Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Every year I buy more books than I read. This year I discovered that I could get free or low- price classics, in all languages, on my ipad through ibooks.

As a result, I have a many, many books on my to-read shelves.

My goal for 2018 is to read 100 classics, in print or electronic form, acquired before January 1, 2018, so that I can reduce my lists.

Number of Books from my Shelf Read in 2018

January: 16 books
16
February: 12 books
28
March: 12 books
40
April: 10 books
50
May: 9 books
59
June: 9 books
68
July: 9 books
77
August: 16 books
93
September: 8 books
101
October: 10 books
111
November: 12 books
123
December: 14 books
137

Good luck with your challenge., Rosemarie. I discovered the inexpensive and free classics I could buy on my Kindle five years ago. I read quite a few over the last few years and have many yet to go. Once you start looking, it seems like there is a never-ending list of classics to read.

Thank you, Laurie. I have learned about so many great books from my various goodreads groups and really look forward to reading them.

Wonderful goal, Rosemarie! I am also trying to read books that I currently own, physical or digital. Good luck on your challenge, and look at all the wonderful books that you can look forward to reading in 2018! :)

Thank you, Terris. I have a list in mind, but it is going to stay unwritten, because I end up making changes to any written lists anyway.

Good luck , Rosemarie!

Thanks.

Rosemarie wrote: "Thank you, Terris. I have a list in mind, but it is going to stay unwritten, because I end up making changes to any written lists anyway."

I certainly understand that!

Best of luck Rosemarie!

A great challenge, Rosemarie. Good luck!

Thank you.

A wise challenge. I have some of the same problem, but I whittle away at them every year.

I have been trying to do that. Each year I plan to read fewer library books, but.....

Rosemarie wrote: "I have been trying to do that. Each year I plan to read fewer library books, but....."

Same here!

I am going to participate in the Classic Bingo and both A to Z challenges to keep me motivated during the course of the year.

Reduce my list books read in January:

1. Andorra by Max Frisch
2. The Wisdom of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton
3. Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen by Heinrich Heine
4. The Aeneid by Virgil
5. Rab and His Friends and Other Papers and Essays by John Brown
6. The Waverly Novels: The Betrothed by Walter Scott
7. The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke
8. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
9. Pan's Garden by Algernon Blackwood
10. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
11. Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying by Wayson Choy
12. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
13. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
14. La Petite Bijou by Patrick Modiano
15. Crackpot by Adele Wiseman
16. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

I buy too many books too! Our local thrift store in town here is AMAZING for books. I’ve found brand new releases in excellent condition for 1$ I will go to that store with 5$ and walk out with 20 books (classics are .25 each!!!!). This year I’m going to read what I already own!!

I have told myself not to go near a second hand bookstore until at least May. That way I won't be tempted.
It is amazing the book deals you can get at thrift stores, which makes them another place to avoid for a while.

I'm trying to do that, too. I own about 2000 print books and have read probably 2/3 of them, which means there are at least 600 that I haven't read. And yet I keep buying more books - I recently stumbled on a fabulous, huge UBS very near my pain management clinic. So naturally, I have to visit every time I have an appointment and I usually leave with a couple more boxes of books. It's an addiction, but I don't want to be cured.

You've finished one already (an interesting-looking one too)! Good for you.

Thanks, Kathleen. It was one of my used book sale finds for one dollar. It is an interesting play written in the 50s.

Books used in Bingo

Jane of Lantern Hill
The Aeneid
The Machine Stops
Ethan Frome
Agnes Grey
Doctor Zhivago
La Petite Bijou
El túnel
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
Die Blendung
Twelve Angry Men
En attendant Godot
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
El Reino de Este Mundo
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Ironweed
Adam's Breed
Swiss Sonata
Livro do Desassossego
King Solomon's Mines
Noli Me Tángere
A Good Place to Come from
La Part de l'autre
Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß

Authors used in A-Z author challenge

Walter Scott
Brian Friel
Joseph Conrad
Juan Rulfo
Adele Wiseman
James Ramsey Ullman
Jens Peter Jacobsen
Augustine of Hippo
W.B. Yeats
Charlotte Lennox
Yaşar Kemal
Fernando Pessoa
James Boswell
Maxim Gorky
Alexandre Dumas fils
L.M. Montgomery
J.R.R. Tolkien
Xenophon
Ismail Kadare
Willem Elsschot
Giorgio Vasari
Oscar Wilde
Solomon Northup
Ellery Queen

Books used in A-Z title challenge

Andorra
The Wisdom of Father Brown
Pan's Garden
The Xanadu Adventure
The Martian Chronicles
In the Village of Viger
Casino Royale
The Unbearable Bassington
Dictionary of the Khazars
The Lake District Murder
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Quicksand
Kidnapped
The Rover
Eline Vere: A Novel of the Hague
The Bride of Lammermoor
The Yellow Wallpaper and Selected Writings
Naissance de l'Odyssée
The Harbor Master
The Scarlet Letter
The Jew of Malta

In March 2016, I started a personal Jasper Fforde challenge. My goal is to read all the literary works mentioned in his books.

The first book in the series is The Eyre Affair, and I still have three works (out of 27) to read:

1.Twelfth Night - finished on Feb. 15
2. Tamburlaine - finished on Nov. 28
3. Dombey and Son

Rosemarie wrote: "In March 2016, I started a personal Jasper Fforde challenge. My goal is to read all the literary works mentioned in his books.

The first book in the series is [book:The Eyre Affair|..."

