10 classics that I should read

I'd avoid Grapes Of Wrath unless you enjoy a story of a family struggling, hoping and at the end of the long journey is misery.

Don't bother with Romeo & Julie. You already know what happens. If you are already a fan of Shakespeare's wonder, go for Merchant Of Venice instead or Hamlet. Or even AMSND.

1984 is over-rated. People say "oh he predicted the future", "everything he said is happening now".

Well it's 2025 now. So he was out by 39 years.

I haven't read them but I don't imagine the Dickens books to be very entertaining.

There you go. I've saved you days of your life and a less furrowed brow. No need to thank me.

And Animal Farm actually!

To Kill A Mockingbird

Not forgetting Alan Bissett if we are staying on the Scottish theme 🤪

Thanks @highlandcoo and @JaninaDuszejko - that sounds worth reading. I’m Welsh but interested to see the parallels in the marginalisation of rural life and language/ dialect.

My goodness, that’s a depressingly narrow list.

And all written within less than 150 years of each other.

For Scotland off the top of my head what about Sir Walter Scott (name me an English writer who has a 200ft tall monument to commemorate them?), Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alistair Gray, Lewis Grassic Gibbon or Muriel Spark?

The Irish and Welsh aren't too shabby at writing either.

@Hartley99 @TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross - 1984 and Brave New World are interesting from a historical and sociological perspective but neither of them are great novels. Prose is pretty clunky.

My goodness, that’s a depressingly narrow list.

It reminds me of an Eddie Izzard sketch talking about those who say they’re widely read. Izzard’s rueful riposte: “I’m thinly read. I’ve read fuck all!”

So what’s on your list of recommendations for those who wish to become more widely read?

I think it's important to know the literature of your own country. Obviously we should read as widely as possible as well – Russian novels, Japanese poetry, whatever. It would be insane to only read the literature of your own country. But it isn't a question of one or the other. We should do both. If you identify as British, you should certainly try:

1. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
2. George Eliot: Middlemarch
3. Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
4. Dickens: Great Expectations
5. Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbevilles
6. Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
7. D H Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
8. George Orwell: 1984
9. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
10. Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway

Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish posters might object that they're all English, which is a fair point. But I'd say those are some of the best novels this island has produced. I'd also add Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, Tom Jones, Dorian Gray, Moll Flanders, Brideshead Revisited, and the poetry of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Browning, Tennyson, Wilfred Owen, Auden, Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin. Oh, and the essays of Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, Walter Pater and Ruskin.

@JaninaDuszejko definitely reread it! I had remembered the main plot, but more so the depth of feeling for Scotland that the book engenders. What I hadn't remembered was the humour and the wry observations about the characters. I think I probably appreciate that a lot more now I'm older.
That's interesting that you grew up on a farm. I nearly grew up in a farming village myself, however my parents decided we'd be too limited in friendship groups and experiences, and we moved to a market town. I might have ended up married to a farmer if we'd stayed ..

@highlandcoo that's quite tempting, was thinking I should reread it.

@MotherOfCatBoy as well as being a bildungsroman the main character represents Scotland herself, the three books of A Scots Quair represent the history of Scotland's relationship with the land, the church, and industrialisation. I grew up on a farm in Scotland seventy years after the book is set but it all felt very familiar. And I adore the Prelude which explains the history and mythology of the Mearns.

I haven't reread it, no. In what way would you say it hasn't aged well? Genuinely curious as not sure I would reread. I read Unbearable Lightness of Being at a similar time and with hindsight would find that irritatingly whimsical now. But The Magus was a real mindblower - Fowles is good on psychological power and perception I think.

An Austen
A Brontë
An Atwood
A Murdoch
A Rhys
A Woolf
A Morrison
Cold Comfort Farm
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Gaudy Night.

