In 2015 Penguin Books published a series of 80 Little Black Classic Books to celebrate their 80th anniversary. I bought the original set but see now more books have been added to the set. I believe they number 127 books. You can see the complete list here.
Of course I have looked through them but not read any of them.
This week the Classic Club 16th Spin has been announced and I thought I would use this set of books to get started reading them. I have picked the first 20 books of the series for the list. There are some I look forward to more than others but I will read the book chosen by the spin number and post a review of it, as required by the end of the year.
The list is as follows:
- Mrs. Rosie and the Priest by Giovanni Boccaccio
- As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue by Anon
- On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts by Thomas DeQuincey
- Aphorisms on Love and Hate
- Traffic by John Ruskin
- Wailing Ghosts by Pu Songling
- A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
- Three Tang Dynasty Poets
- On the Beach at Night Alone by Walt Whitman
- A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees by Kentō
- How to Use Your Enemies by Baltasar Gracián
- The Eve of St Agnes by John Keats
- Woman Much Missed by Thomas Hardy
- Femme Fatale by Guy de Maupassant
- Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls by Marco Polo
- Galigual by Suetonius
- Jason and Medea by Apollonius
- Olalla by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
I don’t have firm favourites or ones I am dreading BUT …. if I had to choose I think my best pick might be no. 7 or 11 and the ones I might hesitate at would be no. 13 and 20. They sound a bit dry but hey! Who Knows!
The Spin will occur on Friday, November 17th. Stay Tuned.
Enjoy life with the Penguin and me..books, travels, photography from Tasmania 
Having read some of Guy de Maupassant’s short stories for the first time this year…I wish you that one 🙂
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What a fun idea! Look forward to seeing how you get on with these! 🙂
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It should be fun and give me a kickstart for others.
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I’d go with 14 and 15 probably, but I love love love 2. I presume it has more than just that poem. I have bought a couple of these black classics, but none of the first 20.
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I would be ok with those you mention too.
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these sound perfect for a winter’s night read… (oh, summer, over there…) i’ve broken down and started a blog: http://muddlet.wordpress.com
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Now MudPuddle, I hope you come back here. I have found your blog from the link here (not from what you told me on my blog) but you haven’t provided anywhere for us to comment. I’m wondering whether what you have done is to create a PAGE and not a POST? A post would normally, somewhere, show the date it was posted but there’s not such information there. Also, can I respectfully suggest you stop shouting at us – that is, you don’t use all upper case! It’s very hard to read and in computer land is regarded as shouting. Good luck! It would be nice to hear from you on your own blog.
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tx for the info, ms. whispering… as soon as we figure those things out, amateurs that we are, it’ll be fixed… lol
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What a fantastic collection – what a wonderful way to sample the great literature. I hope you enjoy the reading, despite them not being easy reads. I have a set of the Penguin Travelogues ( great travel literature ) that I bought on Ebay a long time ago – I also have not read any of them, just looked through them but now I might bring them out and begin the actual reading.
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