Back to the Classics 2026

Like others, I've been lamenting the demise of Karen's Back to the Classics challenge, so I've decided to simply do it this year myself.

Half the fun of the old Back to the Classics challenge was conjuring up a list of classics to match the prompts for the year--and then proceeding to ignore all those stated intentions. (And commenting on everybody else's plans.) At first I was going to make my own list of categories, but then I saw that Deb Nance at Readerbuzz had created a set of categories and I decided to just steal hers. So here we go--and my tentative matches against each category.

The old challenge required that the books be at least fifty years old, and I'll honor that. 

19th Century Classic

George Gissing/New Grub Street 

20th Century Classic

Eudora Welty/Delta Wedding 

An Award-winning Classic

Ursula K. Le Guin/The Left Hand of Darkness (Nebula, Hugo) 

A Classic Journey or Travel Narrative, Fiction or Non-Fiction

R. L. Stevenson/An Inland Voyage 

A Classic by a Woman Author

Rebecca West/The Fountain Overflows 

Humorous or Satirical Classic

Machado de Assis/The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas 

Classic Detective or Mystery Fiction

Edgar Wallace/The Four Just Men 

Classic Children's Book

Horatio Alger/Ragged Dick 

Banned or Censored Classic

Mikhail Bulgakov/Heart of a Dog 

A Classic in Translation

Simone de Beauvoir/The Mandarins 

A Non-fiction Classic

John Ruskin/Unto This Last 

Free Choice

Nazami Ganjavi/Layli and Majnun

 

I just formalized a new Classics Club list, my second, so I had a ready list of classics to choose from.

If you've been missing this challenge & put together a Back to the Classics list, mention it in comments and I'll be thrilled to go find yours. 

European Reading Challenge Signup 2026

 

Time to signup for Gilion's European Reading Challenge for the new year. Hers is one of the best challenges going as far as I'm concerned, and I won't be missing it this year. The idea is to visit unique European countries by book, and I'll sign up at the Five-Star/Deluxe Entourage level once again for five books, but suspect once again I'll go past that. I never know what my books are going to be but I'm pretty sure the first country will be France, because I'm likely to finish Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return about the Lost Generation authors in France later this evening.

Any European books in your future? 

My Reader's Block Vintage Scavenger Hunt Signup 2023

I figure I need another blogging challenge to keep me active, so I'm signing up for Bev's My Reader's Block vintage mystery challenge. I've done it before, but it's been a couple of years. Bev's doing the scavenger hunt model again this year, which I prefer, because it allows me to judge a book by its cover... 😉

The idea is to read books with images that match the various categories on the cards shown below. (Full details given at Bev's post here.) Eight books is the minimum challenge level, and I'll plan on getting to at least that level for both Golden Age (before 1960) and Silver Age (1960-1989) mysteries.

Thanks to Bev for hosting this!