I’ve been having computer problems for the last week, so it’s been a little longer than usual between posts. I now have a fully functioning laptop again, so here we go. As I was going over my TBR list for next year, I realized that it has a lot of classics on it. So, I decided to see if Karen @ Books and Chocolate was running her excellent Back to the Classics challenge again this year, and she is!

The challenge involves completing classic books (50+ years old) in as many of the 12 sub-categories as possible for entries in a prize drawing (Click the picture I lifted from her page to go there, see full details, and sign up). For me, it’s mostly a fun incentive to include some “serious literature” in my reading and an opportunity to see what classics others have enjoyed.

You don’t have to choose which books you will be reading at the start of the year, but I like to start with a list of possibilities. This year I actually have two possibilities for each category… we’ll see how it goes. Without further ado, the list:

1. A 19th century classic –
   The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville
   Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (Tr. Rosemary Edmonds)
2. A 20th century classic
   For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
   On the Road by Jack Kerouac
3. A classic by a woman author –
   Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
   Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
4. A classic in translation –
   The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Tr. David McDuff)
   The Divine Comedy by Danté Alighieri (Tr. Dorothy L. Sayers)
5. A classic by BIPOC author –
   Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley & Malcolm X
   Chaka by Thomas Mofolo (Tr. Daniel P. Kunene)
6. A classic by a new-to-you author –
   Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (Tr. Burton Raffel)
   Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
7. New-to-you classic by a favorite author –
   Bleak House by Charles Dickens
   The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
8. A classic about an animal or with an animal in the title –
   One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
   The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
9. A children’s classic –
   The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
   Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
10. A humorous or satirical classic –
    The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
    A Tale of a Tub & Other Works by Jonathan Swift
11. A travel or adventure classic –
    The Travels by Marco Polo (Tr. Nigel Cliff)
    The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
12. A Classic Play –
    The Miser by Jean-Baptiste Molière (Tr. John Wood)
    The Pot of Gold by Plautus (Tr. E. F. Watling)