![\"\"](\"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Harvard_Classics_books_on_a_bookshelf.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With the completion of David Copperfield<\/em> yesterday, I successfully met my Classics Club Challenge of reading fifty classics in five years!<\/span><\/a> I began the challenge on my 50th birthday in 2016 and finished the final chapter of the final book on the eve of my 55th birthday in 2021. Much has happened in the last five years. I became a grandfather, transitioned from elementary teacher to school principal, began hosting reading challenges, traveled to Europe for the first time, and lived through a pandemic, to name just a few of the more memorable experiences. Through it all, the Classics Club Challenge kept me motivated to read some of the world’s best literature.<\/p>\n Though my initial list changed over the years, and though I was not able to keep up with writing reviews for all the books, I still feel like I accomplished what I set out to do, which was to read more books from my\u00a0Summary of Great Books Lists<\/a>\u00a0and my\u00a0Catholic Classics List<\/a>. I did manage to review twenty-two of the fifty books, but then I changed jobs and I had to let go of a few things to keep my sanity. I look forward to the day when I can return to book-blogging more consistently. Until then, I can be satisfied in knowing that I stuck with the five-year challenge during some pretty busy and momentous times.<\/p>\n This reading challenge showed me that fifty books is a lot, even spread out over ten years. Some have become personal favorites worthy of re-reading, and some were not my taste at all. Here are some of the books from the challenge that I look back on with particular fondness:<\/p>\n And here are some of the duds:<\/p>\n Will I do another Classics Club Challenge? I think probably yes, but at this point I don’t think I’m ready to commit to anything new. Between the annual Chapter-a-Day Read-alongs and the Aubrey\/Maturin Chapter-a-Week 4 Year Read-along Odyssey, my reading hours are pretty full these days. Still, you never know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the completion of David Copperfield yesterday, I successfully met my Classics Club Challenge of reading fifty classics in five years! I began the challenge on my 50th birthday in 2016 and finished the final chapter of the final book on the eve of my 55th birthday in 2021. Much has happened in the last five years. I became a grandfather, transitioned from elementary teacher to school principal, began hosting reading challenges, traveled to Europe for the first time, and lived through a pandemic, to name just a...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Classics Club Challenge Complete! @ourclassicsclub #ccreadingupdate","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[830],"class_list":["post-8366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-classics-club"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Harvard_Classics_books_on_a_bookshelf.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-2aW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8366"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8371,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8366\/revisions\/8371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n