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Classics Book Club

The Classics Book Club meets the second Wednesday of every month at the Central Co-op meeting room. We have been meeting in Tacoma since 1994 and with King's Books since May 2011! We read a variety of classic works, from the ancient to modern. Each month, the selected book is available for purchase at King's Books.  To see what we're reading this month, go to the main Events page. If you have questions, please email Blanca for more information.     

Previous Reads:

May 2024: A Death in the Family by James Agee

April 2024: Embers by Sandor Marai

March 2024: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

February 2024: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

January 2024: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

December 2023: Harvey by Mary Chase

November 2023: Burmese Days by George Orwell

October 2023: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

September 2023: So Big by Edna Ferber

August 2023: The Virginian by Owen Wister

July 2023: The Great American Novel by Philip Roth

June 2023: Nada by Carmen Laforet

May 2023: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

April 2023: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

March 2023: Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

February 2023: A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty

January 2023: The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

December 2022: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

November 2022: The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer

October 2022: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

September 2022: Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

August 2022: Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene

July 2022: Home of the Gentry by Ivan Turgenev

June 2022: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

May 2022: The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

April 2022: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

March 2022: The Awakening by Kate Chopin

February 2022: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

January 2022: Black Elk Speaks by Black Elk and John G Neihardt

December 2021: The Railway Children by E Nesbit

November 2021: Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

October 2021: Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin

September 2021: Brown Girl, Brownstones - Paule Marshall

August 2021: America Is in the Heart - Carlos Bulosan

July 2021: A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

June 2021: Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

May 2021: Oroonoko - Aphra Behn

April 2021: Angle of Reposse - Wallace Stegner

March 2021: When Rain Clouds Gather - Bessie Head

February 2021: Tess of the d'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

January 2021: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

December 2020: Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas,

November 2020: Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

October 2020: The Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey

September 2020: West with the Night - Beryl Markham

August 2020: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

July 2020: Passing by Nella Larsen

June 2020: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

May 2020: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

April 2020: Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz

March 2020: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

February 2020: Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata

January 2020: Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham

December 2019: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

November 2019: Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

October 2019: Eltonsbrody by Edgar Mittelholzer

September 2019: Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

August 2019: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

July 2019: The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

June 2019: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

May 2019: Green Mansions by WH Hudson

April 2019: McTeague by Frank Norris

March 2019: The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tillburg Clark

February 2019: Giants in the Earth by Ole Edvart Rolvaag

January 2019: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come by John Fox

December 2018: Carmen by Prosper Mérimée

November 2018: The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

October 2018: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

September 2018: Herzog by Saul Bellow

August 2018: Les Miserables [Vol. 1: Fantine] by Victor Hugo

July 2018: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

June 2018: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

May 2018: Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf

April 2018: A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

March 2018: My Antonia by Willa Cather

February 2018: Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

January 2018: Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

December 2017: The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley

November 2017: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LeRoux

October 2017: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

September 2017: The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling

August 2017: The Red and the Black by Stendhal

July 2017: Pied Piper by Nevil Shute

June 2017: The Stranger by Albert Camus

May 2017: A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

April 2017: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

March 2017: Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

February 2017: Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

January 2017: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

December 2016: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

November 2016: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

October 2016: Dracula by Bram Stoker

September 2016: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

August 2016: The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

July 2016: Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr

June 2016: Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson

May 2016: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

April 2016: The Group by Mary McCarthy

March 2016: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

February 2016: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

January 2016: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

December 2015: Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

November 2015: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

October 2015: Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

September 2015: The Mountains of California by John Muir

August 2015: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

July 2015: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

June 2015: Cover Her Face by PD James

May 2015: The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

Apr 2015: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Mar 2015: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Feb 2015: The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

Jan 2015: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Dec 2014: Mary Poppins by PL Travers

Nov 2014: The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells

Oct 2014: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Sep 2014: The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Aug 2014: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

Jul 2014: Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Jun 2014: Rabbit, Run by John Updike

May 2014: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Apr 2014: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

Mar 2014: Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor

Feb 2014: Parnassus On Wheels by Christopher Morley

Jan 2014: Dubliners by James Joyce

Dec 2013: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

Nov 2013: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

Oct 2013: I am Legend by Richard Matheson

Sep 2013: The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Aug 2013: The Ambassadors by Henry James

Jul  2013: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Jun 2013: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

