Classic Literature Reading Game #theclassics

Classic Literature Reading Game

Reading can be a lot of fun, but why should you read, and how do you decide which books to read? We have provided countless lists of books to read, but I thought it would be fun to create the Classic Literature Reading Game, since that’s what I am reading this year. This game was inspired by Random House’s Reading Bingo (2014 Reading Bingo). Target to read a book each week, but if that seems like too much for you, how about you read at least one book every month?

Another suggestion is to read all the books in one or two categories. How about if you chose two series and read all the books in each series? For instance, there are six books in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time and six in the Chronicles of Narnia series. If you read those two series, you would have read 12 books for the year. Additionally, Marcel Proust and CS Lewis are world renowned authors.

There are 14 categories, so another suggestion is to use a random number generator to choose which books to read. Set the minimum number to 1 and maximum to 14, then click on generate. Whichever number the generator chooses, that's the category of books that you should focus on.

Based on the categories I am listing below, I will give you suggestions for books to read. Please feel free to add to the list because it’s not exhaustive. I am trying to give you a head start so they are only recommendations. Remember, in Book Recommendations for a Classic Education in 2014, I presented a list of books from which I will choose which books to read this year. Originally, I intended to read 50 books from the list, but I changed my mind and will continue after I have read 50. Visit the page often because I will be adding more books to the list.

The Classic Literature Reading Game

Books by Women

1. Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables Collection: 12 Books, Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne's House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside, Chronicles of Avonlea, PLUS MORE!), Lucy Maud Montgomery
2. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
3. Middlemarch, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
4. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
5. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Mary Wollstonecraft
6. Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar
7. My Antonia, Willa Cather
8. The Woman in White (Penguin Classics), Wilkie Collins
9. Gone with the Wind, 75th Anniversary Edition, Margaret Mitchell
10. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
11. The Golden Notebook: A Novel, Doris Lessing
12. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson

Books over 800 pages in Length

1. The Arabian Nights
2. The Decameron (Penguin Classics), Giovanni Boccaccio
3. The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), Murasaki Shikibu
4. Bleak House (Penguin Classics), Charles Dickens
5. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
6. Le Morte d'Arthur (Modern Library Classics) (The Death of King Arthur), Sir Thomas Mallory
7. Gargantua and Pantagruel (Penguin Classics), Francois Rebelais

Books by the Same Author

1. Complete Novels of Jane Austen (Knickerbocker Classics)
2. Michel de Montaigne – The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics)
3. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems, Edgar Allan Poe
4. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
5. The Bronte Sisters The Complete Novels (Collector's Library)

Books in a Series

1. In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete), Marcel Proust
2. J.R.R. Tolkien 4-Book Boxed Set: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (Movie Tie-in): The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien
3. Chronicles of Narnia Box Set, CS Lewis
4. The Man Without Qualities (The Man Without Qualities Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails), and (The Man Without Qualities Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails), Robert Musil
5. Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Samuel Beckett

The Asian-Pacific Connection

1. Diary of a Madman, and other stories, Lu Xun
2. Journey to the West (Chinese Classics, Classic Novel in 4 Volumes), Wu Cheng'en
3. Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
4. The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata
5. Shakuntala, Kalidasa
6. Ramayana. English, Valmiki and (The Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic)
7. The Mahabharata (Penguin Classics)

It Sounds Like Greek to Me

1. Great Dialogues of Plato
2. Nine Greek Dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes: Part 8 Harvard Classics – Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Furies, Prometheus Bound, Oedipus the King, Antigone, Hippolytus, The Bacchæ, and The Frogs
3. Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis
4. The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), Homer
5. The Odyssey, Homer
6. Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle

When in Rome, Do As the Romans Do

1. The Aeneid (Penguin Classics), Virgil
2. Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics), Ovid

Books by Scandinavian Authors

1. Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy , Jostein Gaarder
2. Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)
3. Independent People, Halldor Laxness

Letters/Journals

1. Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero
2. The Letters of the Younger Pliny (Penguin Classics)
3. Diary of Samuel Pepys – Complete
4. The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams
5. The Life of Cellini (Arts & Letters)

Biographies

1. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
2. Geronimo's Story of His Life
3. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
4. Roughing It (Signet Classics), Mark Twain
5. Plutarch's Lives Of Illustrious Men

Epic Poems and Sagas

1. The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso (Everyman's Library), Dante Alighieri
2. Gilgamesh: A New English Version
3. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained In Plain and Simple English: A Modern Translation and the Original Version, John Milton
4. Beowulf
5. The Song of Roland (Penguin Classics)
6. The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs

Voyages and Travels

1. The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vol. 1, The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: Volume 2, and The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Volume 3)
2. The California and Oregon Trail: Being sketches of prairie and Rocky Mountain life (Classics of the Old West), Francis Parkman
3. The Travels of Marco Polo, Marco Polo
4. The Travels of Marco Polo
5. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, Mungo Park
6. A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2, James Cook

Banned Books

1. Old Goriot (Penguin Classics), Honore de Balzac
2. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
3. Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series), D.H. Lawrence
4. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
5. Fanny Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, John Cleland
6. Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau

Sibling/Family Rivalry

1. The Bronte Sisters: Jane Eyre, The Professor and Villette by Charlotte Bronte; Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte; Agnes Gray, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (The Bronte Sisters The Complete Novels (Collector's Library)).
2. Henry and William James: Daisy Miller (Dover Thrift Editions), The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics), The Turn of the Screw, The Bostonians (Penguin Classics), The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) and What Maisie Knew  by Henry James (Delphi Complete Works of Henry James (Illustrated)). William James’ books are very different from his brother’s and I am not recommending that you read them, unless you want to – Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience, The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to “Pragmatism” and many more by William James
3. Other author siblings include: Aldous and Julian Huxley; Thomas and Heinrich Mann; James and Stanislaus Joyce, Oscar and Willie Wilde
4. Husband and wife: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

How will you play the Classic Literature Reading Game? The possibilities are endless! Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Liked this post? Share it and subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!

Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.

Book links are affiliate links.