#ClassicsCommunity 2021 Reading Challenge discussion

As we look ahead to the beginning of the reading challenge, I'd love to know: what are your personal goals going to be?

When I was designing the reading challenge, it was important to me to allow all of you to tailor your reading to your own interests, especially as there's such a wide variety of classics. So set yourself some personal goals you'd like to achieve related to classics throughout the year!

I want to try to read at least 1 classic every month, which can vary from really old to modern classic. I don't want to be too harsh to myself as I only started to read classics this year. I'm happy to explore and see what classics I like!

This year I’d like to read at least 6 Russian classics and I want to continue reading Gaskell, Harding, Trollope and Dickens.
I also want to try something new as Dinah Maria Craik.

I want to read 1 classic each month, doesn’t matter if it’s a classic or a modern classic.
On top of that I have a collection of all of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales, and I want to read that in 2020 too.

I want to read The Brontes and Austen but atleast all the Brontes since I'm getting a box set of them this Christmas from my in laws.

I want to read several classics a month if possible.

5 Classics / Month

I want to read at least 6 classics in 2020. In 2019 the only classics I read were Les Miserables and The Catcher in the Rye (I am not sure yet if The Hobbit count as one too for me). This year I would like to revisit Jane Eyre at least.

*this next year

Being new to classics my goal is to start slowly and read one classic a month, with a mix of children's, vintage and modern. I also thought it would be fun to read something that relates to the classic in the same month, like the Anne Of Green Gables Cookbook by her granddaughter or history on the author or book or a retelling.

Classics are pretty much what I already read on a daily basis, so in 2020 I would like to take myself out of my comfort zone.
Considering I mainly read children’s classics, I would like to read more in the adult genre. With that said, I would still like to continue reading children’s lit.

Here’s my list of goals:

1. Read at least 24 classics (children’s and adult)
2. Finish Emma by Jane Austen
3. Finish the Anne of Green Gables series (have 3 more books to go)
4. Read a classic book in the gardening genre (I’m thinking Down the Garden Path)
5. Read a classic that intimidates me
6. Read Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
7. Read a lesser known book by Frances Hodgson Burnett
8. Read a lesser known L.M. Montgomery book
9. Read at least 6 adult classics
10. Read a Jane Austen book (in addition to Emma)

I'm setting my base goal at 15 classics for 2020. I think overall for this year I just want to experience a wider verity of genres, cultures, and time periods in my reading, I'd particularly like to read more plays and poetry.

So here is my (in no way complete) list of classics I would like to read in this upcoming year.

1. Three Shakespeare plays as I just recently started reading some if his works
2. At least one of L.M. Montgomery's non-Anne related works (I've already read and thoroughly enjoyed The Blue Castle, and have hear wonderful things about her Emily books)
3. Gone with the Wind (already started, it has been a RIDE)
4. the Time Machine,
5. A Sherlock Homes story
6. The Little Prince
7. The Count of Monte Cristo (please God, let this be the year I finish that thing!)
8. The Great Gatsby
9. An Austen, though I'm not sure which one it'll be
10. Something Russian
11. Reread some Australian and British children's books!

I would like to read at least 12 classics in 2020. I also would like to read all of Charles Dickens works and all of Dostoyevsky’s works. I haven’t read any Charles Dickens yet, and I’m excited to add it to my challenge this year!

I'd love to finally read the remainder of my Terhune books that are on my shelves for years.
Absolutely want to read something of Jane Austen, and I have put my mind to Jane Eyre and Wuthering heights

I want to read one every month and start with the ones I have that are shorter novels.

I really want to continue with Emile Zola’s works as well as read more by the Brontes. I would love to pick up a book by Margaret Atwood and Daphne du Maurier. I also want to read at least one Russian classic!

