If you’re looking for a New Year’s Resolution, allow me to throw a suggestion into the ring. What if you consider reading the classics? We all “had” to read them in school, and if you’re anything like me, I’ll bet that you only barely skimmed them. I know I didn’t put in nearly as much time and attention as I should have, choosing instead to use Cliff Notes (and my friends) to get a basic idea of what the book was about. Now, I’ve been reading the classics on my own for years, and there’s nothing I love quite like sinking my teeth into a good book. So, why not join me this year?
I’ll even make it easy for you! Each month, I’ll choose a different genre or theme and will share a list of 10 classics that fit. By the end of the year, you’ll have 120 different books to pick from, so I imagine that there will be something that you’ll enjoy! Of course, you’re not limited to those titles, and I hope that this will act as an inspiration to read even more classics once the year is out.
As a quick rundown of how this challenge is going to work:
- Each title is only used once for the year
- Each author is only used once per month
- For our purposes, a “classic” has to be published before 1970
- All titles provided are accessible through the library, whether as books or ebooks
I’ll also include on each listing a “bonus” list for further reading. These books may or may not be in our collection, and I may use them again on another list where I can give them a more detailed treatment.
For a little extra fun, let’s start off with a bonus list! These books are all about the classics! Hopefully this will give you some inspiration for what to read next!
Classic Literature Made Simple: Fifty Great Books in a Nutshell (Joseph Pearce)
Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction (Lisa Kröger)
Great Short Books: A Year of Reading–Briefly (Kenneth C. Davis)
The Pocket Guide to Classic Books (Kieran Hughes)
Happy reading!
