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Original poster

Suggest a classic

59 replies

PinotAndPlaydough · 12/03/2022 12:58

I’m an avid reader, I usually just browse and choose whatever I fancy. I would really like to read some of the classics, I think in the past I’ve been put off because I think they’ll be hard to read or the language might be confusing.
However they are classics for a reason and I want to give it a go, what do you suggest?

OP posts:
Toomanyradishes · 14/03/2022 15:57

If you are interested in modern classics excellent women by barbara pym is very good as is diary of a provincial lady which I think is by E L Delafield but i may have got that totally wrong. Also I am a big fan of cranford by elizabeth gaskell

DameHelena · 14/03/2022 15:52

I'm scarred by Jude the Obscure and will never read another Hardy.
I really like Jude the Obscure Grin Also, if you've read that, you can take all the other Hardys.

His poetry is good, incidentally.

PleaseBeSeated · 14/03/2022 15:30

@MurderAtTheBeautyPageant

I'm scarred by Jude the Obscure and will never read another Hardy.

I think Wilkie Collins is fantastic and The Woman in White especially is such a page turner. Might take you 50 pages to get into the rhythm of the book but once you're in the midst of the action it's unputdownable.

In fairness, every single Hardy, even Tess of the D’Urbervilles )which features a dead baby called Sorrow, is cheerier than Jude.

The Woman in White is a good shout. A cool, ugly heroine, a charming villain obsessed with his pet mice, lots of substitutions, secrets and skulduggery.

Original poster
PinotAndPlaydough · 14/03/2022 15:20

Loads of suggestions, thank you! I think I’m going to try a tale of two cities as I read a Christmas Carol years ago and that wasn’t too bad and also nice and short.
The mixed reviews on Frankenstein also has me intrigued! Some fab ideas here 🙂

OP posts:
JustJam4Tea · 14/03/2022 15:03

second the Woman in White.

Tale of Two Cities - it's a complete page turner, it's short, the characters aren't as grotesque as some Dickens.

Hardy is so bloody depressing.

MurderAtTheBeautyPageant · 14/03/2022 14:59

I'm scarred by Jude the Obscure and will never read another Hardy.

I think Wilkie Collins is fantastic and The Woman in White especially is such a page turner. Might take you 50 pages to get into the rhythm of the book but once you're in the midst of the action it's unputdownable.

akissbeforebed · 14/03/2022 14:59

Madame Bovary
Uncle Tom's Cabin (spoiler, it's a tear jerker)

KleineDracheKokosnuss · 14/03/2022 14:55

Hardy is depressing.

KleineDracheKokosnuss · 14/03/2022 14:54

The Warden, Anthony Trollope.

KStockHERO · 14/03/2022 14:53

"Jamaica Inn" and "Rebecca" by Du Maurier are wonderful. "The House on the Strand" is also very good though I couldn't really keep up with the story in the olden-timey bit of the book Blush.

"We have always lived in the castle" by Shirley Jackson is a good twentieth century classic too.

They're not technically 'classics' (yet) but I think Isabel Allende books are in the same league - "Eva Luna" and "Daughter of Fortune" are the ones that stick out in my mind but all her novels are astoundingly brilliant.

DameHelena · 14/03/2022 14:47

However they are classics for a reason

I might dispute that! They're classics because people have decided they are, which is not quite the same.

I do think Frankenstein is jaw-dropping though, and disagree with the negative assessment on here.

A modern classic I love is A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

bachsingingmum · 13/03/2022 16:22

Or try a book by Zola. Thérèse Raquin, Nana, Ladies Paradise (nothing like, and much better than the drama of the same name) or La Bête Humaine. They all seem to have a surprise sting in the tail so don't be tempted to flick to the end.

Yika · 13/03/2022 16:05

George Eliot - Middlemarch - great book

Anna Karenina or War and Peace.

Personally I wouldn't go for Hardy, he is epically miserable.

Trollope is readable, human and funny.

2022HereWeCome · 13/03/2022 15:59

I'm just re-reading 1984 - it's hard going at the moment with the situation in the Ukraine (I started re-reading before the war started). I wouldn't read it at the moment tbh but put on your list.

I have a soft spot for Tolstoy.
And for original noir - Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep etc although you have to be prepared for racism because of when they were written.
I like a lot of F Scott Fitzgerald's short stories.
Austen's Emma is fab too.

I've avoided anything more modern but one of the most underrated writers in my opinion is JG Farrell - he won the Booker twice but hardly anyone has heard of him. 'The Siege of Krishnapur' is my favourite and there is a lovely Everyman's library classic edition of this with another of his books.

muckandnettles · 12/03/2022 19:07

@BattledoreAndShuttlecock

I really wouldn't recommend Frankenstein for someone's first stab at the classics. It may be the best novel ever written by a teenager and a work which has shaped the twentieth century, but it's not exactly a page turner.
Okay, fair enough. 1984 then.
BattledoreAndShuttlecock · 12/03/2022 14:03

I really wouldn't recommend Frankenstein for someone's first stab at the classics. It may be the best novel ever written by a teenager and a work which has shaped the twentieth century, but it's not exactly a page turner.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 12/03/2022 14:02

A Dance to the Music of Time, 12 novel sequence by Anthony Powell. Published 1950 to 1975, roughly Huge cast of characters, action spans 1914 to mid 1970s.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby. Classic from the 1930s.

1984 and Animal Farm, George Orwell.

Almost anything by Evelyn Waugh.

Classic humorous stories: Saki short stories, Diary of a Nobody, almost anything by P. G. Wodehouse.

muckandnettles · 12/03/2022 14:00

Frankenstein! It's been used and abused so many times by film makers etc, it's so interesting to see the original story. You have to bear with the opening as it takes a while to get started, but then it is an amazing book.

BillMasheen · 12/03/2022 14:00

Dracula

Wuthering Heights

onemorecupofcoffeefortheroad · 12/03/2022 13:57

Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. In fact anything by Hardy.

JaneJeffer · 12/03/2022 13:54

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

Gagagardener · 12/03/2022 13:52

Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

BattledoreAndShuttlecock · 12/03/2022 13:49

Vanity Fair
Dracula
Pride and Prejudice
Sherlock Holmes is a good shout, very easy to read.

RedRobin100 · 12/03/2022 13:48

Anything Austen

RedRobin100 · 12/03/2022 13:47

Catch 22. I find it very funny and clever

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