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Original poster

Genuine favourite genuine literary classic?

82 replies

ElizabethX · 27/07/2012 14:55

Ok what genuine pukka classic work of literature do you genuinely love and repeatedly re-read?

For me there is The Great Gatsby, The Turn of the Screw and Wuthering Heights. Dracula maybe although the theme has been so overdone since it feels a bit tarnished.

I'd like to say I love Jane Eyre and Dickens and what not but although I've got through lots of these I can't say I as rapt throughout.

What are yours?

OP posts:
Allalonenow · 29/07/2012 22:51

Ah yes I'm also in love with Ladislaw, but have never recovered from Marcus in "Eagle of the Ninth" whom I first met when I was about nine!! As for Cromwell in "Wolf Hall".....

BigLakeDryHumpers · 29/07/2012 22:45

Persuasion - 'You pierce my soul' [swoon]

Middlemarch, I am in love with Will Ladislaw [swoons again]

Allalonenow · 29/07/2012 22:44

Then in no special order
Middlemarch
Little Dorrit
Count of Monte Christo
Brideshead

Allalonenow · 29/07/2012 22:40

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Tonightheywin · 29/07/2012 22:37

1/The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas.
2/ The Rougon-Macquart by Emile Zola (20 volumes, but any will do)
3/Anything by Guy de Maupassant.

LeeCoakley · 29/07/2012 22:35

I like your copy! <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.com/imgres?q=catch-22&num=10&hl=en&biw=1280&bih=558&tbm=isch&tbnid=znrUoshxIXPy2M:&imgrefurl=rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/12/catch-22.html&docid=mgODfDZUZEpKYM&imgurl=www.ucl.ac.uk/conservation-c-22/images/catch22&w=311&h=500&ei=i6sVUPa-Asmu0QWfjYDADQ&zoom=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This is mine. I think yours is older though.

aliportico · 29/07/2012 22:17

Love Catch 22 too, with this cover - 4.bp.blogspot.com/-LkyvKcQhHhw/Tepbun4WJPI/AAAAAAAABkk/DDcGJYPNUYc/s640/catch22.jpg - book has fallen apart now so dh bought me a poster of it for Christmas.

But for an older classic: Vanity Fair. Gets funnier every time I read it.

HugeMedalTally · 29/07/2012 22:03

Another one for Persuasion. It's her most grown up novel.

I also like Far From the Madding Crowd. I love the bit at the end where it describes their relationship as being two people working together side by side. For a Victorian novel, they have a pretty equal partnership, in the end.

post · 29/07/2012 21:59

Persuasion. Never fails to hit the spot.

LeeCoakley · 29/07/2012 21:57

Love Catch-22! I bought the new anniversary edition paperback this year but it's not the same as my old floppy yellow 1960s version!

funchum8am · 29/07/2012 21:55

Not sure if it's properly literary but my favourite novel EVER is Catch-22. I also love Dickens, esp Bleak House.

LeeCoakley · 29/07/2012 21:54

P & P is my all time favourite but I might try Persuasion again after reading this thread!

Also love Great Expectations and Three Men in a Boat. Still laugh out loud at Uncle Podger. Grin

HarrietSchulenberg · 29/07/2012 21:51

Wuthering Heights. Tenant of Wildfell Hall. My Antonia. They're like comfort reading yet I find new things in them each time. Each of them is now a part of me.

DiscoDaisy · 29/07/2012 21:48

I know it's not a classic as such but my ultimate favourite book and the one that has had the biggest impact on me is War Of The Worlds.

perplexedpirate · 29/07/2012 21:43

And, I don't know if it counts but I could read Brideshead Revisited on a loop. I adore that book.

perplexedpirate · 29/07/2012 21:42

I reread Dracula recently and realised all the male characters apart from the count are incompetent bumbling toffs.
It was like monster versus the Tory party.

I love The Turn of the Screw, and Woman in Black.

NellyBluth · 29/07/2012 21:27

Wuthering Heights, though I swear it gets darker every time I read it.

In 'snobby' literary arguments (generally where I'm trying to claw back some intellect points after admitting I love Bernard Cornwell and Spike Milligan novels) I also like to point out that one of my all time favourite novels is The Good Solider by Ford Madox Ford. Not sure if it is well known enough to count as a 'genuine literary classic' but it is one of those books that gets better and better every time you read it.

GnocchiNineDoors · 29/07/2012 21:11

Little Women.

redrosette · 29/07/2012 21:09

it was pride and prejudice for years but now its persuasion. I find it so heartbreaking at times, I really feel for Anne :(

Also love 'of mice and men'.

Was disappointed by 'to kill a mockingbird'. Good book but I was expecting something I'd always remember and re-read, it wasn't that.

quirrelquarrel · 29/07/2012 05:57

I love Huckleberry Finn too :)

Read Jane Eyre something like five or six times back to back when I was 11/12. Same with Heidi a few years earlier.

StarMeKitten · 28/07/2012 22:02

Pride and Prejudice and to kill a mockingbird

Clawdy · 28/07/2012 17:33

I'm with NutmegKate it's Persuasion for me,too.

insancerre · 28/07/2012 17:26

Dracula
Dickens- especially Bleak House, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations
To Kill a Mockingbird

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 28/07/2012 17:23

Love Miss Pettigrew! In fact, I bought a new copy of it in a charity shop this morning: One pound well spent methinks!

I re-read all of Austen's complete novels at least once a year. 'Sense And Sensibility' was my favourite for a v v long time but now I think it's been toppled by 'Persuasion' - it could me my age!

I also re-read lots of children's classics, especially the Little Women and What Katy Did series, plus Ballet Shoes, Charlotte Sometimes and Daddy Long Legs.

Love 'Lolita' too and think that Isabel Allende's 'Paula' is a modern classic which benefits from re-reading.

Waswondering · 28/07/2012 17:20

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