Conquering the Classics - The First 100

When I first started this blog in 2009, I selected a list of 100 "classic" novels. To see how I selected this first list of 100, check out this post.

Here are the original rules I established for myself:

(1) I must start AND finish every book.

(2) I must read every book, including the ones I've already read.

(3) I'm required to read all books in a series. No exceptions.

(4) I'm not allowed to blog about a book before I've finished it; each book deserves its fair shot, cover to cover.

I originally set myself a year for the project, but as you can see from the date stamps, it extended well beyond the frame.

Now that I've expanded the project significantly, I'm trying to make a more readable collection of my posts. To that end, to see any of my first 100 blog posts, click on the title of the book and author below, and you'll be sent to my post on that book. I've included the date of each post & the title I gave it (a selected line or lines from the novel) next to each one.

1) 1984 by George Orwell (Sunday, September 19, 2009)

  • Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

2) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Monday, September 21, 2009)

  • Every third Merriweather is morbid.
3) The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (Saturday, September 26, 2009)
  • All I can say is, don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself. 
  • Hobbits: soft as as butter they can be, and yet sometimes as tough as old tree roots.
5) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Tuesday, October 13, 2009)
  • A little sea-bathing would set me up for ever!
6) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Sunday, October 18, 2009)
  • Tomorrow, we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...
  • Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia.
8) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (Saturday, October 31, 2009)
  • Is anybody in the John, Milton?
9) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Monday, November 9, 2009)
  • My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning).
10) The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Wednesday, November 25, 2009)
  • Have you fallen in love with disorder?
11) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (Saturday, December 5, 2009)
  • Daylight began to forsake the red-room.
12) Animal Farm by George Orwell (Tuesday, December 8, 2009)
  • Who will believe I did not do this on purpose?
13) Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Saturday, December 12, 2009)
  • I'm frightened. Of us.
14) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Monday, December 21, 2009)
  • In a little while, it ain't gonna be so bad. In a little while.
15) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Saturday, January 2, 2010)
  • But truly, truly it's not my fault, or only my fault a little bit...
16) Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling (Thursday, January 21, 2010)
  • Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.
17) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Wednesday, January 27, 2010)
  • Was and will make me ill, I take a gramme and only am.
Alexis's Blog-Along on Brave New World  (Thursday, January 28, 2010)
  • Sometimes people blogged along with me. In this case, my sister Alexis did a read and blog-along.
18) Ulysses by James Joyce (Saturday, February 13, 2010)
  • Longest way round is the shortest way home.
19) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Sunday, February 21, 2010)
  • Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad?
  • The friends of today are the enemies of tomorrow.
21) East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Sunday, May 9, 2010)
  • You see, there's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.
  • Is it to be wondered at if my thoughts were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the natural light from the misty yellow rooms?
  • There is nothing to do until tomorrow. I can't sleep.
  • The yellow butterflies would invade the house at dusk.
  • Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.
26) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Monday, July 18, 2011)
  • I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer.
27) Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (Tuesday, August 16, 2011)
  • If I did not know that you were so good, I should be afraid of you.
28) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Sunday, August 21, 2011)
  • Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
29) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (Tuesday, September 13, 2011)
  • We're not wheat, we're buckwheat!
30) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Wednesday, November 30, 2011)
  • Brother Sancho, an adventure looms.
31) The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (Thursday, December 15, 2011)
  • I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.
32) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Monday, December 26, 2011)
  • For you, a thousand times over.
33) The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (Wednesday, January 18, 2012)
  • Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak.
34) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Monday, February 20, 2012)
  • Check your premises.
  • Where are my stinking traitorous droogs?
36) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Friday, March 9, 2012)
  • Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.
  • Sometimes people blogged along with me. In this case, my sibling Logan did a read and blog-along.
  • This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
38) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (Thursday, April 5, 2012)
  • Then there was only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Roark.
  • Caddy smelled like trees in the rain.
40) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Sunday, April 29, 2012)
  • Shall I not then hate them who abhor me?
Logan's Blog-Along on Frankenstein (Tuesday, May 1, 2012)
  • Sometimes people blogged along with me. In this case, my sibling Logan did a read and blog-along.
41) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (Sunday, April 29, 2012)
  • He's gonna let me tend the rabbits. 
  • You have a very wolfy roar.
  • I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
  • How long will you like me?
45) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Wednesday, May 30, 2012)
  • Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?
46) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Wednesday, May 30, 2012)
  • She rests at last beneath the starry skies.
  • This race and this country and this life produced me. I shall express myself as I am.
  • It's like a wonderful nightmare.
49) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (Wednesday, June 20, 2012)
  • To whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?
