Thanks to Karen for hosting the Back to Classics Challenge 2017! This is my wrap-up post, listing the books I read for each category (I ended up reading way more than 12 classics this year, so I actually found a couple that fit each category):

19th Century Classics

• Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens – A stereotypical Dickens very much in the style of Oliver Twist or David Copperfield
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James – A ghost story made excellent by a potentially unreliable narrator

20th Century Classics

• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad – A depressing spy story similar to something written by LeCarré
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck – A tragic tale of greed and colonialism

Classics by a Woman Author

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – Gothic romance at its finest
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys – An angry, post-colonial prequel to Jane Eyre

Classics in Translation

• Histories by Herodotus – Greece vs. “the barbarians” (plus plenty of other factoids) from the father of history
• The Peloponnesian War  by Thucydides – Athens vs. Sparta showing how history tends to repeat itself

Pre-1800’s Classics

• The Gilgamesh Epic (Anonymous) – The granddaddy of all epic poetry (read in a disappointing translation)
• Othello by William Shakespeare – Tragic bitterness and racism boil over into multiple deaths (as you would expect from the Bard)

Romance Classics

• The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare – Not sure if this is actually romance or Stockholm Syndrome
• Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze – A fairly typical crime-noir novel that centers around romance (or lust, at least)

Gothic or Horror Classics

• The Monk by Matthew C. Lewis – Quite possibly the most Gothic book to ever Gothic
• Dracula by Bram Stoker – The original sexy vampire

Classics with a Number in the Title

• The 39 Steps – Largely responsible for the “innocent man on the run with dash of political intrigue” trope
• Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly – A chilling exposé from the late 19th century

Classics About an Animal (or with an animal on the cover)

• Animal Farm by George Orwell – What if Stalin and Trotsky were pigs and Russia was a farm?
• The Master and Margarita – The devil and his posse (including a talking cat) visit Soviet Russia (and Jesus and Pontius Pilate are involved somehow too)

Classics Set in a Place You’d Like to Visit

• Perelandra by C. S. Lewis – What if Eve hadn’t immediately fallen for the serpent’s lie? (as played out in Venus’s version of Paradise)
• The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse – Bighearted but a bit dim Bertie Wooster survives the perils of English high society with the help of his genius butler

Award-Winning Classics

• The Chosen by Chaim Potok – The life and friendship of two Jewish boys in New York who come from very different backgrounds
• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein – A love letter to fascism disguised as military sci-fi

Russian Classics

• Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol – A literary version of many of the themes found in the Conan the Barbarian stories
• The Captain’s Daughter and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin – a little bit of everything: romance, bandits, a twist ending, tragedy, and a hint of the supernatural

So there you have it! If I happen to win, you can contact me here.