Here are my goals:
a) 20 novels
b) included in the 20, 6 novels of more than 500 pages
c) 20 short stories
d) 20 poems
e) 10 plays
f) 10 non-fiction
g) 15 different countries of origin
h) 10 different original languages

I plan on at least 2 novels and 2 short stories per month. Some I plan on specifically are:
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Shirley
The Mill on the Floss
Agnes Grey
Villette
Love in the Time of Cholera
Mary Poppins
Jamaica Inn
Palace Walk
Summer
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

My goal is to read classic eras that I haven't read before. This year I'm focusing on Ancient Greece. I hope to finish all of Homer, some Greek plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes and Euripides, as well as some history and philosophy such as Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus and Thucydides.

My goals are:
- to read at least one classic per month
- to read a book of every Brontë sister (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey)
- to read the unread Jane Austen I still have (Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Lady Susan, and Persuasion)

I want to ideally read 30 classics this year but at least the minimum 12. I want to read Russian classics and have a mixture of novels, plays, short stories and poetry.

I plan on reading or re-reading at least 12 classics next year.

Those include all of Daphne du Maurier's books, the Brontës's, Jane Austen's but I also own others on my e-reader (Oscar Wilde, Thoreau, E.M. Forster, Edith Wharton, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley, Thackeray, Arthur Conan Doyle, Elizabeth Gaskell, R.D. Blackmore, Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Anthony Trollope, Mary Wollestonecraft...). Plus I work in a library and can get many others ^^
I'd also love to read biographies of these authors, their correspondances, books about the periods they were living in.

I'm open to classic-classics and modern classics, I prefer women authors but I'm open to any change.

My goal is to read one classic a month, from a mix of eras. I’m excited to read some Jane Austin in January as well as Ann Radcliffe’s the romance of the forest. Would also really like to finish lord of the rings this year. Other than that I’m leaving my options pretty open.

I have a lot of classics to read but I have more time as I am semi-retired because of a disability. I did work for 30 years previously. Every cloud has a silver lining.

I hope to complete my reading of all the works of George Eliot this year with Romola in January and Scenes of Clerical Life and The Lifted Veil / Brother Jacob later in the year.

I am reading 4 works by Walter Scott a much-overlooked author I think. I have read 6 by him already. The four are:
Guy Mannering
Quentin Durward
Kenilworth
The Antiquary

I want to throw some ancient literature in again this year and will be revisiting The Iliad and The Odyssey and some more Greek plays, Lysistrata being one chosen for this year.

I will be reading at least 10 books by Nobel prize-winning authors and also some works that have been on my tbr list for awhile:

Barnaby Rudge or Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

I will be reading works by P.G. Wodehouse thorough out the year as well as other works that catch my fancy.

I moderate a few groups here on Goodreads and one is female authors that published pre 1990. We are starting in January with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparkand Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

For myself, I'm kinda limiting this read-a-thon to the more arbitrary and conventional idea of "classics" up to the 1930s, primarily because of the limits of time and expanse of reading material. So my use of the term "classic" will be in this context.

My goals are:
> Reading at least one classic in a month, and two ideally.
> Reading all the classics on my shelf right now (before procuring or borrowing more) - this is contingent on how I address this as a reading "habit" or practice!
> Diversify and include poetry, short stories, non-fiction and perhaps plays in my reading.

I have long term goals to read everything by Trollope, Dickens and Dostoevsky. So next year I plan to read 5 by Trollope, Dombey and Son by Dickens and Notes from Underground and The Idiot by Dostoevsky. I also want to reread Little Dorrit and Bleak House. Other Russian classics that I want to read next year are Anna Karenina, and 2 books each by Gogol and Turgenev as well as Eugene Onegin and some Chekhov short stories. If I achieve all that I'll be pleased if not a little amazed!

