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For those who read the classics-recommend your fav?

81 replies

christie1 · 24/03/2006 02:49

I read many of the classics over the years but fell off (strangely around the time I had kids). I get great book recommendations here, can you give me some suggestions of classics. I have read alot of the standard ones-dickens, george elliot, thomas hardy,jane austin, the brontes but can you suggest some I should try that you just loved? It doesn't have to be victorian, just a really good read, I can feel my brain comming back again and longing for something good to read after years of mysteries and mommy lit(not knocking them, just want to go back to an old love, the classics).

OP posts:
NotQuiteCockney · 24/03/2006 10:23

Carson McCullers is another great Southern US female author of that era. The Member of the Wedding is great.

I also like The Master and Margarita, by Bulkagov.

And anything by Sherwood Anderson, but I expect I'm on my own there.

Oh, and The Enormous Room, by E. E. Cummings.

harrogatemum · 24/03/2006 10:16

Daphne du Maurier - REbecca and My Cousin Rachel

Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

Wuthering HEights - Emily Bronte

Oscar Wilde - Importance of being Earnest.

Grapes of Wrath - John STeinbeck

and many more.........

saadia · 24/03/2006 10:12

I liked Wives and Daughters, by Mrs Gaskell. As a teen I was really into Carson McCullers' books but not sure how I would react to them now (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye).

foxinsocks · 24/03/2006 09:49

I would also second P G Wodehouse - you can get an omnibus on amazon (The Mating Season, Code of the Woosters and Right Ho, Jeeves). They are beautifully written and very funny.

JackieNo · 24/03/2006 09:48

Anything by Jane Austen, Vanity Fair by Thackeray, another vote for Madame Bovary. Also love Evelyn Waugh (The Loved One is one of my favourite books of all time). Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Also like Dickens. More recent 'classics' - I really like Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie) and some of the earlier Martin Amis. Oh, and Lawrence Durrell - the Alexandria Quartet.

Mazzystar · 24/03/2006 09:46

Ooh, its making we hungry for a few spare reading hours:
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Tender Is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
Anglo Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson
The Bell by Iris Murdoch

DumbledoresGirl · 24/03/2006 09:42

Oh, if we are going for 2oth cnetury, then definitely Daphne du Maurier and Graham Greene and other Evelyn Waugh novels. Also Robert Graves, Antonia White, John Mortimer (never read Rumpole though - the others), Mary Renault....I had better stop now!

DumbledoresGirl · 24/03/2006 09:39

One of my all time favourite books is Brideshead Revisited. Also love Austen, the Brontes (though I have never read Anne Bronte - anyone comment on how she compares with the others?), even a bit of Hardy although most Victorian novelists leave me cold (Dickens, Thackeray, Elliot - have never managed to finish a single one of their novels!!) Anthony Trollope is OK though.

If you like adventure, Robert Louis Stevenson is good. Or the Waverley novels?

foxinsocks · 24/03/2006 09:38

any graham greene (our man in havana and brighton rock are good ones to start with)
daphne du maurier's Rebecca
The Odyssey (it's a fantastic read)

Hazellnut · 24/03/2006 09:37

Mine have been said but just to second -

3 men in a boat (and 3 men in a bummel the sequel)
Room with a view and any other Forster
Rebecca
Great Gatsby

frogs · 24/03/2006 09:33

A seriously underrated book, maybe because of the user-unfriendly title is 'The Way of all Flesh' by Samuel Butler. It sounds as if it should be a diatribe against the wickedness of humankind, but is actually a largely autobiographical story, desribing how the son frees himself from the rigid Victorian family ruled by a hypocritical clergyman father. It's written with a really wicked tongue-in-cheek irony (think Jane Austen, but much more spiky).

Vvv highly recommended.

Orlando · 24/03/2006 09:28

Howards End (Forster)
A Handful of Dust (Waugh - sends shivers down my spine just thinking of it)
Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)

FioFio · 24/03/2006 09:22

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spacedonkey · 24/03/2006 09:20

God yes George Orwell is a fantastic writer

sleepycat · 24/03/2006 09:18

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spacedonkey · 24/03/2006 09:14

Thanks to Suzywong I have recently discovered the joys of Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White was unputdownable. Just about to start on Dracula, also on her recommendation. So basically whatever Suzy says I slavishly follow Grin

Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov are all brilliant.

P G Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and my all time favourite, The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, which I re-read at least once a year.

I second Margaret Atwood - an astonishing writer.

And Bernice Rubens - I love her!

Hausfrau · 24/03/2006 08:54

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podkin · 24/03/2006 08:47

Any Dickens

Hausfrau · 24/03/2006 08:31

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maomao · 24/03/2006 08:27

Doing well, thanks! How are you and your lovely boys? Yes, I'm here, but have lost your email, m'dear.

Lockets, I love To Kill a Mockingbird, too.

lockets · 24/03/2006 08:25

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suzywong · 24/03/2006 08:22

oh there you are!!! I was just thinking about you the other day, wondered if you'd moved back home. How are you? Smile

maomao · 24/03/2006 08:19

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

suzywong · 24/03/2006 08:17

speaking of MR James, can anyone with paypal ship me a copy please and I'll pay for it. I couldn't face reading "Whistle and I'll Come Running" and I feel up to in now.

Therese Raquin - Zola
Dracula - Bram Stoker
to answer OP

harpsichordcarrier · 24/03/2006 08:11

George Eliot - Middlemarch especially but any onf them
George Orwell
Wilkie Collins the Woman in White
anything by Dylan Thomas