20th Century Classics 2017 Reading List

As a follow up to the post I shared with you last week (Classics I Read in 2016), today I am sharing the list of classics I plan to read in 2017. This list is made up of decidedly more modern titles than last year, with the oldest being published in 1908 and the most recent in 1998. The way I approached selecting these books was to scan through lists of popular titles from each decade in the 20th century and choose one from each that jumped out at me as a familiar title that I had never actually read.

They are listed in chronological publishing order, but that’s not necessarily the order in which I will read them. I’ll decide that along the way based on what else I’m reading and what I have time for. You’ll also notice there are twelve books on this list, while there are only ten decades in a century. That’s because I wanted to read one each month, so I included two bonus picks to get me to an even dozen.

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Another thing that influenced my picks for this year was length. Length was something that I failed to take into account last year, and I put several books on my list that I ended up not having time for because they were inordinately long (The Count of Monte Cristo, The Deerslayer, and Les Miserables, in case you were wondering). So this year I put a little more effort in researching the books I was interested in before throwing them on the list. As a result, intentionally choosing shorter word counts left me with several titles that are often categorized as middle grade or YA.

At first that made me feel like I was being lazy and not challenging myself, but I’ve decided to look forward to reading something a little less challenging and more relaxing. There are plenty of other books on other lists (I have several lists; don’t think this is all, folks) that I expect to challenge me, so I’m just going to enjoy the easier reads on this list and consider it research for when my kids are old enough to read them in a few years.