May 2013: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Apr 2013: Silence by Shusaku Endo

Mar 2013: Dune by Frank Herbert

Feb 2013: Snow White by Donald Barthelme & Time and Again by Jack Finney

Jan 2013: Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence

Dec 2012: The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle

Nov 2012: The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Oct 2012: The Collector by John Fowles

Sept 2012: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

Aug 2012: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Jul 2012: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Jun 2012: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

May 2012: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré

Apr 2012: She by H. Rider Haggard

Mar 2012: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Feb 2012: Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Jan 2012: The Plague by Albert Camus

Dec 2011      Tom Brown's Schooldays                       Thomas Hughes

Nov 2011       Germinal                                            Émile Zola

Oct 2011       The Haunting of Hill House                  Shirley Jackson

Sept 2011      Jude the Obscure                              Thomas Hardy

Aug 2011       Emma                                                Jane Austen

July 2011      The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay    Michael Chabon

June 2011     Bound for Glory                                 Woody Guthrie

May 2011      Song of the Lark                                 Willa Cather

Apr 2011       Their Eyes were Watching God           Zora Neale Hurston

Mar 2011       Gone with the Wind                           Margaret Mitchell

Feb 2011       Little Women                                      Louisa May Alcott

Jan 2011       Glass Menagerie, The                          Tennessee Williams

Dec 2010      Child's Christmas in Wales, A               Thomas Dylan

Nov 2010      As I Lay Dying                                    William Faulkner

Oct 2010      Hound of the Baskervilles, The             Arthur Conan Doyle

Sep 2010      Grapes of Wrath, The                          John Steinbeck

Aug 2010      Ethan Frome                                       Edith Wharton

Jul 2010       Canticle for Liebowitz, A                      Walter Miller

Jun 2010      American Tragedy, An                         Theodore Dreiser

May 2010     Book of Five Rings, A                         Miyamoto Musashi

Apr 2010      Maltese Falcon, The                            Dashiell Hammett

Mar 2010      All Quiet on the Western Front              Erich Maria Remarque                                                          

Jan 2010      Tin Drum, The                                      Gunter Grass

Dec 2009      Christmas Memory, A                          Truman Capote

Nov 2009      The Turn of the Screw                          Henry James

Oct 2009      Catch 22                                             Joseph Heller

Sep 2009      Of Mice and Men                                 John Steinbeck

Aug 2009      Babbitt                                               Sinclair Lewis

Jul 2009       O, Pioneers                                         Willa Cather

Jun 2009      Member of the Wedding, A                  Carson McCullers

May 2009     Tobacco Road                                    Erskine Caldwell

Apr 2009      Walden                                               Henry David Thoreau

Mar 2009      SteppenWolfe                                     Hermann Hesse

Feb 2009      Common Sense                                  Thomas Paine

Jan 2009      Vanity Fair                                          William Thackeray

Dec 2008      Christmas Carol, A                              Charles Dickens

Nov 2008      Winter of our Discontent, The               John Steinbeck

Oct 2008      House of Seven Gables, The               Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sep 2008      Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The                Carson McCullers

Aug 2008      Oil                                                      Upton Sinclair

Jul 2008       Foundation                                         Isaac Asimov

Jun 2008      Of Human Bondage                             W. Somerset Maugham

Apr 2008      Things Fall Apart                                 Chinua Achebe

Mar 2008      Demons                                              Fyodor Dostoevsky

Feb 2008      Look Homeward, Angel                        Thomas Wolfe

Jan 2008      Othello                                                William Shakespeare

Dec 2007      Little Prince, The                                  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Nov 2007      Silas Marner                                        George Elliot

Oct 2007      Picture of Dorian Gray, The                  Oscar Wilde                                                          

Aug 2007      Connecticut Yankee                             Mark Twain

Jul 2007       Pride and Prejudice                             Jane Austin

Jun 2007      Golden Bowl, The                                Henry James                                                      

Apr 2007      Man in the Iron Mask, The                    Alexandre Dumas

Mar 2007      Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A                    Betty Smith

Feb 2007      On the Road                                       Jack Kerouac

Jan 2007      Canterbury Tales                                 Geoffrey Chaucer

Dec 2006      Wind in the Willows, The                      Kenneth Grahame

Nov 2006      Sea Wolf, The                                     Jack London

Oct 2006      Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde                       Robert Louise Stevenson                                                     

