It’s another challenge signup post! Thank you to Karen K over at Books and Chocolate for once again hosting the Back to the Classics Challenge.

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’m starting with two possibilities for each category… we’ll see how it goes. Without further ado, the list:

1. A 19th century classic:
   The Black Robe by Wilkie Collins
   The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville
2. A 20th century classic:
   The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
   Oil! by Upton Sinclair
3. A classic by a woman author
   The Sundial by Shirley Jackson
   Julius by Daphne DuMaurier
4. A classic in translation
   Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
   Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
5. A classic by BIPOC author
   Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cuba by Machado de Assis
   The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
6. Mystery/detective/crime classic
   Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
   Nightfall by David Goodis
7. A classic short story collection
   The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne DuMaurier
   An Obsession with Death and Dying by Cornell Woolrich
8. Pre 1800’s classic
   Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
   Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
9. A nonfiction classic
   Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
   The Travels by Marco Polo
10. Classic that’s been on your TBR list the longest (Pretty close between these two)
    For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
    The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
11. Classic set in a place you’d like to visit
    The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (Middle Earth)
    Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (Oxford)
12. Wild card classic
    Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham
    Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy