Hey Skwad!
Recently, the mounting pile of books (both physical and digital) in my library has grown and my will to actually read them has only declined... 😔
Naturally, being me, part of me wonders if this has anything to do with the fact that there are 171 books in the pile - that's 83 novels from the 19th century, 50 books from the 20th century and 38 pieces of miscellaneous literature (Including libretto) - and I don't know where to begin.
So here's a list of all the classic works I've collected over the years (alphabetised and in chronological order, of course!), in hopes that having a physical list to keep me accountable (and more importantly to get to tick off!) will make any change to my reading habits. Like my bucket list post, I'm hoping this will be a post I keep returning to and updating as and when things change! ☺️
Also, worth noting: most of these are free downloads from Kindle or Apple books, some are birthday and Christmas presents - please do not think I've spent a load of money on books and never read them. Literature circa 19th century
Sense & Sensibility ~ Jane Austen (1811)
Grimm’s Fairy Tales ~ The Brothers Grimm (1812)
Pride & Prejudice ~ Jane Austen (1813)
Mansfield Park ~ Jane Austen (1814)
Emma ~ Jane Austen (1815)
Northanger Abbey ~ Jane Austen (1817)
Persuasion ~ Jane Austen (1817)
Frankenstein ~ Mary Shelley (1818) ✅
Notre-Dame de Paris ~ Victor Hugo (1831)
The Pickwick Papers ~ Charles Dickens (1837)
Oliver Twist ~ Charles Dickens (1838)
Dead Souls ~ Nikolai Gogol (1842)
A Christmas Carol ~ Charles Dickens (1843)
The Three Musketeers ~ Alexandre Dumas (1844)
Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave ~ Frederick Douglass (1845)
The Count of Monte Cristo ~ Alexandre Dumas (1846)
Jane Eyre ~ Charlotte Brontë (1847)
The Man in the Iron Mask ~ Alexandre Dumas (1847)
Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Brontë (1847)
David Copperfield ~ Charles Dickens (1850)
The Narrative of Sojourner Truth ~ Sojourner Truth (1850)
The Scarlet Letter ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale ~ Herman Melville (1851)
Twelve Years a Slave ~ Solomon Northup (1853)
Hard Times ~ Charles Dickens (1854)
North and South ~ Elizabeth Gaskell (1855)
Madame Bovary ~ Gustave Flaubert (1856)
A Tale of Two Cities ~ Charles Dickens (1859)
Bleak House ~ Charles Dickens (1852)
The Mill on the Floss ~ George Eliot (1860)
Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl ~ Harriet Jacobs (1861)
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe ~ George Eliot (1861)
Les Misérables ~ Victor Hugo (1862)
Five Weeks in a Balloon ~ Jules Verne (1863)
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby ~ Charles Kingsley (1863)
Journey to the Centre of the Earth ~ Jules Verne (1864)
Notes from Underground ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll (1865) ✅
Crime & Punishment ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
The Gambler ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
War & Peace ~ Leo Tolstoy (1867)
At the Back of the North Wind ~ George MacDonald (1868)
Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens (1868)
Little Women ~ Louisa May Alcott (1868)
The Idiot ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1869)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ~ Jules Verne (1870)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood ~ Charles Dickens (1870)
Middlemarch ~ George Eliot (1871)
Roughing it ~ Mark Twain (1872)
The Gilded Age ~ Mark Twain (1873)
Anna Karenina ~ Leo Tolstoy (1876)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ~ Mark Twain (1876)
Black Beauty ~ Anna Sewell (1877)
Heidi ~ Johanna Spyri (1880)
The Brothers Karamazov ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880)
Robbery Under Arms ~ Rolf Boldrewood (1882)
Treasure Island ~ Robert Louis Stevenson (1883) ✅
Vera; or, The Nihilists ~ Oscar Wilde (1883)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ~ Mark Twain (1884)
Germinal ~ Émile Zola (1885)
Beyond Good & Evil ~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)
Kidnapped ~ Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
The Mayor of Casterbridge ~ Thomas Hardy (1886)
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab ~ Fergus Hume (1886)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde ~ Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
Sherlock Holmes (Complete Series) ~ Arthur Conan Doyle (1887→1917)
Better Dead ~ J. M. Barrie (1887)
Auld Licht Idylls ~ J. M. Barrie (1888)
The Black Arrow ~ Robert Louis Stevenson (1888)
The Happy Prince & Other Tales ~ Oscar Wilde (1888)
The Picture of Dorian Gray ~ Oscar Wilde (1890)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles ~ Thomas Hardy (1891)
The Duchess of Padua ~ Oscar Wilde (1891)
The Refugees ~ Arthur Conan Doyle (1893)
The Jungle Book ~ Rudyard Kipling (1894)
The Importance of Being Earnest ~ Oscar Wilde (1895)
The Time Machine ~ H. G. Wells (1895)
The Island of Doctor Moreau ~ H. G. Wells (1896)
