Welcome to our first installment of The Classics Challenge, where every month, I’ll provide you with a list of classic books that you can check out from the library! Since the year has just started, let’s kick things off with a selection of big books that will take a lot of time to read. Why? Because during this cold winter days, we’ll be spending a lot of time inside, and a big book is a great way to while away the time. And since it’s so early in the year, you’ll have plenty of time to for tackling these towering tomes!
Our criteria for choosing titles is simple. While pagination varies from printing to printing, and while abridged publications will certainly be shorter, in their original forms, these books were at least 600 pages long. And if you’re eager for more, take a closer look at some of these authors. There are a few on the list who have a couple hefty tomes in their bibliography! I’ve included a few below in our For Further Reading section!
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
Considered by many scholars to be the first modern novel, Don Quixote is perhaps one of the strangest stories ever written. Alonso Quijano, a Spanish nobleman with perhaps too much time on his hands, reads so many romantic novels about knights and squires that he literally goes insane. He decides to become a knight-errant and revive chivalric code, riding out into the world, righting wrongs. As every good knight needs a squire, he recruits his neighbor, Sancho Panza, a farm laborer to be his aid and the two set off on adventures together. Despite his high ideals, Alonso, now calling himself Don Quixote, cannot see the world for what it really is, which means that things all appear as more romanticized versions of what they really are: his old work horse becomes a noble steed, windmills become giants, and Aldonza Lorenzo, a slaughterhouse worker, becomes his lady love, Dulcinea del Toboso.
Ulysses (James Joyce)
Told over the course of a single day, Ulysses is the story of a single day: June 16th, 1904. The novel covers the actions of three Dubliners, Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and artist Stephen Dedalus. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland’s relationship to Britain. Joyce is a tough writer to tackle, so fair warning if you’re looking to tackle this behemoth of a book, which comes in at somewhere between 700 and 800 pages!
Les Misérables (Victor Hugo)
This book is the basis for my favorite musical of all time, although I’ve never read the original before. The story, which has a huge cast of characters, principally follows Jean Valjean, a newly released prisoner who was arrested nineteen years ago for stealing bread to feed his starving family. Now, nearly two decades later, embittered, angry, and jaded, Valjean tries to adjust to the world, but the world is not kind to a branded criminal like him. It’s only after he’s helped by (and then robs) a kindly bishop that Valjean finds himself on the path to salvation once again. This beautiful, heartbreaking epic covers not only the life of one man, but of the man others whose paths intersect with his: Fantine, a mother whose love for her daughter drives her to despair; Cosette, her daughter who Valjean promises to care for; Javert, the police inspector determined to bring Valjean back to prison; and Marius, a young revolutionary who falls in love with Cosette.
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
Fun fact: this thrilling tale of revenge is so hefty that even the abridged version (which I read a few years ago) clocks in at 500+ pages! And if you take a look at the copy we have on the shelf (and if you don’t include the additional pages of notes at the end), you’re looking at 1,243 pages of sweet, sweet revenge! Life is looking up for Edmond Dantès. He’s just been promoted, he’s about to marry the love of his life…and then an accusation of treason sends everything crashing down around him. Locked in the notorious prison, Château d’If, for a crime he did not commit, Edmond spends years trying to figure out what brought him to this state…until he learns that three of his rivals in love, politics, and business falsely accused him and he makes it his life’s mission to not only escape from prison, but to track down each member of the devious trio and make them pay most cruelly for what they did to him.
Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)
Honestly, this might be my favorite title on the list. This hulking American classic tends to scare readers off, but it’s a funny, dramatic, and thrilling book that’s full of heart. Ishmael, a young sailor from the merchant service tells us that whenever he starts to feel depressed, he goes out to sea, hoping the change of scenery will uplift his spirits. And one dreary winter, he finds that not only is the sea calling to him again, but that this time, he wants to go aboard a whaling vessel. After a comedy of errors draws him into close friendship with the “cannibal” Queequeg, the two decide to sign onboard the ship Pequod under the authority of Captain Ahab. Little do either of them realize, however, that Ahab has no intentions of following his orders, and instead is planning a terrifying revenge scheme against the white whale that took his leg on his last whaling voyage.
Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
Tolstoy’s classic tale of a doomed love affair was once assigned to me as a summer reading project–and oh, what a summer! This massive book combines not only the story of Anna Karenina, but of those other characters who are drawn into her orbit. Anna is unhappily married to Karenin, a government official who is twenty years her senior. When she meets and falls in love with Count Alexei Vronsky, she risks everything for a chance at happiness, even though her decisions do nothing but bring suffering in their wake. As other members of the Russian upper crust meet and fall in love, and romantic liaisons become more and more entangled and the characters become more and more dissatisfied with their lots, until everything comes to an explosive end. This huge novel clocks in at 239 chapters, so if you’re looking to explore Russian literature in 2025, this is a book that will keep you entertained for a very long time!
Middlemarch (George Eliot)
This is the first book by a female author on our list! And no, that’s not a typo. George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, the English writer of classics such as Silas Marner, and of course, Middlemarch. This massive tome covers the stories of the residents of Middlemarch, a fictional town between the years 1829 and 1832. Dorothea thought her marriage to Edward would be a meeting of the minds, but instead she finds herself trapped in a lonely union to a tyrannical man some years her senior. Tertius Lyndgate comes to the town full of big ideas that only end in financial ruin. Fred Vincy desires to marry his childhood sweetheart, but she won’t have him unless he finds a better job. And God-fearing Nicholas Bulstrode’s past catches up with him when an old enemy comes to town, determined to secrets that he wanted to keep buried. This masterwork of fiction deftly ties together these four lives into one magnificent story!
Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
Rich, spoiled Southern socialite Scarlet O’Hara’s world starts crashing down around her as the Civil War ravages everything she holds dear. In a desperate attempt to win the heart of her neighbor, Ashley Wilkes (who is engaged to Scarlet’s cousin), she attends a party and there catches the attention of the dashing Rhett Butler, a man known for being a womanizer. The two soon begin a tumultuous love affair, but can romance survive in the wake of such devastating destruction? And will Scarlet and Rhett themselves survive as their world is torn apart?
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon- acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. If you think you can handle this grim tale, you will find a story that generations of readers have found to be a deeply insightful and thrilling read.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (Henry Fielding)
I’ll (reluctantly) admit that I had to read this book in college, and all I remember is that it was a staggering size (I think my copy was nearly 1,000 pages!)…and I don’t recall much else (because I didn’t actually read it). So, here’s a summary for both of us: At the center of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1749, as shocking as they are funny today. Expelled from Mr Allworthy’s country estate for his wild temper and sexual conquests, the good-hearted foundling Tom Jones loses his money, joins the army, and pursues his beloved across Britain to London, where he becomes a kept lover and confronts the possibility of incest. Tom Jones is rightly regarded as Fielding’s greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. This is a spicy one (although as I said before, I don’t really recall much–probably because I didn’t read it!) and one that will certainly be far from boring!
I hope you enjoy this start to our year of reading the classics! If you find something you like, I’d love to hear about it!
Happy reading!
For Further Reading:
In case you’d like more, here are some additional titles! These may or may not be in the collection, but they should all be freely available online!
- War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
- The Iliad (Homer)
- The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
- Bleak House (Charles Dickens)
- The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien)
- Finnegans Wake (James Joyce)
- The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo)
- Tale of Genji (Lady Murasaki)
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
- The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
- Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)
- The Faerie Queen (Edmond Spenser)
- Varney the Vampire (James Malcolm Rymer)
- The String of Pearls (Thomas Preskett Prest)
- The Bethrothed (Alessandro Manzoni)
