (1856)
Elizabeth Gaskell
Mary Barton (1848)
North and South (1854)
Cranford (1853)
George Gissing
The Odd Women (1893) K
Oliver Goldsmith
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
Thomas Hardy
A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
Far From the Madding Crowd (1874)
The Hand of Ethelberta (1876)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches (1863) K
Aldus Huxley
Brave New World (1932)
Henry James
The Golden Bowl (1904)
Three Novellas:
Pandora (1884)
The Patagonia (1888)
Four Meetings (1877)
C.S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet (1938)
Perelandra (1943)
That Hideous Strength (1945)
W. Somerset Maugham
The Magician (1908) K
George Meredith
The Egoist (1879)
L.M. Montgomery
Emily of New Moon (1923)
Thomas Love Peacock
Maid Marian (novella, (1822)
Crotchet Castle (1831)
Headlong Hall (novella, 1816)
Nightmare Abbey (novella, 1818)
Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe (1819)
Gertrude Stein
Three Lives (1909)
G.B. Stern
The Matriarch (1924)
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Master of Ballantrae (1889)
William Thackeray
Vanity Fair (1847)
Anthony Trollope
(Barsetshire Chronicles Readalong)
The Warden (1855)
Barchester Towers (1857)
Doctor Thorne (1858)
Framley Parsonage (1860)
The Small House at Allington (1862)
The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
Jules Verne
Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870) K
Edith Wharton
Old New York (1924)
Glimpses of the Moon (1922)
Virginia Woolf
The Voyage Out (1915) K
The the Lighthouse (1927)
The Years (1937)
Harold Bell Wright
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1911)
Emile Zola
Nana (1880)
Ladies Paradise (1883)
Nonfiction
Johanna Brandt
The Grape Cure (1928)
Le Baron Russell Briggs
To College Girls (1911)
Vera Brittain
Testament of Youth (1933) K
Sarah Josepha Hale
The Good Housekeeper (1841)
Emily Post
The Personality of a House (1930)
Cornelia Otis Skinner & Emily Kimbrough
Our Hearts were Young and Gay (1942)
Edith Wharton
A Backward Glance (1934)
Glibert White
The Natural History of Selborne (1789)
Plays
Oscar Wilde
A Woman of No Importance (first performed, April 19, 1893) K
The Importance of Being Ernest (first performed, February 14, 1895)
List 2 that’s brilliant and some titles that I love (Middlemarch, Tale of Two Cities and more) and lots that I don’t know. I hope you enjoy them and find some real favourites, I love the way you’ve organised the list as well!
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Thank you, Jane. I have read so few Dickens, just Oliver Twist (waaaay back in school) and last year I read A Christmas Carol. I have so many on my shelf that I have collected over the years, so I need to get to them!
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I read Two Cities this year and loved it, slow at first but then wham!
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Any list with three Dickens novels on it is bound to be great! (Though five would be better, under the FF One-Dickens-a-Year Rule 😉 ) I also loved the Barsetshire novels and Jules Verne, and The Master of Ballantrae is excellent, so you have some enjoyable reading ahead. Have fun!
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I was finally able to get a copy of The Master of Ballantrae after you recommended it to me, because I found Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde a little problematic. So it’s on you! haha!!
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Haha, oh yes, I remember us discussing them at the time! Now I doubly hope you enjoy it… 😉
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Congrats on List 2 Laurie!
Scrolling down I can confidently say that you will find a few more firm favourites as you make your way through it!
The Anthony Trollope Readalong in 2021 – is that a personal project or a wider blogging community event?
I have all of (or most of) the Barchester Chronicles on my bookshelf – would be keen to tackle them in order one day too 🙂
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Hi Brona, the Trollope readalong is on Instagram. If you go to @wheat.to.honey and scroll down a few lines you’ll see the post and you can contact her.
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Thanks. It looks great. Sadly with my schedule for next year already locked away, I wont be able to fit it in for 2021…maybe next time.
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Wow, between you and Fanda……!!
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Well done with making a list out of books you own. I hope it helps you make a dent in it!
The ones of these that I’ve read are definitely worth reading – I don’t know if they will become favorites, but will be interested to read your thoughts as usual. The Space trilogy was long a favorite of mine but I wonder how it will hold up now. And if you’ve not yet read Emily of New Moon, it’s lovely!
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Interesting comment on the Space Trilogy. I have no idea really, but I want to read it, because I don’t feel done with Lewis. I had such a good time with the Narniad last year though I am sure this series is very different.
I am just afraid I will like all of the books on this new CC list and want to keep them!
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Heh heh, a distinct possibility! Good luck with that.
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Some good stuff here. “That Hideous Strength” and “A Tale of Two Cities” have long been among my favorites.
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I am looking forward to Lewis’ whole Space Trilogy. I hope I am not disappointed.
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Oh, the Space Trilogy is so interesting! I’m thinking of re-reading it in January. I’ve read it several times. They are very, very different than the Narnia stories. That Hideous Strength is really strange, but also I love it so. 🙂
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I hope so too.
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There’s a Trollope event? Where is it? You have a great list there, I bet you’ll have a great time with it!
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Jean are you on Instagram? I can hook you up. Let me know. https://www.instagram.com/_lauriewelch/
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Oh…there’s my problem. I am not on Instagram. I am only barely on Twitter. I spend so much time on the computer as it is, I’ve tried not to get into more social media (and also I just hate Twitter).
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I totally understand about Twitter. I like Instagram, because I can better control what I see because of who I follow. It’s a great place for booklovers.
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Hmmm….I will give that some thought.
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What a great list! Let me know when you’re ready to dive into Vanity Fair. I may join you.
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Yes! Let’s check in at some point and do it.
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What a list! Vicar of Wakefield is a funny little novel — did you hear about it through Little Women? It was on my last CC run.
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Ha! Yes. But it is mentioned in so many 19th century novels it has me curious.
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Good luck and happy reading with your second Classics Club list, Laurie. You have some great books on here. Some of my favourites are Far From the Madding Crowd and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. 😊
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Thank you, Jessica. I read my first Hardy this past October (Jude, the Obscure) and I want more!
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I really need to read more by Hardy, too! 😏
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I’ve got a couple of these, like Barchester Towers, on my shelves, and I plan to finish Middlemarch in 2020,so we might even overlap! I’ve still a dozen or more Classics Club titles to finish by the end of this month — in theory! — so I shall be extending my deadline at least a year… 😁
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With my first Classics Club list I only listed the requisite 50 titles. This time around, so much more…But I’ve a lot on my shelves that really need reading!
I have yet to get into Middlemarch, but I am looking forward to it.
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I’m going through the Thomas Hardy books and loving them. Did you know you can download Kindle versions of the classics for free and totally legally from https://www.gutenberg.org/
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Hi Denzil! I just read my first Hardy, Jude, the Obscure this past October and loved it. I am participating in a Hardy readalong next year, so thanks for reminding me about Project Gutenberg. I don’t know why I don’t go there more often!
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Coincidentally Laurie I am in the last 10% of Jude! Can you send me the link to the Hardy readalong please? It sounds interesting. Before Jude I re-read “The Woodlanders” which is one of my favourite Hardy’s. Have you ever read East Lynne by Ellen Wood? I read it a decade or so ago and loved it.
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The only other Hardy I read before Jude was Under the Greenwood Tree, which is quite enjoyable and light-hearted, so I was warned about Jude!
The readalong is on Instagram. Check in with @wheat.to.honey
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