I really want to start reading Virginia Woolf's work, so I'm going to start with Mrs. Dalloway.
Before I watch the movie, I want to have read Little Women, but maybe I'll get to this one in the christmas break already, so then technically I would read it in 2019 still haha.
I also want to reread Pride and Prejudice, and read more of Austen's work, because I've only read Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion so far.
The, I'd also like to read some work by the Brontë sisters, starting with Jane Eyre, I think.
I also want to read Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Hardy.
I've wanted to read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft for a while now, so I hope I can get to that one as well.
And finally, I would like to continue my reading of Atwood's oeuvre. So far I've read The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, Surfacing and The Edible Woman and I loved all of them.
I don't know if I'm going to get to all of these, but I sure am going to try :)

My major literary goal for 2020 is to read all of Jane Austen's published works - I have already read Pride & Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and her Teenage Writings so need to read Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion and Sanditon, Lady Susan and The Watsons.

I also want to read more Virginia Woolf, including:



Another goal of mine is to read a book by each Bronte sister for the first time! I want to read:





Basically I want to work my way through all of the classics that I own before I buy anymore :) So excited to start this reading challenge next year! Good luck everyone

I'm repeating myself from my intro post (oops!), but I'd like to read at least 6 classics in 2020. Definitely Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, and A Tale of Two Cities. I'd also like to try The Way We Live Now, and I really should finally read Jane Eyre. I also like the idea of losing myself in a multi-perspective story set in an English village, so maybe Middlemarch or something similar? We'll see what happens next year; I get carried away when I start thinking about TBRs and reading goals and I tend to bite off more than I can chew.

My goal is to read 1 classic a month. I'm going to try to keep it from the Victorian era or earlier but excluding literature from the ancient world. I have a different personal project for reading ancient myths and classics. Of the 12 classics I plan to read in 2020, 5 of them will take place in a different European country to fit with my goals for another reading challenge (yay, overlap!)

My goals aren't set in stone, but in general I want to:

1. Finish the Barcetshire series (3 books)
2. Focus (mostly) on Modern Classics (1901-1965)
3. Read translated Classics.
4. Read Classics I already own.

I'll also read books for Jane Austen July and Victober.

I’m not setting any specific goals other than to read mainly from books I already own that I haven’t yet read. At least 25% of my book stash are modern or true classics so I’ve plenty of choice.

I don't want to restrict my reading with too specific goals or TBRs, which is why I only chose the following personal reading goals:
- read 12 classics
- read 3 german classics (which is my native language)
- read at least 1 poetry book
- read The Odyssey

I am really looking forward to starting this readalong on 1st of January straight!

I read lots of classics, both as part of my profession (I'm a teacher) and as a hobby. The main challenge to me is writing about them in both my mother tongue (Hungarian) and English. And in some cases so is the language I try reading in...

My list of twelve books (there will be more, this can be changed):

1. François Rabelais: Les Cinq Livres des faits et dits de Gargantua et Pantagruel (I have a nice bilingual copy at home, and I want to make myself get to the end of all five books)
2. Joanot Martorell: Tales of the White Knight
3. Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre (re-reading)
4. Virginia Woolf: Orlando
5. Émile Zola: Thérèse Raquin
6. Guy de Maupassant: Bel-Ami
7. William Shakespeare: Henry V
8. Choderlos de Laclos: Les Liaisons Dangereuses
9. Apuleius: Metamorphoses (re-reading)
10. Jókai Mór: Nincsen ördög (there's no English translation according to Goodreads, but I'll find out)
11. Annette von Droste-Hülshoff: The Jews' Beech (in Hungarian translation)
12. Adam Mickiewicz: Księgi narodu i pielgrzymstwa polskiego (my Polish is not that good, but there is a Hungarian translation)

12+1. All the required readings I always re-read with my students (Father Goriot, Death of Ivan Ilyich, Murder on the Orient Express, The Wild Duck, The Seagull, The Book of Jonah [an epic poem by a classic Hungarian poet], Anna Édes)

Everyone has some really awesome goals for 2020!

I haven't really decided what to read in 2020, but I definitely want to complete Les Mis, read some Jane Austen, and also some Russian classics.