Aug 2006      For Whom the Bell Tolls                       Ernest Hemingway

Jul 2006       Travels With Charlie                             John Steinbeck

Jun 2006      Return of the Native                             Thomas Hardy

May 2006     No Man is an Island                             Ernest Hemingway

Apr 2006      Scarlet Pimpernel, The                         Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Mar 2006      Tale of Two Cities                                Charles Dickens

Feb 2006      Far from the Madding Crowd               Thomas Hardy

Jan 2006      Don Quixote                                       Miguel de Cervantes

Dec 2005      Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, The     C.S. Lewis

Nov 2005      Quiet American, The                            Graham Green

Oct 2005      Beowolfe (Seamus Heaney Trans)        -

Sep 2005      Inferno (Richard Pinski Translation)       Dante Alighieri

Aug 2005      Paradise Lost                                      John Milton

Jul 2005       Lolita                                                  Vladimir Nabokov

Jun 2005      Brave New World                                 Aldus Huxley

May 2005     Lord of the Flies                                  John Goulding

Apr 2005      Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, A    Alexandre Solxhenitsyn

Mar 2005      Howard's End                                     E. M. Forster

Feb 2005      Secret Agent, The                                Joseph Conrad

Jan 2005      Cry, The Beloved Country                    Alan Paton

Dec 2004      Peter Pan                                            J.M. Barrie

Nov 2004      All the King's Men                               Robert Penn Warren

Oct 2004      Last Man, The                                     Mary Shelley

Sep 2004      Emma                                                 Jane Austin

Aug 2004      Martin Eden                                        Jack London

Jul 2004       My Brilliant Career                               Miles Franklin

Jun 2004      Idiot, The                                            Fyodor Dostoevsky

May 2004     Good Earth, The                                  Pearl S. Buck

Apr 2004      How Green was my Valley                    Richard Llewellyn

Mar 2004      Snows of Kilimanjaro, The                   Ernest Hemingway

Feb 2004      Mr. Midshipman Hornblower                 C.E. Forrester

Jan 2004      Narcissus and Goldmund                     Hermann Hesse

Dec 2003      Tuck Everlasting                                  Natalie Babbitt

Nov 2003      My Antonia                                         Willa Cather

Oct 2003      Haunted House                                   Charles Dickens

Sep 2003      Typee                                                 Herman Melville

Aug 2003      Elmer Gantry                                       Sinclair Lewis

Jul 2003       People of the Abyss                           Jack London

Jun 2003      Jungle, The                                         Upton Sinclair

May 2003     Mayor of Castorbridge                        Thomas Hardy

Apr 2003      Death in the Afternoon                         Ernest Hemingway

Mar 2003      To the Lighthouse                                Virginia Wolfe

Feb 2003      Fahrenheit 451                                     Ray bradbury

Jan 2003      Reivers, The                                        William Faulkner

Dec 2002      The Lost World                                    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Nov 2002      Journey to the Center of the Earth        Jules Verne

Oct 2002      King Solomon's Mines                         Ryder Haggard

Sep 2002      Tender is the Night                              F. Scott Fitzgerald

Aug 2002      Time Machine, The                               H.G. Wells

Jul 2002       Tom Jones                                          Henry Fielding

Jun 2002      Moon and Six Pence                           Somerset Maugham

May 2002     Till we have Faces                               C.S. Lewis

Apr 2002      Kim                                                    Rudyard Kipling

Mar 2002      Hunchback of Notre Dame                   Victor Hugo

Feb 2002      Mill on the Floss                                  George Elliot

Jan 2002      Phinneas Finn                                     Anthony Trollope

Oct 2001      The Moonstone                                   Wilkie Collins

Sep 2001      Deerslayer                                          James Fenimore Cooper

Aug 2001      Death Comes for the Archbishop         Willa Cather

Jul 2001       Nostromo                                           Joseph Conrad

Jun 2001      Totem and Taboo                                Sigmund Freud

May 2001     Beowulf (Seamus Heaney Trans)          -

Apr 2001      Cousin Bette                                       Honore de Balzac

Mar 2001      Count of Monte Cristo                         Alexandre Dumas

Feb 2001      Murder Trials                                       Cicero

Jan 2001      Roman Lives                                       Plutarch

Nov 2000      Journey to the End of the Night           Louis Celeni

Oct 2000      Jewel of the Seven Stars                     Bram Stoker

Sep 2000      Benvenuto Cellini                                 Benvenuto Cellini