Nice one! I'm not overwhelmed by Jasper Fforde (great idea, uneven execution), but there's no denying he references interesting books!

That is one of the reasons I enjoy fforde, all the literary references, the plot does get repetitive after a while.
He did write an interesting speculative fiction novel called
Shades of Grey, where your role in society was determined by the colours you could see.

February books:

1. Lenz by Georg Büchner
2. At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror by H.P. Lovecraft
3. Eclipse of the Sun by Michael D. O'Brien (800+ pages)
4. Gritlis Kinder: Wo Gritlis Kinder hingekommen sind / Gritlis Kinder kommen weiter by Johanna Spyri
5. River of the Sun by James Ramsey Ullman
6. In the Village of Viger by Duncan Campbell Scott
7. Five Little Peppers Midway by Margaret Sidney
8. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
9. The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
10. Sechs Novellen by Jens Peter Jacobsen
11. Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić
12. Die Blendung by Elias Canetti

Fun Colours Challenge 2018

My goal is to read at least 12 books with colours in the title.

1. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
2. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
3. The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche by Gary Krist
4. The Blue Mountains of China by Rudy Wiebe
5. The Black Mountain by Rex Stout
6. Farewell Thrush Green by Miss Read
7. Le mystère de la chambre jaune by Gaston Leroux
8. The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
9. Pat of Silver Bush by L.M. Montgomery
10. The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
11. The Orange-Yellow Diamond by J.S. Fletcher
12. The Golden Lion of Granpere by Anthony Trollope
13. Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson
14. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
15. The Golden Key by George MacDonald
16. The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
17. The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne
18. Yellow & Pink by William Steig
19. Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
20. The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
21. The Red Room by August Strindberg
22. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
23. Die schwarze Spinne by Jeremias Gotthelf

March Books

1. The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
2. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
3. Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
4. City of God by Augustine of Hippo
5. Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works by Aphra Behn
6. The Atonement Of Ashley Morden by Fred Bodsworth
7. The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Selected Critical Prose by Oscar Wilde
8. The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood
9. Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown
10. The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories by Truman Capote
11. The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains by Owen Wister
12. The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

I now have two bingos:
The 4's and the I's.

Congrats, Rosemarie. You've had some challenging books as well.

Thank you.

Rosemarie wrote: "I now have two bingos:
The 4's and the I's."

Congrats!

Thanks.
I tend to get hooked on bingo games.

April books:

1. Religio Medici by Thomas Browne
2. Ironweed by William Kennedy
3. The Blue Mountains of China by Rudy Wiebe
4. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
5. A Small Boy in the Sixties by George Sturt
6. Adam's Breed by Radclyffe Hall
7. The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox
8. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
9. The Firebird by Gitte Dry Svensmark
10. Die Harzreise by Heinrich Heine

May books

1.The Wind from the Plain by Yaşar Kemal
2. The Major Works by Thomas Browne
3.De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
4. Swiss Sonata by Gwethalyn Graham
5. The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
6. The Satires of Horace and Persius
7. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
8. Brothers-in-Arms by Frederick Niven
9. Patrimony by Philip Roth

June Books

1. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski
2. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
3. A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
4. This Year In Jerusalem by Mordecai Richler
5. King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
6. Tread Softly for You Tread on My Jokes by Malcolm Muggeridge
7. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
8. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
9. Der Besondere by Ludwig Ganghofer

July Books

1. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
2.A Good Place to Come from by Morley Torgov
3. A History Of My Times by Xenophon
4. Mit dem Auto auf du by Alexander Spoerl
5. Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
6. Naissance de l'Odyssée by Jean Giono
7. Feather Fall by Laurens van der Post
8. In Search of History by Theodore H. White
9.The Bobbsey Twins: Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out by Laura Lee Hope

August Books

1. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
2. The Golden Lion of Granpere by Anthony Trollope
3. The Harbor Master by Theodore Goodridge Roberts
4. The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore by Laura Lee Hope
5. Le Horla by Guy de Maupassant
6. Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson
7. Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari
8. The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
10. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
11. Dschapei by Ludwig Ganghofer
12. Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson
13. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. The Beetle by Richard Marsh
15. When William Came by Saki
16. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Rosemarie wrote: "July Books

1. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
2.A Good Place to Come from by Morley Torgov
3. [book:A History Of My Times|2..."

I love that you read The Bobbsey Twins!!

Those were one of the few books that I owned as a little girl. I consider them mind candy.

I think a friend gave me The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore for my birthday when I turned 8 years old! I loved it :)

I had that one too.

September Books

1.Recollections And Essays by Leo Tolstoy
2. Old Men Forget by Duff Cooper
3. Sämtliche Werke, Ergänzungsband 2: Briefe by Wilhelm Raabe
4. Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
5. The Theban Plays by Sophocles
6. La Part de l'autre by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
7. Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
8. The Stream Runs Fast by Nellie L. McClung

October Books

1. Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie by Kate Chopin
2. The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe
3. The Colour Out of Space and others by H.P. Lovecraft
4. Before the Lamps Went Out by Geoffrey Jules Marcus
5. Fantaisies sur les péchés capitaux by Roger Lemelin
6. Schachnovelle by Stefan Zweig
7. The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
8. Selected English Short Stories - Second Series
9. All Rivers Run to the Sea by Elie Wiesel
10. The Bobbsey Twins in the Country by Laura Lee Hope

I finished the A - Z Author and Title challenges.

Congrats,Rosemary!!

Thank you!