I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library - Jorge Luis Borges

I'm restless. I don't know what's going on, but I don't seem to be able to settle. Still having tests and seeing doctors about my shoulder, would you believe. One year after my accident. How depressing is that?

So I'm looking for a new challenge. To focus. To settle me down. To put my energy into. Instead of moping after things that I cannot control. That I cannot have.

And, as if by magic, The Classics Club appeared. A group of bloggers reading books they consider classics. And sharing the experience with fellow bloggers. Sounds fab to me.

The challenge? To join, you need to provide a list of a minimum 50 books that you pledge to read over the next five years maximum. As you know, I cannot resist a list. And a list of classics?! It was a no-brainer.

So I’ve mooched and wondered. Reflected and puzzled. Checked out my other lists. And here’s what I’ve come up with. The classics that I would really like to read by 10 February 2017:

1. A Mere Interlude, Thomas Hardy

2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,James Joyce

3. Adam Bede, George Elliott

4. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser

5. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

6. Catch 22, Joseph Heller

7. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

8. Cider House Rules, John Irving

9. Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann

10. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

11. Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin

12. Faust, Johann Goethe

13. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

14. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

15. Hiroshima, John Hersey

16. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

17. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad

18. Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos

19. Metamorphoses, Ovid

20. Moby Dick, Herman Melville

21. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

22. Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov

23. Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham

24. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

25. Sketches from a Hunter’s Album, Ivan Turgenev

26. Testaments Betrayed, Milan Kundera

27. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain

28. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

29. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

30. The Clown, Heinrich Böll

31. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

32. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

33. The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams

34. The Good Terrorist, Doris Lessing

35. The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy

36. The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper

37. The Odyssey, Homer

38. The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens

39. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

40. The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine

41. The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell

42. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

43. The Screwtape Letters, C S Lewis

44. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

45. The Trial, Franz Kafka

46. This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald

47. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

48. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

49. Utopia, Thomas Moore

50. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Now I don't say that I'll read them in this order. I usually have to go with what I’m feeling at any particular time. But we’ll see. And I’ll keep the list updated as and when I read them. So feel free to pop back and check up on my progress.

I'm excited by the challenge. I'm pleased with my list. More or less. The only books that I'm really concerned about are the Dickens, Ovid and Homer.

We studied Dickens in school. In particular, Great Expectations. I was not a fan. I am still not a fan. Now I love his stories. And they make stunning films. But I just don’t love his style. It’s way too heavy on the descriptive for me.

Still, I felt compelled to put The Old Curiosity Shop in there, because it has sat on a bookshelf of mine since I was 12 years old. I received it as a school prize. My copy still has the congratulatory school certificate on the inside cover. And it’s hardly long, is it?

As for the Ovid and Homer, well, just reading their names seems well over my head. We shall see. As I said, this is a challenge. It's not meant to be easy, is it??  Wish me well. Join me if you dare…