Ruthanna Emrys's Journal

And I'd suggest reading a different Austen, because P&P isn't her best and you already know the story. In fact, I'd suggest specifically Persuasion or Emma.

Beowulf translation -- I haven't read it, but I've heard good things about the new Heaney verse one. The Crossley-Holland is really good, and I read it aloud to Z when he was about six and neither of us could stop talking in the metre for days.

Chaucer, assuming you're going to read in translation, get the Coghill -- Penguin Classics -- translation, because it rocks.

Other suggestions -- Trollope, and the one I would suggest is Phineas Finn. Mrs Gaskell, North and South, don't read the footnotes because there are spoilers. John Fowles The Magus. Robert Graves I, Claudius?

I think you should put all Greek plays on your Shakespeare list rather than reading Antigone, and go to see any you get the chance to.

I did approximately this when Wordsworth Classics, bless them, brought out attractive paperback editions of OOC classics for a pound in the early nineties, and carandol and I went around buying all the things we always thought we ought to read, to see which we actually liked.