Penguin has this kind of wonderful-looking line of hardcovers that they call Drop Caps, where they have selected books from the across the Penguin imprints (though mostly from Classics and Modern Classics) from authors whose names start with every letter in the English alphabet. This post is not about that line.
One of the things that is driving me to read so many classics right now is knowing just how much literature I've never read, despite having been reading since before I can remember. Some books, I may have read in the past but wasn't mentally prepared to fully appreciate (The Turn of the Screw stands out especially, but also the works of Homer, and even though he's one of my favorite authors, some of Ray Bradbury's works that I haven't revisited since high school), while others may have simply been avoided because they seemed unapproachable, or simply outside my interests, as it were.
Even just focusing on Penguin Classics and the associated lines, there's a vast selection to choose from. My shelf finally reached the point where I have authors for every letter of the alphabet now, so I decided that my summer reading is going to largely focus on making use of that and reading through the alphabet, in order. Maybe I can make an annual thing of it, though I suspect that certain letters may require some fudging of the rules in the future. (especially looking at Q here)
For this year, though, I can do authors, like Penguin did with the Drop Caps line.
A: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (started 5/12/21, completed 5/18/21)
B: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (started 5/20/21, completed 5/21/21)
C: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (started 5/22/21, completed 6/28/21)
D: A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (started 6/28/21, completed 7/5/21)
E: Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (started 7/5/21, completed 7/12/21)
<Break #1 - Uprooted by Naomi Novik> (started 7/13/21, completed 7/18/21)
F: The Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin (started 7/18/21, completed 7/25/21)
G: Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Part One started 7/26/21, completed 7/27/21; Part Two started 7/28/21, completed 7/30/21)
H: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (started 7/30/21, completed 8/1/21)
I: The Cheapest Nights by Yusuf Idris (started 8/1/21, completed 8/2/21)
J: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (started 8/3/21, completed 8/3/21)
<Break #2 - Look Me in the Eye by John Robison> (started 8/4/21, completed 8/4/21)
K: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling (started 8/10/21, completed 8/12/21)
L: Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot (started 8/13/21, completed 8/24/21)
M: The Crucible by Arthur Miller (started 8/25/21, completed 8/27/21)
N: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda (started 8/28/21, completed 8/30/21)
O: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (started 8/31/21, completed 9/5/21)
<Break #3 - Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. (Started 9/6/21, completed 9/7/21)
P: The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki (Started 9/7/21)
Q: Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
R: Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
S: Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw
T: Roughing It by Mark Twain
<Break #4 - A Pocketful of Crows by Joanne Harris>
U: Kristen Lavransdatter I: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset
V: Candide by Voltaire
W: Monkey King by Wu Ch'êng-ên
X: The Persian Expedition by Xenophon
Y: Hungry Hearts by Anzia Yezierska
Z: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
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