Had anyone come to a classic late in life ?

I hadn’t read any classics since school but due to my bookclub, have read a few now. Surprised myself by liking Frankenstein, but Wuthering Heights just didn’t get. Expected a great love romance but it was nothing of the sort!

Also just read my first Georgette Heyer, and Jane Austin. Yet to read Rebecca by Daphne du M.

I work in a charity book shop. We get so many bound classics - I think in years gone by people signed up for eg one a week. As these people pass on their books come to us - often immaculate/ unread. Ask a shop to put some aside for you - the arrival of types of books is erratic but over a few months I'd think you'd get quite a few.

I think The House in Paris is my favourite

How could I have forgotten The House in Paris - what a brilliant book.
I’d have loved an epilogue that told us what happened to poor Leopold.

I think The House in Paris is my favourite, followed by The Last September and the Blitz stories, but I agree about poor Major Brutt. Bowen was a frightening genius.

Oooh this is a great thread!
I didn’t study English post GCSE. I was very much a STEM subjects girl, and the thought of reading any more poetry or Shakespeare filled me with horror.

After years in the literary wilderness of parenting small people and reading the sodding Gruffalo more times than I care to remember, I promised myself last year that I’d finally get round to reading the classics in my late 30s.

I’ve enjoyed Anna Karenina, The Grapes Of Wrath, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the last couple of years.
I couldn’t get on with Pride and Prejudice so gave up half way through. Also read Brave New World - knew it was never going to be cheerful but bloody hell, that is one horrible book!

@Barbadossunset thank you!

• The Iliad and the Odyssey (the latter is better, IMO)
• Little Women

MNetters would gasp, but my living doesn't have book shelves. Kids rooms' have them, I have some old uni books in another room, but as I've mostly listened to audio books for the last decade I don't have bookshelves with books.

So, the point, we are getting some shelves and cupboard put in our living room this year, and I am going to buy lots of pretty bound classic books so I look intelligent and the room looks good to be a good influence to the kids, but also, I fully intend to read them too! I've only ever read classics that the curriculum demanded, I have no idea where to start and I hope I enjoy them!

I'm trying to start The French Lieutenant's Woman, for the setting.

@Scout2016 i would start with The Death of the Heart. It’s such a good book, and contains, in my opinion, the saddest character in 20th century literature, Major Brutt.
The Last September set in Ireland during the War of Independence is also excellent as is The Heat of the Day set in WW II.
Her short stories are also very good - if you enjoy ghost stories try The Demon Lover and The Cat Jumps.

“Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser is very interesting and well worth a read.

Thanks to whoever recommended The Real Charlotte - that’s going on my list.

I was having a similar chat with a friend this week and she highly recommended Trollope’s early Irish novels, which I haven’t read but am now planning to.

Anna Karenina is fantastic, but like a pp I recommend skipping the Russian farming bits.

@Barbadossunset oooh, I haven't read any Elizabeth Bowen. Where would you recommend starting please? You had me at "formidibly intelligent woman"!

Real Charlotte is going on my list too, thanks those who suggested that.

@Pootlemcsmootle I found Anna Karenina easier to read than War and Peace, simply because there are fewer characters to keep track of and not too many of them with the same names. I did skip some quite long sections about 19th century Russian farming. It is quite a sad story though, I didn’t find anything uplifting about it.

I didn't get Anna Karenina at all when I read it as a teenager (although I really liked War and Peace) but very much enjoyed reading it in my forties.

Weirdly although I've read a ridiculous amount, there's so many classics I've not got to yet! What does everyone think of Anna Karenina?

A lot of books I read (and enjoyed) as a teenager, hit really differently when read in my fifties. War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Hardy, Wuthering Heights - the great thing about rereading is that you get different things out of books at different times. I reread The Conscience of Zeno a year ago. I had studied it at uni and found it boring. It actually made me laugh this time around!

I read some Thomas Hardy in my youth but never got round to reading Jude the Obscure until much later in life. When I read it - wow! It made me cry. I cannot explain why without giving away a key element but it's one of my favourite classics.
In total agreement with @Dappy777 in looking forward to discovering lots of classics in my later years.

I reread Lord of the Flies (last read about 55 years ago at school) I liked it then and I think I liked it more now. Quite short and to the point, good story. It was the 70th anniversary of it's publication last year.
I find that books published in the 50s seem to be more to the point, less waffle than nowadays.

And for a cheerier Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country is black comic tale of a nouveau riche midwesterner, the wonderfully-named Undine Spragg, making inroads into upper-class society.

Though my favourite remains The Age of Innocence.

When Joe comes to visit Pip after he’s moved to London to be a gentleman, and Pip is ashamed of the awkward country ways of the man he used to adore — it’s also a very funny scene, with Joe desperately trying to manage his hat and mortifying Pip in front of Herbert and their serving boy by talking about how his first act on arriving in London was to go and see a blacking warehouse he knows from ads in shops at home, but I think it’s very poignant when Joe fully recognises, and is generous about, Pip being ashamed of him, says ‘I’m wrong out of the forge’, blesses him and leaves.

And the other one is when Pip is at the dying Magwitch’s bedside, faithfully keeping up the pretence that Magwitch’s money has set him up as a ‘gentleman’ for life, rather than the truth, which is that, as a returned transport, his money is forfeit, so Pip is penniless.

Funny, that was a book club book. Possibly my choice and I gave up with it. Even had it on audio and could nt be bothered with it!

Would like to read/listen to other classic though and I have a load on my phone!! Not much room for 'real' books sadly!

Ooh, I'm about 50 pages into The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

I've done WH and JE and have to say it's remarkably more readable and engaging than both so far.

Yes, I second this. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is brilliant and for some reason I didn't read it until I was in my 40s. The themes feel so contemporary for a Victorian novel.