    • He would be greeted by the little phrase from the sonata, played in the garden on the restaurant piano.
    • I was only unhappy for one day at a time.
    • These people belong to a different race, they can't help it with a thousand years of feudalism in their blood.
    • These Wednesdays were works of art.
    • Beneath any carnal attraction which is at all profound, there is the permanent possibility of danger.
    • Good-bye: I leave you with the best part of myself.
    • Our legs and our arms are full of torpid memories.
51) Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (Sunday, September 2, 2012)
  • The most noble title any child can have is Third.
52) Watership Down by Richard Adams (Wednesday, October 17, 2012)
  • To rabbits, anything unknown is dangerous.
53) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Monday, October 22, 2012)
  • Ah, but it was something at least to have a choice of nightmares.
  • Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection.
55) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Monday, November 19, 2012)
  • All she asked was to have something more stable than love to lean upon.
  • The air seemed to be full of dark intentions, like the forms of thoughts not yet born.
57) A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (Sunday, January 27, 2013)
  • I lay flat on the bank and heard the river and the rain.
58) Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Tuesday, February 12, 2013)
  • Come aboard if your destination is oblivion.
    • If Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it would not be for lack of inward fire.
    • We Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be.
    • The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.
    • I am indebted to the rain.
    • Her world was in a state of convulsive change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself was that she must wait and think anew.
    • The world, it seemed, was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for her trustfulness.
    • Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.
    • What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
  • Ignatius gets nasty if we run outta cake.
  • Sometimes people blogged along with me. In this case, my sibling Logan did a read and blog-along.
61) On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Saturday, May 25, 2013)
  • We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every side.
62) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Thursday, May 30, 2013)
  • To be independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart.
63) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Monday, June 3, 2013)
  • The devil does not ride us anymore.
64) The Stand by Stephen King (Monday, June 24, 2013)
  • The dyin' ain't over. It's just got started.
  • Why does a ripe persimmon taste delicious? Why does wood smell smoky when it burns?
  • Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well.
  • Sometimes people blogged along with me. In this case, my sibling Lexie did a read and blog-along.
67) Dracula by Bram Stoker (Friday, August 23, 2013)
  • Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are?
68) The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Tuesday, September 10, 2013)
  • Today is my day, my red-letter day, my leap day, I've waited a long time for it.
69) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (Monday, September 23, 2013)
  • Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk?
  • Little by little the fragrance of Fermina Daza became less frequent and less intense, and at last it remained only in white gardenias.
  • What does this mad myth signify?
72) A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (Wednesday, November 13, 2013)
  • Now we're the grown-ups we were in such a hurry to become.
  • The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
74) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Sunday, December 8, 2013)
  • To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.
75) Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (Tuesday, December 10, 2013)
  • If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?
76) To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Saturday, December 21, 2013)
  • Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing.
  • He has appeared! Catch him at once, or he will work untold disasters!
  • The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
79) Dune by Frank Herbert (Saturday, February 15, 2014)
  • Go, Usul, and ride the maker, travel the sand as a leader of men.
80) The Trial by Franz Kafka (Sunday, February 23, 2014)
  • Was it the trial that cast him about so, and kept him from distinguishing his friends from his enemies?
  • Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.
  • His heart beat with passionate desire for the beauty and the strangeness of the world.
83) Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (Thursday, May 22, 2014)
  • A screaming comes across the sky.
  • Never fear quarrels, but seek adventures.
85) The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (Wednesday, August 20, 2014)
  • We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.
86) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (Tuesday, August 26, 2014)
  • My mother is a fish.
87) The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Wednesday, September 17, 2014)
  • To live is to be marked.
88) Persuasion by Jane Austen (Wednesday, September 24, 2014)
  • All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
  • Kissing is forbidden between us. This makes it bearable.
90) Atonement by Ian McEwan (Saturday, December 6, 2014)
  • She was one of those children possessed by a desire to have the world just so.
91) Emma by Jane Austen (Wednesday, January 14, 2015)
  • What is the certainty of caprice?
92) Beloved by Toni Morrison (Thursday, January 29, 2015)
  • In the dark my name is Beloved.
93) Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (Thursday, February 12, 2015)
  • He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.
  • I can't do chatting.
95) Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (Wednesday, April 22, 2015)
  • I am a very sly Zemblan.
96) I, Claudius by Robert Graves (Saturday, May 9, 2015)
  • He shall give Rome fiddlers and fear and fire.
  • Memory believes before knowing remembers.
98) Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (Sunday, June 21, 2015)
  • Why change the world if the world is not watching?
  • We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial - I believe we are lost.
  • Infamy was babbling around her in the public market place.
My post on finishing the first 100 (Saturday, September 12, 2015)

I went on to read another 100 books, and more after that. Head back to the home page if you're curious to see what I read next!

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