I’m embarking on a new 5-year project of reading 50 classics in 5 years. Hopefully the next five years will be a bit less…historic than the previous five! I read just over half my list (and switched out a couple titles) last time, but I’m hoping to do better this time.

Here’s the plan: 50 classics. 5 years. October 2023 – October 2028. Here’s my list, and I’ll link to reviews once I’ve read them:

1. Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women (January 2024)
2. Aurelius, Marcus: Meditations
3. Brontë, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (April 2026)
4. Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre (March 2026)
5. Brontë, Charlotte: Villette
6. Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights (February 2026)
7. Burns, Olive: Cold Sassy Tree
8. Cather, Willa: My Antonía
9. Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
10. Dickens, Charles: Little Dorrit
11. Dickens, Charles: Our Mutual Friend (May 2025)
12. Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
13. Dickens, Charles: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (November 2023)
14. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
15. Du Maurier, Daphne: Jamaica Inn
16. Eliot, George: Middlemarch (October 2024)
17. Eliot, George: The Mill on the Floss
18. Hemingway, Ernest: A Moveable Feast
19. Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God
20. Lewis, C. S.: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (April 2026)
21. Lewis, C. S.: Prince Caspian (May 2026)
22. Lewis, C. S.: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (May 2026)
23. Lewis, C. S.: The Silver Chair
24. Lewis, C. S.: The Horse and His Boy (April 2026)
25. Lewis, C. S.: The Magician’s Nephew (April 2026)
26. Lewis, C. S.: The Last Battle
27. Newbigin, Lesslie: The Household of God
28. Orwell, George: Animal Farm
29. Pargeter, Edith: The Green Branch
30. Pargeter, Edith: The Heaven Tree
31. Pargeter, Edith: The Scarlet Seed
32. Potok, Chaim: The Chosen
33. Sayers, Dorothy: Clouds of Witness (May 2025)
34. Sayers, Dorothy: Gaudy Night (October 2025)
35. Sayers, Dorothy: Whose Body? (February 2024)
36. Soltzhenitsyn, Alexander: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
37. Sophocles: Antigone
38. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
39. Stoppard, Tom: Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
40. Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Fellowship of the Ring (January 2025)
41. Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Two Towers (February 2025)
42. Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Return of the King (February 2025)
43. Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
44. Trollope, Anthony: The Warden
45. Trollope: Anthony: Framley Parsonage
46. Von Arnim, Elizabeth: The Enchanted April
47. Watson, Winifred: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
48. Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited
49. Wharton, Edith: The Age of Innocence

Removed (List edited/updated July 2025):

• Le Guin, Ursula: A Wizard of Earthsea
• Le Guin, Ursula: The Farthest Shore
• Le Guin, Ursula: The Tombs of Atuan
• Burnett, Frances Hodgson: The Secret Garden
• Flaubert, Gustav: Madame Bovary
• Steinbeck, John
• Wharton, Edith: Ethan Frome
• Lewis, C. S.: An Experiment in Criticism