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Original poster

50 Classics to read before I am 50

40 replies

desiretochange · 08/02/2011 15:39

On another thread, I wrote that I want to compile a list of 50 things to do before I am 50 (in 2 years), and a poster suggested that I read 50 classics, any suggestions??

OP posts:
ElephantsAndMiasmas · 08/02/2011 18:18

ooh yes I vote The House On The Strand - Daphne du Maurier

and I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 08/02/2011 18:18

The History of Tom Jones - Henry Fielding

Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (or just "all")

Woman in White AND The Law and the Lady - Wilkie Collins

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe

The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (Neville Coghill translation is good but sure there are newer ones)

The Decameron - Boccaccio

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Nights At The Circus - Angela Carter (ok maybe not a classic yet but it will be)

Little Women - Lousia May Alcott

mycomment · 08/02/2011 18:13

Not 50, but 5 from me:
Milan Kundera - the book of laughter and forgetting
Italo Calvino - invisible cities
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 100 years of solitude
Arundhati Roy's - the god of small things
Salman Rushdie - midnight's children

PotteringAlong · 08/02/2011 18:11

Peyton place

Marjorie morningstar

To kill a Mockingbird

Rebecca - infect anything by Daphne du Maurier!

OfflineFor30Seconds · 08/02/2011 18:09

If this is a Man

onimolap · 08/02/2011 18:08

Vanity Fair (Thackeray)

The Bible (and other great sacred texts)

Paradise Lost (Milton)

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

Beowulf

A La Recherche des Temps Perdus

We have to talk abut Kevin (Lionel Shriver)

The Secret History (Donna Tartt)

Lace (Shirley Conran)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)

....... might be back later with more.

OfflineFor30Seconds · 08/02/2011 18:08

Count of Monte Cristo

Jane Eyre

She

Frankenstein

Dracula

Midnight's Children

Don Quixote

Heart of Darkness

If this is Man

winnybella · 08/02/2011 18:06

Heart of Darkness

Gulag Archipelago

All of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov

Master and Margarita

Jane Eyre

All of Austen

zabwino · 08/02/2011 18:02

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. Don't be put off by the size, it is a fantastic book.

GeorgeEliot · 08/02/2011 18:02

Middlemarch

compo · 08/02/2011 18:02

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
all the Harry Potters ( they will be classics)
all of roald dahl

dh Lawrence sons and lovers

George Eliot mill on the floss

BelligerentGhoul · 08/02/2011 18:00

All of Jane Austen's

The Woman In White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Dracula

Frankenstein

Brideshead Revisited

Lolita

1984

BendyBob · 08/02/2011 16:10

Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola

Original poster
desiretochange · 08/02/2011 16:06

Thanks Belinda, it has been years since I read any of the Classics!

OP posts:
belindarose · 08/02/2011 15:43

Everything by Dickens, if you haven't had the pleasure already. 'And The Count of Monte Cristo'.