12 Classics I Need to Be Held Accountable to Read

We are 71 days into 2020, and I still have not read a single classic. Meep.

Clearly I need to be held accountable to someone for this goal, so that's going to be YOU, my blog readers. I have a whole shelf full of classics to read, and my goal is to read one a month until I've read all of them. I do not need to like them; I do not need to finish them. I can skim them if I'm getting bored. But I need to read them. Here's the list of classics you're going to see me read over the next several months.


1. Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery
I've read the first four Anne books, and I literally own a copy of this one so I don't know what's stopping me.


2. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
The last Austen I need to read. (Apart from her juvenilia, which I do own as well.) I've owned a copy of this one for at least two and a half years, so who knows what's taking me so long.


3. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
4. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Obviously I have strong opinions about Jane Eyre, but I really want to try Anne's work.


5. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Meant to read this last summer on vacation, and I just didn't. RIP.


6. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
I have literally seen a web-series version and the Carey Mulligan movie adaptation and yet I haven't read the book.


7. All the Shakespeare plays I haven't read
Thanks to high school and college classes, I've read a bunch of Shakespeare's work, including:
~Hamlet
~King Lear
~Timon of Athens
~Cymbeline
~The Tempest
~The Taming of the Shrew (regretfully)
~Much Ado About Nothing
~As You Like It
~Henry IV
~Richard II
~Macbeth
~Romeo and Juliet
~A Midsummer Night's Dream
~Twelfth Night
~The Merchant of Venice

So that leaves 23 to read. Guess I'd better get started...


8. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
I guess I gotta.


9. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
This one is nice and short at least.


10. Tales of Horror by Edgar Allan Poe
Maybe I'll read this in October?


11. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
I feel drawn to this one.


12. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Can't wait to see how different this one is from the Disney movie. Also that cover. 


So obviously my list is super white. Recommend me some classics by authors of color, please! I've read One Hundred Years of Solitude and Beloved, if you need some reference points. And current author-wise, I've enjoyed Stacey Lee's, Renée Watson's, and Heidi Heilig's works, for example!