heyy

reading through the decades!

If you track your reading on goodreads, you can see this little visualisation of what books you have read against when they were published. I've always found this really fascinating!
You can see that mine clearly clusters in an upwards trend, with publish date progressing with read date. However, there are still tiny specs that pop up all throughout the decades. I thought it might be fun to try and fill in the gaps and read a book from every decade from the 1800s to the 1990s! 2000s onwards I have countless books read so its not so interesting to include them here at this stage*.

This is an ongoing challenge, with no end goal in date. In that aspect, it's not really a challenge per se, but more just a way to help me dive into more classics. I have listed up to five books from each decade. In the case of more recent decades where I have read much more than five these are my favourite books from that decade. They are not ranked, rather listed in chronological order.

This list was first created in February 2026, with only 4 of decades unread at point of commencement (1800s, 18020s, 1803s, and 1850s). This surprised me, I have read more widely from the 1800s than I thought! I was also surprised by the 1970s; I have only read four, and two of those are books read as a child. I expected everything post 1940s to be complete.

Perhaps one day this will transition into a "read a book from every year" challenge, once each decade has been fattened out, but for now I am happy to aim for 5 books in every decade.

*If I do transition to reading a book from every year, then I will add books from the 2000s onwards! Enough chattering, onto the list!

Key:

Red = No books.

Green = At least one book read.

Gold = Decade completed (ie. 5 or more books read)

1990s

1980s

1970s

1960s

1950s

1940s

1930s

1920s

1910s

1900s

1890s

1880s

1870s

1860s

1850s

1840s

1830s

1820s

1810s

1800s

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