Aug 2000      Once and Future King                          T.H. White

Jul 2000       Paradisio                                            Dante Alighieri

Jun 2000      French Lt. Woman                               John Fowles

May 2000     Uncle Tom's Cabin                              Harriet Beacher Stowe

Apr 2000      Red and the Black, The                        Stendahl

Mar 2000      Vanity Fair                                          William Thackeray

Feb 2000      Ethics                                                 Aristotle

Jan 2000      Rob Roy                                             Walter Scott

Nov 1999      Tess of the D'Ubervilles                       Thomas Hardy

Oct 1999      Fall of the House of Usher                   Edgar Allen Poe

Sep 1999      Castle, The                                          Franz Kafka

Aug 1999      Nausea                                               Jean Paul Sartre

Jul 1999       Beautiful and the Damned                    F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jun 1999      SteppenWolfe                                     Hermann Hesse

May 1999     Screwtapes Letters                              C.S. Lewis

May 1999     Letters from the Earth                          Mark Twain

Apr 1999      Great Expectations                              Charles Dickens

Mar 1999      Atlas Shrugged                                   Ayn Rand

Feb 1999      Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man     James Joyce

Jan 1999      Sound and the Fury, The                      William Faulkner

Dec 1998      Christmas Carol, A                              Charles Dickens

Nov 1998      Pride and Prejudice                             Jane Austin

Oct 1998      Brothers Karamazov, The                     Fyodor Dostoyevski

Sep 1998      Civilization and it's Discontents            Sigmund Freud

Aug 1998      Souls of Black Folk, The                      W.E.B. Du Bois

Jul 1998       Traffic in Women                                 Emma Goldman

Jun 1998      Dolls House                                        Henrik Ibsen

May 1998     On the Geneology of Morals                Friedrich Nietzsche

Apr 1998      On the Origin of Species                     Charles Darwin

Mar 1998      Frankenstein                                        Mary Shelley

Feb 1998      Origins of Inequality                            Jean Jacques Rousseau

Nov 1997      Prince, The                                          Nicholai Machiavelli

Oct 1997      Second Treatise on Civil Government   John Lock

Oct 1997      Communist Manifesto                          Karl Marx

Sep 1997      Candide                                              Voltaire

Aug 1997      On Methods                                        Renee Descartes

Jul 1997       Confessions                                       St. Augustine

Jun 1997      Aeneid                                                Virgil

May 1997     Bachae                                               Euripides

Apr 1997      Theban Plays                                      Sophocles

Mar 1997      Orestia                                                Aeschylus

Feb 1997      Odyssey                                             Homer

Jan 1997      Paradise Lost                                      John Milton

Nov 1996      Wuthering Heights                               Emily Bronte

Oct 1996      Selected Essays                                 Michele de Montaigne

Sep 1996      Inferno (Richard Pinski Translation)       Dante Alighieri

Aug 1996      Connecticut Yankee                             Mark Twain

Aug 1996      Don Quixote                                       Miguel de Cervantes

Jul 1996       Moll Flanders                                      Daniel de Foe

Jun 1996      Hedda Gabler                                      Henrik Ibsen

May 1996      Miser and other Plays                          Moliere

Apr 1996      Death of Ivan Ilyich                              Leo Tolstoi

Mar 1996      Selected Dialogs                                 Plato

Feb 1996      Faust                                                  Johann Goethe

Jan 1996      Twelfth Night                                       William Shakespeare

Oct 1995      Bhaghavad Gita                                  -

Sep 1995      Le Morte D'Arthur                                Sir Thomas Malory

Aug 1995      Plague, The                                         Albert Camus

Jul 1995       Buccaneers                                         Edith Wharton

Jun 1995      Metamorphosis                                   Ovid

May 1995      Emma                                                 Jane Austin

Apr 1995      Canterbury Tales                                 Geoffrey Chaucer

Mar 1995      Death in Venice, A                               Thomas Mann

Feb 1995      MiddleMarch                                       George Elliot

Jan 1995      Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The                  Anne Bronte

Nov 1994      Awkward Age, The                               Henry James

Oct 1994      Fathers and Sons                              Ivan Turgenev