Let's try another challenge for the year.  Try for six to twelve to read for 2021.  I read only four last year but hope to do more this year.  Choose your own and share your thoughts about each.

1.  The Road by Cormac McCarthy. 1/6/2021, 4 stars.

2.  The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason,3/4/2021, (not on the classics listings but I think is certainly is one so I listed it here.

3.  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, 3/28/2021, 3 stars

4.  The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, ISBN 0-8129-6642-2, this edition not included in PBS listing.  5/10/2021, 5 stars

5.  The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, 5/17/2021, 3 stars

6.  The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 10/15/2021, 4+ stars

7.  The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Illustrated by Gertrude Stein. 10/19/2021, 3 stars

I am in! I am trying to work on Mount-to-be-Read, this will motivate me.  Thanks for starting this.

1. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens.

2. Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington. Completed 7/19/21.*****

I'm in also!  Last year I decided to read one classic book a month and actually did it.  So I am going for it again. 

1.  Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac  01/07/2021

2.  The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald  02/21/2021

3.  The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin  03/06/2021

4.  The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy  05/15/2021

5.  The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain  07/24/2021

6.  Native Son by Richard Wright  10/6/2021

REK-you have motivated me to read some classics. I always like the idea of classics but usually I either put off reading them or don't really like the ones I pick. I think I read only 1 last year...I'll have to double check that. So I'm going to go for 4...one per quarter. Now let's hope I remember I've committed to this. 

I don't have many on my TBR because I can always get them at the library or online, so this won't help with my TBR goal, but I have been meaning to read some classics. To me, some are so bad they are DNF for me and I don't know how they get to be called classics. But some are amazingly good.

I want to read  at least one of the Leatherstocking Tales ... I have never read any of those.

now... what should I pick first?

Classics I read:

•  Understood Betsy Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher. 
•  Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin. 

I googled "best classics" and found a top 100 list from Penguin Books, and found one that actually is on my TBR, so I'll plan for this one to read sometime in January:

I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)

Found it.  I have that book too, Margaret.   Maybe I should look for it. 

Margaret and Rose Ann, I have I Capture the Castle, too.  I think it is time to read it!

Glad to see so many of you coming over to share your classic reads.  It really doesn't matter how many you do.  I just try!  And, there are some awfully good authors out there.

I finished my first classic. It's actually a middle grade book. I chose a classic for Middle Grade March.

I read The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox. It was okay (2 stars). It was hard to read how terrible the Africans were treated. 

I just finished Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell location is actually the same as the title. I needed an award winner of some sort for my independent bookstore's challenge this month. I found this on my shelf of children's books & decided on it. I never read it as a child & thought this was a good way to get it off my shelf. It won the Newberry Award Medal in 1961. 

I certainly got off to a slow start with this challenge!

I was reading for the traveling challenge and I needed a book set in Vermont. I googled "classic books set in Vermont" and found Understood Betsy Author: Dorothy Canfield Fisher. I don't recall reading this as a child, but I read many similar books. I could really tell that this author was one of the proponents of Montessori schools. I enjoyed the book a lot.

That went so well that for the next state I googled "classic books set in Maine" and found Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin. I believe I did read an abridged version of this as a child but really had no memory of it so I went ahead and read the unabridged (probably more adult!) version. I would have enjoyed the story, except that I kept cringing at how much of this story was borrowed by the author of Anne of Green Gables. This may spoil my enjoyment of Anne of Green Gables! And it has been a favorite of mine for so long!