Please recommend me a classic read?!

[BubblesBubbly]

I want a book to read, an old one, a classic!

I read catcher in the rye recently and enjoyed it. I remember reading Of mice and Men in school and enjoying that.

Not too shakespearian but I can only think of bronte, Dracula, don quiotix. Those kind or eras I’m keen on exploring.

Any recommendations? Not fussed on genre, just old classics.

Thanks!
.... PS!... I was shit at English lit in school so this is my way of catching up

I love "I capture the castle " by Dodie Smith and "Down and out in Paris and London" by George Orwell.

Rebecca by Daphne du maurier

To kill a mocking bird

Rebecca or Jamaica inn.

Anna Karenina!!!
It’s a fantastic read - I was glued to it!

Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, its very good

The Colour Purple

Silas Marner

Jane Eyre

Those would be my favourites

Happy reading, I've never read Catcher in the rye but I'll keep my eye out for it in the charity shops

Oh also Huckleberry Finn is good

Rebecca. Oh to be reading thst for the first time agsin!

Sense and Sensibility
Lady Chatterly's Lover
1984

Jane Austen is a great start for reading the classics.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.

Crime and punishment
The woman in white
The moonstone

The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Classic American reads that - along with To Kill a Mockingbird - give you a bit of a sense of the scope of American Lit.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a great Gothic novella, so quick to read. Dracula is really absorbing too. Frankenstein a bit heavy going if you're just getting back into reading stuff like this!

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

Last year I read all of the books in the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe saga. by C S Lewis.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe',
'The Magician's Nephew',
'The Horse and His Boy',
'Prince Caspian',
'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', 'The Silver Chair' and
'The Last Battle'.

All beautifully written and captures the imagination of adults as well as children.

Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell
Middlemarch - George Eliot

I recently read Animal Farm again with one of my English classes, hated it when I was at school but loved it this time.

my favourite book - far from the madding crowd by Thomas Hardy.

North and south by Elizabeth Gaskell
Persuasion - Jane Austen
😁 you’ve made me want to read them again now 😁

The Great Gatsby - but be warned - it’s the loneliest yarn. So lonely and sad (but also a great read). Classed as a “modern novel” though.

I remember reading The Grapes of Wrath. Incredible.

Good luck OP. Tell us what you enjoy!

Jane eyre is my immediate thought. Tedious and pointless as a child- a revelation and brilliant novel to read as an adult.

1984 if you haven't read it- such an ageless masterpiece

To kill a mockingbird.

A child's book - but the secret garden is another classic I loved re reading as an adult.

Love in the time of cholera- Gabriel Garcia Marquez best IMO

Pride & prejudice

To Serve Them All My Days - long, satisfying and will make you happy.

Wish everything could be as reliable

1984
Animal farm
Brave new world
Anna Karenina
Dr Zhivago
Remains of the Day (absolute must!)
My melancholy whores
Life of Pi (not really a classic but a great book)
Crime and Punishment

Another vote for Love in the time of Cholera. A bleak dystopian masterpiece full of warm living humans.

The funniest Jane Austen is Northanger Abbey. But Persuasion was my favourite book for many years.

i finally broke my hatred of Dickens by reading Bleak House. Just awesome.

I would say when reading old classics, just push through. You dont have to get every word or even every paragraph, just let it wash over you and keep going.

A Tale of Two Cities is a good one - it's far from Dickens' best (that's obv Bleak House) but it's hugely enjoyable and very readable.

I second I Capture the Castle, it's really lovely.

my daughter just finished
East of Eden
in three days...she picked it up at a free book swap and plans on keeping it for a while.

Dracula
Tess of the D'urbevilles
The Godfather
The Handmaid's Tale

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914) is a semi-biographical novel by the Irish house painter and sign writer Robert Noonan, who wrote the book in his spare time under the pen name Robert Tressell.