30 at 30: The List

Bookman’s Clerk. (bags my books)   That’s a lot of classics you have there. Are these for a class you’re taking?

Me.   Nope.

Bookman’s Clerk. (continues to bag)   Are you a teacher?

Me.   Nope.

Bookman’s Clerk. (pauses, looks up at me in confusion)   Umm … Do you really like to read?

CH. (pointedly looks at me with a smug, bemused expression on his face)

Me. (slightly embarrassed)   If I tell you, you have to promise not to make fun of me.

And so began 30 at 30. Without further ado, here’s the list of “classics” I’ve chosen.

1.      1984 by George Orwell

2.      A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

3.      Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
(alternative, Anthem by Ayn Rand)

4.      Beloved by Toni Morrison

5.      Billy Budd by Herman Melville

6.      Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

7.      Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

8.      East of Eden by John Steinbeck

9.      I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

10.  Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
(alternative, Macbeth by Shakespeare)

11.  Oedipus the King by Sophocles

12.  One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

13.  Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

14.  Self-Reliance and Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

15.  Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

16.  The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

17.  The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

18.  The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

19.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

20.  The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

21.  The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

22.  The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

23.  The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

24.  Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

25.  “The Raven” and selected short stories by Edgar Allen Poe

26.  “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

27.  “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

28.  This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

29.  Ulysses by James Joyce

30.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

I think it’s worth noting that there really is no rhyme or reason behind my final choices. I carefully compiled a list, but when I spread the pages out across the floor of my loft and started poring over it, I relied mostly on gut feeling. Anything that “felt” like it should make the final cut got a neat little checkmark placed by it. And with the exception of a few changes here and there, those initial choices stuck. I was tempted to make even more changes once I had finished plundering Bookman’s and had stacked my spoils atop one of four sagging bookcases in my office. But I squashed the panic that was threatening to attack (Why did I pick so many LONG pieces?! When am I going to read all of this?!) with a little pep talk that may or may not have involved a sizable bowl of ice cream (aka The Great Problem-Solver). And now I’m good and ready to tackle this list. *GULP*

So if you don’t hear much from me in the next 12 months, don’t panic. I’m probably making myself a second home deep within the pages of these books.