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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:
FrannyandZooey · 24/03/2006 08:07

Ovid's erotic poems are quite good too :)

Pruni · 24/03/2006 08:04

Ovid - Metamorphoses - is surprisingly good (but I suppose it depends on the translation).
Rattles along nicely and v perceptive

FrannyandZooey · 24/03/2006 08:02

I second Madame Bovary
Candide
Brave New World
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead, The Loved One, Scoop, etc
Forster: Room with a View (what a treat :)), Maurice etc
Chekhov short stories
Crime and Punishment
Three Men in a Boat

Or some superb modern writers:

John Irving
Robertson Davies
Patrick Suskind
Margaret Atwood
Anne Tyler

Enid · 24/03/2006 06:56

anything by Capote or Fitzgerald
Wilkie collins Woman in white
Flaubert Madame Bovary
the Odyssey
Goodbye to all that - graves
Brideshead revisited
Katherine Mansfield collected stories

Ghost stories by M R James
Sherlock Holmes - conan doyle

(I don't like a lot of modern fiction Grin)

yoyo · 24/03/2006 06:40

Two of my favourites would be Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South and also Therese Raquin by Emile Zola.

bloss · 24/03/2006 06:08

Not 'classic' literature - but A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. I love all the authors you mention and I adoed this book - it's also satisfyingly LONG!