My goals are:
1) Don Quixote
2) Anna Karenina
3) Mysteries of Udolpho
4) Araby
5) Dubliners
6) Grapes of Wrath
4) Sense and Sensibility
6) Little Women
7) In Search of Lost Time
8) The Philosopher's Pupil
9) Jane Eyre
10) Moonstone
11) The Woman in White
12) The Years
13) To The Lighthouse
14) The Good Apprentice
15) Tess of D'Urbervilles
And so many more...

I am planning on re reading this year. I first read most of my classics 30+ years ago when I was studying and feel it really is time for a reread of them all! Not sure how many I will fit in (I feel it is a long term project) but I will aim for one a month, starting
with Great Expectations.

Rereads I am also hoping to get to are:
Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Oliver Twist
The Count of Monte Cristo
Anna Karenina
Pride and Prejudice
The Princess Cassamassima
Tess of the D'Ubervilles
The Moonstone
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Uncle Tom's Cabin

There are plenty more I can chose from, so this project will continue for a while! Haven't even touched on 20th century classics yet!

My personal goal is to try to complete 12 classics this year from as many different authors as possible. I want to explore which style of classics I love best. I’m going to push myself to try to complete some longer classics as well. My longest classics currently are Jane Eyre and Little Women but I have never been able to finish a Dickens or Alexandre Dumas novel.

My goals will probably change, but I honestly just want to read most of the classics on my shelf! The ones I don't read by the end of this year, I will think about getting rid of (though knowing me, will not follow through..)

I would like to read more classics. I would especially would like to read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" because I actually have never read it.

My goal is to read 20 classics (just because it's 2020), though I might try and read more. Out of these 20 I hope to read:

- all Jane Austen novels in English (I read some of them a long time ago in Croatian)
- one book by each of the Bronte sisters
- finally read War and Peace
- some Greek tragedies by Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides.

My goals might change and I don't want to put too much pressure on myself, so I won't feel bad if I don't get to all of these. But a girl can dream! :)

I'm aiming for 12 classics in 2020. One a month. Many of those may end up being children's classics because I can then share them and recommend them to children in school. I think I've read 2.5 this year so far (still in the middle of the third but plan to finish by New Year!)

I want to read one classic a month and I’d also like to finish all the Jane Austen and Bronte books.

This year I wanted to read one classics a month which I managed to do. So I'm going to try for 2 a month. I'd also like to try to read some classics beyond the Victorian/English language classics I tend to read. I might try some Russian classics next. Recommendations welcome!

My goal is to read one classic per month. And since I have a tendency to get stuck on one author, I am challenging myself to pick a different author each month.

I've read 14 this year, so I think 20 will be a doable number for next year.

I'd like to read 12 classics this year. I want to finish reading the two Bronte classics I haven't read yet or have forgotten: Villette and The Professor. My favorite classics are British classics. The rest of my focus will be on Victorian and Edwardian era classics.

It’s a while since I read any classics so will start with a small aim of joining 3 buddy reads with this Group in 2020.

My Tbr for 2020 (may be a bit ambitious BUT...
Anna katenina
Life and fate
The master and margsrita
Father's and sons
Count of monte christo
Cider House rules
The Scarlet pimpernel
The Rainbow
All Quiet on the western front
Gone with the wind
A tree grows in brooklyn
Doctor zhivago
The Gulag archipelago
Norwegian wood
Cold mountsin
Lorna doone
I capture the castle
One Flew over the cuckoo's nest
We always lived in the castle
Black narcissus
Mary barton
A clockwork orange
The scapegoat
The samurai
The grapes of wrath
The Enchanted April

My goal is to read at least one classic in English a month and one classic in French every two months. I would also like to establish a list of about 50 must-read classics (to create a "to-do list"). Any help is welcome!

Since 2020 will be my final year of University, so I'll be pretty occupied, my goal will be to read one classic every month or every two months, depending on how busy I'm.