The Well-Educated Mind Reading Challenge

Being an English major and frequent page-turner since I learned to read, I've felt some pressure to read "the classics." After years of feeling stuck in college classes and forced to read books they wanted me to read, I felt like I lost my will to read for personal pleasure.

But I just can't get away from the allure of a reading challenge, which gives me hope that my passion for reading hasn't died.

Since I am interested in giving my son a classical education, reading all of the classics myself can only help me. I have already read some of these, but I am rereading those and cracking open the ones that are new to me.

If you'd like to challenge yourself, feel free to join me.

My plan:

1. Start at the beginning of the list. 

2. Read a little each day.

3. Blog about my progress (at least once a month) to share and keep myself motivated.

Without further ado, here is the list:

Books marked by an orange asterisk (*) are books that are being re-read. Books written in blue ink are ones I have completed. I'll be reading a few from each section so as not to overload on any one type of literature. 

NOVELS

Don Quixote- Miguel de Cervantes (1605) currently reading

The Pilgrimʼs Progress- John Bunyan (1679)

Gulliverʼs Travels- Jonathan Swift (1726)*

Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen (1815)

Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens (1838)

Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte (1847)

The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)*

Moby-Dick- Herman Melville (1851)

Uncle Tomʼs Cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe (1851)*

Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert (1857)

Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)

Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy (1877)

The Return of the Native- Thomas Hardy (1878)

The Portrait of a Lady- Henry James (1881)*

Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain (1884)*

The Red Badge of Courage- Stephen Crane (1895)

Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad (1902)

The House of Mirth- Edith Wharton (1905)

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)*

Mrs. Dalloway- Virginia Woolf (1925)

The Trial- Franz Kafka (1925)

Native Son- Richard Wright (1940)

The Stranger- Albert Camus (1942)

1984- George Orwell (1949)

Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison (1952)*

Seize the Day- Saul Bellow (1956)

One Hundred Years of Solitude- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)

If on a winterʼs night a traveler- Italo Calvino (1972)

Song of Solomon- Toni Morrison (1977)

White Noise- Don DelilloPossession- A.S. Byatt (1990)

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

The Confessions- Augustine (A.D. c. 400)

The Book of Margery Kempe- Margery Kempe (c. 1430)*

Essays- Michel de Montaigne (1580)

The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself- Teresa of Avila (1588)

Meditations- Rene Descartes (1641)

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners- John Bunyan (1666)

The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration- Mary Rowlandson (1682)

Confessions- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1781)

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin- Benjamin Franklin (1791)*

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself- Harriet Jacobs (1861)

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass- Frederick Douglass (1881)*

Up from Slavery- Booker T. Washington (1901)

Ecce Homo- Friedrich Nietzsche (1908)

Mein Kampf- Adolf Hitler (1925)

An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth- Mohandas Gandhi (1929)

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas- Gertrude Stein (1933)

The Seven Storey Mountain- Thomas Merton (1948)

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life- C.S. Lewis (1955)

The Autobiography of Malcolm X- Malcolm X (1965)

Journal of a Solitude- May Sarton (1973)

The Gulag Archipelago- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Born Again- Charles W. Colson (1977)

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez- Richard Rodriguez (1982)

All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs- Elie Wiesel (1995)

HISTORIES

The Histories- Herodotus (441 B.C.)

The Peloponnesian War- Thucydides (c. 400 B.C.)

The Republic- Plato (c. 375 B.C.)

Lives- Plutarch (A.D. 100-125)

The City of God- Augustine (Completed 426)

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People- Bede (731)

The Prince- Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)

Utopia- Sire Thomas More (1516)*

The True End of Civil Government- John Locke (1690)

The History of England, Volume V- David Hume (1754)

The Social Contract- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)

Common Sense- Thomas Paine (1776)

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire- Edward Gibbon (1776-1788)

The Vindication of the Rights of Women- Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)

Democracy in America- Alexis de Tocqueville (1835-40)

The Communist Manifesto- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy- Jacob Burckhardt (1860)

The Souls of Black Folk- W.E.B. Du Bois (1903)

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism- Max Weber (1904)

Queen Victoria- Lytton Strachey (1921)

The Road to Wigan Pier- George Orwell (1937)

The New England Mind- Perry Miller (1939)

The Great Crash 1929- John Kenneth Galbraith (1955)

The Longest Day- Cornelius Ryan (1959)

The Feminine Mystique- Betty Friedan (1963)

Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made- Eugene D. Genovese (1974)

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century- Barbara Tuchman (1978)

All the Presidentʼs Men- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1987)

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era- James M. McPherson (1988)

A Midwifeʼs Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary- Laura Thatcher Ulrich (1990)

The End of History and the Last Man- Francis Fukuyama (1992)

DRAMAS

Agamemnon- Aeschylus (c. 458 B.C.)

Oedipus the King- Sophocles (c. 450 B.C.)*

Medea- Euripides (c. 431 B.C.)

The Birds- Aristophanes (c. 400 B.C.)

Poetics- Aristotle (c. 330 B.C.)

Doctor Faustus- Christopher Marlowe (1588)*

Richard III- William Shakespeare (1592-93)

A Midsummer Nightʼs Dream- William Shakespeare (1594-95)*

Hamlet- William Shakespeare (1600)*)

Tartuffe- Moliere (1669)*

The Way of the World- William Congreve (1700)

She Stoops to Conquer- Oliver Goldsmith (1773)

The School for Scandal- Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1777)

A Dollʼs House- Henrik Ibsen (1879)*

The Importance of Being Earnest-Oscar Wilde (1899)

The Cherry Orchard- Anton Chekhov (1904)

Saint Joan- George Bernard Shaw (1924)

Murder in the Cathedral- T.S. Eliot (1935)

Our Town- Thornton Wilder (1938)

Long Dayʼs Journey Into Night- Eugene OʼNeill (1940)

No Exit- Jean Paul Sartre (1944)

A Streetcar Named Desire- Tennessee Williams (1947)

Death of a Salesman- Arthur Miller (1949)

A Man for All Seasons- Robert Bolt (1960)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead- Tom Stoppard (1967)

Equus- Peter Shaffer (1974)

POETRY

The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2000 B.C.)*

The Iliad and the Odyssey*- Homer (c. 800 B.C.)

Greek Lyricists (c. 600 B.C.)

Odes- Horace (65-8 B.C.)

Beowulf (c. 1000)*

Inferno- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)*

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1350)*

The Canterbury Tales- Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)*

Sonnets- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)*

John Donne (1572-1631)*

Psalms- King James Bible (1611)

Paradise Lost- John Milton (1608-1674)*

Songs of Innocence and Experience- William Blake (1757-1827)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

John Keats (1795- 1821)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1883)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)*

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)*

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)*

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)*

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

Robert Frost (1874-1963)*

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)*

T.S. Eliot (1888-1954)*

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)*

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Mark Strand (1934-)

Adrienne Rich (1929-)

Seamus Heaney (1939-)

Robert Pinsky (1940-)

Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)

Rita Dove (1952-)