Joining the Classics Club, but...tweaking it to fit me...

I've noticed over the years that several of my blogging friends are members of The Classics Club.  And I have never or certainly rarely thought of myself as a 'Classics' reader.  There were a couple of things - a truly obnoxious high school English teacher (that man....), a bad and very tiresome experience with a William Faulkner book (ah, the endless length of the sentences), and having the same teacher tell me that I basically couldn't write my way out of a paper bag.  Seriously?  In any case, despite the fact that I loved books by Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen and the Brontes, I thought that 'Classics' just weren't for me.  Mysteries, crime, thrillers, suspense, horror and also romance, a bit of fantasy/sci fi, Gothic historicals - you know, the genres, those were my places.

However, I have decided, after reading some of those same blogging friends' updates and posts on their 'Classics Club' experience and after checking out the website here, yes, I've decided to join in.  With some special 'kay' tweaks.  The books I'm putting on my list of 50 to read in the next 5 years or sooner are all mysteries, crime, horror, Gothics - my kind of books.  All were published before 1990, so are at least 27 years old.  Some I got from the list at The Classics Club, some are on my shelves now, some I read in the past and loved and want to reread, and some are new to me - many gleaned from Mystery Book Award lists.  I'm really excited about this and hope you'll come around and check out my posts about the special 'kay's Classics Club' offerings.

OK, what are the books?  They are listed below - not with links, but are easy to find.  The publication year is detailed and they are in date order.  My aim is to read these in some manner, still working on a random thing, in the next 5 years or basically before the end of 2022 (my word, I'm old).

kay's Classics Club List

Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen (1817)
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (1847)
Collected Stories and Poems – Edgar Allan Poe (before 1849)
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins (1859)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Washington Irving (1875)
Turn of the Screw – Henry James (1898)
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
The Circular Staircase – Mary Roberts Rinehart (1908)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie (1926)
The Secret of the Old Clock – Carolyn Keene (1930)
Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie (1934)  - finished 4/12/18
Death on the Nile – Agatha Christie (1937)
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (1938)
The Red Carnelian – Phyllis A. Whitney (1943)
The Crucible – Arthur Miller (1953)
Death in Kashmir – M.M. Kaye (1953)
A Kiss Before Dying – Ira Levin (1954)
Wildfire at Midnight – Mary Stewart (1956) - finished 1/22/18
The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson (1959)
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (1960)
Mystery of the Haunted Pool – Phyllis A Whitney (1960)
Bride of Pendorric – Victoria Holt (1963)
This Rough Magic – Mary Stewart (1965)
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote (1966)
Ammie Come Home – Barbara Michaels (1968)
Waiting for Willa – Dorothy Eden (1970)
The Blessing Way – Tony Hillerman (1970)
A Clubbable Woman – Reginald Hill (1970)
Last Bus to Woodstock – Collin Dexter (1975)
Crocodile on a Sandbank – Elizabeth Peters (1975)
Where Are the Children? – Mary Higgins Clark (1975)
Sleeping Murder – Agatha Christie (1976) - finished 1/30/18
A Judgment in Stone – Ruth Rendell (1977)
The Stand – Stephen King (1978)
The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin (1978)
The Mirror – Marlys Milhiser (1979)
The Cater Street Hangman – Anne Perry (1979)
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco (1980)
A is for Alibi – Sue Grafton (1982)
Indemnity Only – Sara Paretsky (1982)
When the Bough Breaks – Jonathan Kellerman (1985)
The Dark-Adapted Eye – Barbara Vine (1986)
Presumed Innocent – Scott Turow (1986)
The Ritual Bath – Faye Kellerman (1986)
Strangled Prose – Joan Hess (1986)
Death on Demand – Carolyn Hart (1987)
Gallows View – Peter Robinson (1987)
A Great Deliverance – Elizabeth George (1988)
The Killings at Badger’s Drift – Caroline Graham (1988)