Dracula ~ Bram Stoker (1897)
The Invisible Man ~ H. G. Wells (1897)
The War of the Worlds ~ H. G. Wells (1898)
On Our Selection ~ Steele Rudd (1899)
Heart of Darkness ~ Joseph Conrad (1899)
Literature circa 20th century
The Wizard of Oz ~ Frank L. Baum (1900) ✅
My Brilliant Career ~ Miles Franklin (1901)
The Tale of Peter Rabbit ~ Beatrix Potter (1901)
Up From Slavery: An Autobiography ~ Booker T. Washington (1901)
Such is Life ~ Joseph Furphy (1903)
The Call of the Wild ~ Jack London (1903)
The Souls of Black Folk ~ W. E. B. Dubois (1903)
The Railway Children ~ Edith Nesbit (1905)
The Wind in the Willows ~ Kenneth Grahame (1908)
The Adventures of Anne Shirley (Complete Series) ~ L. M. Montgomery (1908→1921) ✅
Lady Molly of Scotland Yard ~ Baroness Orczy (1910)
The Getting of Wisdom ~ Henry Handel Richardson (1910)
Father Brown (Complete Series) ~ G. K. Chesterton (1911→1935)
The Secret Garden ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
Peter Pan ~ J. M. Barrie (1911)
Pygmalion ~ George Bernard Shaw (1912)
The Lost World ~ Arthur Conan Doyle (1912)
The Lodger ~ Marie Belloc Lowndes (1913)
Dubliners ~ James Joyce (1914)
Herland ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
Metamorphosis ~ Franz Kafka (1915)
Of Human Bondage ~ W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
The Rainbow ~ D. H. Lawrence (1915)
The Thirty-Nine Steps ~ John Buchan (1915)
The Voyage Out ~ Virginia Woolf (1915)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ~ James Joyce (1916)
The Land That Time Forgot ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs (1918)
South ~ Ernest Shackleton (1919)
Dream Psychology ~ Sigmund Freud (1920)
Flappers & Philosophers ~ F. Scot. Fitzgerald (1920)
Ulysses ~ James Joyce (1920)
Babbitt ~ Sinclair Lewis (1922)
Captain Blood ~ Rafael Sabatini (1922)
Siddhartha ~ Hermann Hesse (1922)
The Beautiful & Damned ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1922)
A Passage to India ~ E. M. Forster (1924)
The Box-Car Children ~ Gertrude Chandler Warner (1924)
We ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924)
Mrs. Dalloway ~ Virginia Woolf (1925)
The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) ✅
The Richest Man in Babylon ~ George S. Clason (1926)
Of Mice & Men ~ John Steinbeck (1937) ✅
Klee Wyck ~ Emily Carr (1941)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ~ Betty Smith (1943)
The Little Prince ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943)
Animal Farm ~ George Orwell (1945) ✅
1984 ~ George Orwell (1949)
James Bond (Complete Series) ~ Ian Fleming (1953→1964)
On the Road ~ Jack Kerouac (1957)
Mexico City Blues ~ Jack Kerouac (1959)
Miscellaneous Literature & Librettos I have to read
Literature
The Odyssey ~ Homer (late 8th-early 7th century BC)
The Iliad ~ Homer (late 8th-early 7th century BC)
The Art of War ~ Sun Tzu (5th century BC)
The Enchiridion ~ Epictetus (circa 125 AD)
Beowulf ~ Anonymous (circa 700–1000 AD)
Dido, Queen of Carthage ~ Christopher Marlowe (1593)
Don Quixote ~ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1605)
Leviathan ~ Thomas Hobbes (1651)
Robinson Crusoe ~ Daniel Defoe (1719)
Gulliver’s Travels ~ Jonathan Swift (1726)
Clarissa ~ Samuel Richardson (1748)
Candide ~ Voltaire (1759)
Common Sense ~ Thomas Paine (1776)
Love & Friendship ~ Jane Austen (1790)
Fighting For Hope: The Chronicles of Narnia & The Harry Potter Series as Transformative Works for Child Readers Traumatized by War ~ Erin Brownlee (2013)
Stories To Make You Smile ~ Fanny Blake (2013)
Witchcraft, Sorcery & Harry Potter ~ Garner Ted Armstrong (2016)
A Fighting Chance: An Inspector McLevy Short Story ~ David Aston (2020) ✅
Mystery at Shelly Rock: An Inspector McLevy Short Story ~ David Aston (2020)
No Rest for The Wicked: An Inspector McLevy Short Story ~ David Aston (2020)
Severance - Anonymous (2022)
Leo Tolstoy: The Complete Novels & Novellas ~ Leo Tolstoy (2023)
Libretto
The Taming of The Shrew ~ William Shakespeare (1594)
Romeo & Juliet ~ William Shakespeare (1597)
Henry V ~ William Shakespeare (1599)
Julius Caesar ~ William Shakespeare (1599)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream ~ William Shakespeare (1600)
Hamlet ~ William Shakespeare (1603) ✅
Othello ~ William Shakespeare (1603)
King Lear ~ William Shakespeare (1606)
Macbeth ~ William Shakespeare (1606) ✅
Richard III ~ William Shakespeare (1623)
A Doll’s House ~ Henrik Ibsen (1879)
Hedda Gabler ~ Henrik Ibsen (1890) ✅
An Inspector Calls ~ J. B. Priestley (1945) ✅
A Streetcar Named Desire ~ William Tennessee (1947) ✅
Under Milk Wood ~ Dylan Thomas (1954)
Accidental Death of an Anarchist ~ Dario Fo (1970) ✅
I hope this encourages you to pick up a book if, like me, you haven't in a while..., hold yourself responsible for your own goals (and not blame yourself for falling in and out of habits), or even just spot something that takes your fancy to add to your own GoodReads list haha!
I'd ask you to comment with your book recommendations, but honestly, I think that's the last thing I need! hahaha