Oh Lordy, the things I dream up for myself at times! How on earth will I go from only reading the occasional biography and autobiography (interspersed with the latest self-help book) to reading novels deemed to be classics. You see ‘dear reader’ I’ve been very neglectful of my literary education. In fact, I’ve been a lazy reader and have not been challenging myself. But it wasn’t always that way. I used to consume books, always had one on the go. I wasn’t a ‘take the book with you everywhere’ type of reader, more like, it’s on the nightstand and I’ll pick it up and read it when I have some downtime. I’m blaming my midlife lack of intellectual curiosity on social media and the internet in general. I’ve been well and truly down the social media rabbit hole and can doom scroll with the best of them.

For a while now I’ve wanted to get back into reading, but modern fiction was not holding my attention for some reason. I was browsing the web recently when I saw an article about some of the top classic books. As I was reading the article, I was beginning to feel some serious FOMO due to the number of books I’d not read. And a crazy thought entered into my head – why don’t I try and read 100 of the best books published? I immediately realised creating a list of the best books was going to involve some research and would be open to argument and conjecture. Despite this, I set about Googling away, and after maybe reading three or so lists, I realised the lists while having a lot of books in common varied enough for me to start getting confused. So I turned to Chad (my name for ChatGPT) and told Chad what I wanted to achieve. Let’s just say the irony of asking Chad to do this was not lost on me. But within minutes not only did I have a list, but it was divided up into months, years, ‘voices’ and genres. Chad had decided to ‘ease me in’ with some British classics. I wasn’t about to argue with Chad’s choices. They looked pretty good to me, and I wasn’t keen on spending time debating it with others or doing more research. The list (which I’ve published below) is going to give me some challenges for sure, but I also hope that once the list is done, I’ll have reset my brain and detoxed from social media. Plus there’s the bragging rights that I have read all of these books. And while I acknowledge I’m doing this out of a bit of snobbery (I was looking down on my own reading), I’m more interested in what it might do to my own writing.

For some time now, I’ve had a novel in me, trying to get out. But it’s stuck. And I figured, if I don’t write it, someone else will and I’ll be mad at myself for not getting it out of me. But after many attempts at writing chapters, I realised I probably needed to either go and do a course in writing, or immerse myself in the writing of some of the world’s best novelists. Not keen to do a course, I’ve chosen the later. So let’s get onto the list!

Now, I should add, that while this reading challenge commences in January 2026, I couldn’t help myself, and decided to get a jump on things. So I downloaded Pride and Prejudice onto my phone and got reading. Despite being a fan of the 1995 mini series, I’d never read the book. I’d read page one many times, and could not get into it. I’m pleased to report that I have now finally read Pride and Prejudice. I tripped over the words a lot, and often got impatient as I knew what was coming next. It took me 14 hours and 4 minutes to read the book using the Libby app on my phone. I started on October 25th and picked up the book 28 times, finishing it on Friday the 14th of November.

Reading a book on my phone I soon realised was probably not ideal, and as I had a birthday during this time, I suggested to my partner that perhaps a Kobo would be a good present. And so we dispatched ourselves to the nearest Harvey Norman and procured a black and white Kobo (rather than coloured), as the research indicated it would be easier to read, and after a brief glance at the two options, I concurred that yes, black and white was the way to go. I’ve now downloaded my second book, Jane Eyre, onto my Kobo, and as I write this, I’m now 38% of the way through Jane Eyre. I’m finding it much easier to read, part of that will be due to the Kobo, but I also realised after page one that I was much preferring the writing style. Ok, so let’s move on to the list.

The List of 100 Classic Books Prepared by ChatGPT

This is the output from my ChatGPT prompt. My initial query was ‘I have a new goal of reading 100 classic books. Could I do this in 3 years?’

ChatGPT decided it was achievable if I read a book every 10-11 days. After asking me a few more questions including what type of cannon I wanted to read (eg, western, world, or 20th century) – I went for a mix of different styles. And here they are. A few I have already read, but they’ll get a re-reading, as I was much younger when I read them. But I have to admit, it’s a tad embarrassing how many I haven’t read, and I have a lot of catching up to do.

Here’s a tailored, sustainable 3-year reading roadmap (100 classics) that balances length, style, and difficulty — so you stay motivated and never feel bogged down.

📘 YEAR 1: FOUNDATIONS & FAVOURITES

Theme: Getting into the rhythm — accessible, story-driven classics that build momentum.

🗓️ January–March – British Foundations

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

A Room with a View – E.M. Forster

The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

🗓️ April–June – American Voices

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

🗓️ July–September – European Classics

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

The Stranger – Albert Camus

The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

Les Misérables (abridged version) – Victor Hugo

🗓️ October–December – Gothic & Reflection

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Dracula – Bram Stoker

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

📗 YEAR 2: DEPTH & DIVERSITY

Theme: Expanding horizons — world literature, philosophy, and modernism.

🗓️ January–March – Russian & Eastern European

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (spread over 3 months)

Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

🗓️ April–June – French & Existential

The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

Les Fleurs du Mal – Charles Baudelaire (poetry)

The Plague – Albert Camus

The Trial – Franz Kafka

In Search of Lost Time (Vol 1: Swann’s Way) – Marcel Proust

🗓️ July–September – World Voices

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

The Tale of Genji (abridged) – Murasaki Shikibu

The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

🗓️ October–December – Modernism & Reflection

A Passage to India – E.M. Forster

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

1984 – George Orwell

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

📙 YEAR 3: MASTERWORKS & PERSONAL DISCOVERY

Theme: Big ideas, myth, and the books that shaped culture.

🗓️ January–March – Epics & Myth

The Odyssey – Homer (modern translation)

The Iliad – Homer (modern translation)

The Divine Comedy (abridged) – Dante Alighieri

Paradise Lost – John Milton

🗓️ April–June – Philosophy & Reflection

Walden – Henry David Thoreau

The Republic – Plato (modern abridgement)

Meditations – Marcus Aurelius

The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran

Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl

🗓️ July–September – Women’s Voices & Global Classics

A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton

My Ántonia – Willa Cather

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Beloved – Toni Morrison

🗓️ October–December – Legacy & Modern Impact

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

The Road to Wigan Pier – George Orwell

The Outsider – S.E. Hinton

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera

📊 Reading Pace Summary

At 30 minutes/day (~20 pages/day), you’ll average 7,000 pages/year.

With short and long works balanced, this fits beautifully into 3 years — you’ll comfortably reach 100 books by sprinkling in shorter ones between long reads.

Conclusion

There are books on this list that I do not relish reading. I’ve tried in the past to read them, and just couldn’t do it. 1984 is one such book. It just scared and freaked me out too much. And yes, I know, that’s the goal of the book. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve tried to read it. War and Peace, jeepers, ChatGPT did give me the chance to exclude it, but I thought, what the heck, why not? I may live to regret that decision, assuming I get that far into the list.

So 1.3 books down! Wish me luck.