@MotherOfCatBoy it's the story of Chris Guthrie, born into a crofting family in the NE of Scotland before the First World War. She's an intelligent girl, torn between pursuing her education, which would mean moving to the city, and her emotional attachment to the land and a traditional way of life.
In this small rural community, there is a wide range of characters: kind, judgemental, hypocritical, funny, just all humanity really. Chris has a loving but worn-out mother, a harsh and punitive father and a brother who's desperate to escape to a freer life.
It paints a brilliant picture of a rural community over a hundred years ago - it's full of incident - and in some ways it's an elegy to a disappearing way of life; people still plough with horses and harvest with scythes but modernisation is coming and of course the war tears everything apart.
It's a tough life, and there are some heart-breaking events, but also some joyful ones - there's a lovely wedding scene - and there's a dry Scottish humour running through a lot of the writing.
It's written in language that tries to capture the rhythm of the local dialect and does include some Scottish words; mostly understandable in context although a few might need to be looked up, but don't let that put you off.
One warning .. the first few pages are a stream-of-consciousness passage on the ancient history of the area and I would say just let that wash over you until the proper story begins.
It was voted best Scottish book in 2016 (I think) and I think it's brilliant. I can't tell how much of my appreciation of the book comes from being Scottish myself ( I remember my grandparents using many of the turns of phrase plus words like "plitter" and "scunner" and "wheesht") and it would be interesting to know how non-Scottish people get on with it.

1984
Orlando
Rebecca
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird

I can only come up with those 5, as I haven't enjoyed any of the other 'classics' I've ever read!

What’s it about @highlandcoo ?

@Vettrianofan @JaninaDuszejko I wonder if it's read much outwith Scotland? It should be; the themes are universal.

I think it was the first novel I'd read where the rhythm of the language was so much part of the story. I must have been 14 or 15 at the time, and it was rare that our class of teenage kids were so engaged with a book. Bleak House the following year got a more mixed response.

I picked up a nice hardback edition of A Scots Quair in a charity shop a couple of years ago and it's been on the TBR pile since.

I normally start Readalongs and then fall off the thread because I don't do well with the gradual pace. However, I wonder if anyone would be interested in reading Sunset Song together over a period of say the month of May and then discussing it .. the way the Rather Dated thread works?

Another vote for Sunset Song. Loved that book when I studied it at school.

Love love ❤️ Sunset Song!!

So difficult to choose just ten. I'm going for books I've really enjoyed and that have stayed with me, rather than a list from "the canon" re upthread discussion. So ..

Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen. I also love Persuasion but P&P cheers me up more.

Middlemarch George Eliot. Such truthful character observation

The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett. A great small-town drama.

Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope. The whole set of Barchester Chronicles if that's OK.

War and Peace Leo Tolstoy. I agree with a PP. It's not a difficult read; it's great. I don't understand why people are so daunted by long books. Just think of it like reading two or three shorter ones.

Sunset Song Lewis Grassic Gibbon. All Scottish kids of my era read this at school, and it's still a strong memory from my teenage years. I must reread it soon, and I hope I still think it's as good.

A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry. Some people find it depressing but I think it shows the strength of the human spirit in unimaginably challenging situations.

Diary of a Nobody George and Weedon Grossmith. Subtle and touching and funny.

My Life and Hard Times James Thurber. Ageless observational humour.

Can I squeeze in Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild as well? I read it again and again as a child. I just found it magical (and didn't question the sort of poverty where one scrapes by with only a nanny, a cook, two tutors and one maid!)

Second ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ - it’s beautifully written. Definitely a modern classic.

@Orangebadger - I found it unreadable- sadly.

Virginia Woolf - not Wolf!

I agree. No-one should sneer at someone else's choices. I studied literature but some of the books listed on this thread I didn't enjoy at all. I have never enjoyed a Jane Austen book. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy is my favourite 'classic' novel but I know it's not everyone's cup of tea.

The best book I've read in the last 5 years was The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. I think he's a brilliant writer.