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Original poster

Could you recommend some classic literature to help me get back into reading classics?

85 replies

SweetSakura · 02/04/2023 21:30

I seem to have swung from reading almost nothing but classics as a teen (because my parents house was stuffed full of them) to now reading nothing but contemporary literature.

I'd like to mix it up a bit but can't decide where to start!

I've read pretty much all Jane Austen/Brontes/Dickens/George Eliot/Thomas Hardy I think, although I guess it was a long time ago and I could re read them!

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Echobelly · 02/04/2023 22:23

Would also recommend Trollope. Loads of books - in some of them nothing massively dramatic happens, although some can also have very surprising and 'modern'-feeling twists too, but they all really pull you into the England of his era (which is what I love about the best of the classics) with some very compelling characters and notably some well-written, unconventional female characters too. Which is something quite unusual for the time, especially for a male author.

Elizabeth Gaskell is fantastic and rather underrated - North and South is probably her best.

DahliaMacNamara · 02/04/2023 22:21

Gulliver's Travels
Tom Jones

PeachPitt88 · 02/04/2023 22:21

Oh I loved Wilkie Collins! More along those lines would be great.

Try Armadale - it’s dead good.

Anything by Balzac, very readable. Cousin Bette is a scream.

Zola can a slog, but it’s worth it.

Tiddler39 · 02/04/2023 22:19

heldinadream · 02/04/2023 21:51

Great suggestions to which I must add Emile Zola.

I second this.

Therese Raquin is 🤯

RosesInWater · 02/04/2023 22:13

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Wuthering Heights
David Copperfield
Jude the Obscure
Jane Eyre.

I keep them all on the kindle, and I will never be short of a great read. Classics.

JaneyGee · 02/04/2023 22:11

Henry Fielding: Tom Jones
Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders

Both really good novels, and a fascinating glimpse into 18th-century Britain (so different in tone and feel to Dickens)

Vanity Fair
The Picture of Dorian Gray (gorgeous dialogue)

How about D H Lawrence? I enjoyed Sons and Lovers. Women in Love is meant to be his masterpiece, however.

Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
E. M. Forster: A Room with a View (the film is superb)
Aldous Huxley: Chrome Yellow (my favourite novel)
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter
Nabokov: Pale Fire
Ian McEwan: Atonement
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5
Edward St Aubyn: Melrose novels
Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time

I'm a huge fan of Anthony Burgess. Amazing novelist, and superb prose stylist. Try his Enderby books, or Earthly Powers (which should have won the Booker).

Harold Bloom compiled a list of the greatest books ever written, beginning with Homer and ending with writers like Cormac McCarthy and Jeanette Winterson. Take a look at that if you need ideas. It makes you realize just how many classics there are. I've never read a word of Henry James, Iris Murdoch, H G Wells, Ford Madox Ford, Don De Lilo, Martin Amis, Antony Trollope...oh, too many to name.

StellaOlivetti · 02/04/2023 22:09

The Forsyte Saga? I loved it and I think it’s nine volumes so will keep you going a nice long time!

Tradeup · 02/04/2023 22:07

@Changeau followed up by The Wide Sargasso Sea, which is fantastic and tells Bertha’s story.

TossieFleacake · 02/04/2023 22:06

Rebecca

AnyBenny · 02/04/2023 22:06

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell definitely. I reread Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier recently and really enjoyed it but that might be too recent for you. Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbevilles for a bit of a drama (not a cheer up!). How about a bit of Dickens - maybe Great Expectations to distract you from the current terrible TV version?!

Switchwitch · 02/04/2023 22:04

Dumas is always where I retreat to

Changeau · 02/04/2023 22:03

I thought The Woman In White was one of the most boring books I've ever read. Jane Eyre is brilliant.

Tradeup · 02/04/2023 22:01

The Sound and the Fury is true Southern Gothic, hard to believe it was published in 1929.

May09Bump · 02/04/2023 22:01

Pride and prejudice - always makes me giggle and has made a happy retreat in tough times.

Dracula - I feel sorry for Dracula and his anger in grief which turned him into a monster.

Not sure classed as a classic but Kane and Abel - I found brutal yet outstanding.

Tradeup · 02/04/2023 22:00

My eldest DD (22) suggested it, they have chosen the books so far, I think we began during Covid . I have got 3 copies of Hags waiting in the wings if they ask me for a suggestion. When everyone gets really busy it can take a while, we get through them quicker in the summer.

Original poster
SweetSakura · 02/04/2023 21:57

I love the idea of your book club @Tradeup ... I am currently reading my daughter's new favourite book so we can chat about it 😀 (she's 9 though so it's a rather lovely silly book called Stitch Head!)

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Tradeup · 02/04/2023 21:57

For American literature I love Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zola Neale Hurston

Also The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner

MargaretOliphant · 02/04/2023 21:57

Trollope is great. Bit of an acquired taste, but quintessentially Victorian. Try Orley Farm or Framley Parsonage

Original poster
SweetSakura · 02/04/2023 21:56

Ooh Zola and Les Mis are good ideas, I'm trying to alternate reading in french and English this year so they can go on that list Smile

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Original poster
SweetSakura · 02/04/2023 21:55

Ah yes Dorian Grey is fabulous.

Elizabeth Gaskell - good idea don't think I have read any of hers!

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Original poster
SweetSakura · 02/04/2023 21:54

Oh I loved Wilkie Collins! More along those lines would be great.

Am not set on 19th century literature I think it's just we had a lot of it at home. Possibly just because my mum was scandalised by anything more modern Grin

I loved Candide, Madame Bovary, Tolstoy, Vanity fair. Hated Dostoyevsky!

Trollope is a good suggestion- don't think I've read any

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Tradeup · 02/04/2023 21:54

Les Mis is amazing, when I finished it I literally thought I needed to pay some a large wad of cash for the privilege.

I often read books with my young adult dds right now we are reading Dorian Grey by Wilde. They are at Uni and they like to a have a mini book club for the 3 of us to keep in touch.

heldinadream · 02/04/2023 21:51

Great suggestions to which I must add Emile Zola.

MargaretOliphant · 02/04/2023 21:50

It sounds like you like nineteenth-century literature in particular. I suggest you read Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone or The woman in White. Or Mary Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret. A bit of Victorian sensational literature is definitely the way to go (Victorian literature professor here, so I am a bit biased, but, seriously, check them out!)

Medenagan · 02/04/2023 21:49

I’d second Vanity Fair too.