My Starting List

Well, I took some time last night and this morning to make up my list of 60 classic books that I would like to read in the next 5 years.  I went with 60 because that gives me one book per month.  I know that there are several books on the list that I could read in an afternoon, but I didn't want to overwhelm myself.  I figure that this way I can finish some of the easier books more quickly, and leave plenty of time for the more challenging works.  Plus, it should give me time to read other books that I'm interested in at the same time.  My hope is that as I go through this list, my interests will branch out into other related books, and it will become something of an incredible journey of reading.

I found that most of the books on my list are British, which can probably be explained by the fact that I'm fascinated with the British Isles.  However, as I work through this list I hope to continue adding more, non-British books.  However, since my list is so Britain heavy, I will also be participating in the "Reading England 2016" challenge to help encourage me through this list.

The goal of the Reading England challenge is to read books from a variety of English counties.  I'm going to be starting with 10, but I give myself permission to change it. 

Now, without further ado, here my list for the next 5 years (until 1/1/2021)

Author	Title
Adams, Richard	Watership Down
Austen, Jane	Emma
Austen, Jane	Northanger Abbey
Austen, Jane	Persuasion
Austen, Jane	Mansfield Park
Blackmore, Richard	Lorna Doone
Bronte, Charlotte	Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily	Wuthering Heights
Burnett, Frances Hodges	The Secret Garden
Cather, Willa	My Antonia
Chaucer, Geoffrey	The Canterbury Tales
Cleland, John	Fanny Hill
Cookson, Catherine	The Black Velvet Gown
Dante	Paradiso
Dante	Purgatorio
Dante	The Inferno
Defoe, Daniel	Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel	Moll Flanders
Dickens, Charles	Nicholas Nickleby
Dickens, Charles	Great Expectations
Dickens, Charles	Hard Times
Dickens, Charles	Oliver Twist
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor	Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor	The Brother's Karamazov
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor	The Idiot
Doyle, Arthur Conan	Hound of the Baskervilles
Dumas, Alexander	The Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas, Alexander	Man in the Iron Mask
Dumas, Alexander	The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George	Middlemarch
Felding, Henry	The History of Tom Jones
Gaskell, Elizabeth	North and South
Gaskell, Elizabeth	Cranford
Gothe	Faust
Grahame, Kenneth	The Wind in the Willows
Hardy, Thomas	Far From the Madding Crowd
Joyce, James	The Dubliners
Lawrence, DH	Lady Chatterley's Lover
More, Thomas	Utopia
Orczy, Emmuska	The Scarlet Pimpernel
Plutarch	The Rise and Fall of Athens
Pyle, Howard	The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
Rand, Ayn	The Fountainhead
Scott, Walter	Rob Roy
Scott, Walter	Ivanhoe
Shakespeare, William	As you Like It
Shakespeare, William	Much Ado about Nothing
Shakespeare, William	Hamlet
Shakespeare, William	Richard V
Solzhenitsyn	The Gulag Archipelago
Sterne, Lawrence	The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman
Stoker, Bram	Dracula
Swift, Johnathan	Gulliver's Travels
Tacitus	The Annals of Imperial Rome
Thackerary, William	Vanity Fair
Tocqueville, Alexis de	Democracy in America
Tolstoy, Leo	Anna Karenina
Twain,, Mark	Huckleberry Finn
Twain,, Mark	The Prince and the Pauper
Verne, Jules	20000 Leagues Under the Sea