I want to read classic or important books

[PointOfTipping]

I would really like to start reading important books- not sure how much time I'm going to have to do it so think realistically I want to compile a list of 10 and aim to do them this year. I'd be happy to be honest if I manage at least five.

The only one I have on my list so far is War and Peace. I love literature yet feel like I don't know anything about significant books - would anyone like to nominate any titles?

Yes, 1984 works! Although I have a feeling I started it as a teenager and then dropped it. I loved both Gone With The Wind (nearly failed my Chemistry A level as I couldn’t put it down and focus on revision!) and Crime and Punishment, which made me feel like I was going totally mad... like the protagonist! From modern lists, I really enjoyed The Life of Pi; I’ve not seen the film though. Cried at the end.

I couldn't get through Les Mis! Tried the Hunchback too but failed dismally.

So my New Years resolution was to read more Classics or Modern classics.
I actually started the year with all the Harry Potter books though because we're going there in March and I wanted to be up to speed and know what's going on! I actually really recommend them.

After that the books I've read so far are:
To Kill a mockingbird
Catcher in the rye
Animal farm
Lord of the flies
The great gatsby
The book thief
Life of Pi

Forgot about Little women.

The problem with these "classics" lists is that they're usually made up of authors that have been given more prominence because they're white, middle class and (usually) male. Personally I think you'd get more enjoyment and value from reading things you enjoy rather than things that are worthy. Maybe buy the London Review of Books and pick something from the reviews that you like the sound of?

Animal farm
Fahrenheit 451
Of mice and men
The five people you meet in heaven

All amazing!!

I'm reading She Said, which is by the two journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story about how they did the investigation and published the story....

it feels like quite an important read so far

Flowers for Algernon.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

Canterbury Tales

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

Five books a year isn't setting the bar very high! But I admit I never made it quite to the end of War and Peace. (Loved the beginning, then got bogged down by the war.)
I gave up half way through Ulysses, too - in my younger days when I also set myself projects like this!
If you want a big, fat, 'important' book, Middlemarch is brilliant and easy to read. If you want a short, 'important' book, try Pride and Prejudice or Mrs Dalloway.
Nobody has mentioned Henry James.
It's a noble project but you should read to please yourself, not to impress other people. I'd sooner romp through Trollope/WilkieCollins/EdithWharton than be dozing over War and Peace.

If you like Russian literature, you could try
The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov
Dead Souls by Gogol
Eugene Onegin by Pushkin

My book club is doing a year of classics. So far we have done 1984, next is Little Women then Wuthering Heights.

I'd also like to reread Of Mice & Men & start any by Oscar Wilde & Charles Dickens.

P J Wodehouse ?

Tess of the Durbervilles

Jane Eyre

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Handmaid's Tale - Atwood

The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck

The Children of Violence quartet - Doris Lessing

A Day in the Life of Ivan Ivanisevic - Solzhenitsyn

Grapes of wrath

Moby dick

Water ship down

Withering heights/pride and prejudice

To name a few

Oh also the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel, the third volume of which is published next week. The first two are just fantastic.

The ragged trousered philanthropists by Robert tressell
set in 1900s early socialism about how bosses grind down a group of decorators, it gets you thinking and is funny, pathos, a brilliant book,

great expectations Charles dickens

Oh and gone with the wind

I'm on attempt number three of reading Middlemarch. I've ready many, many, many books, but somehow I always stall in Middlemarch. Perhaps because the main character irks me.

A couple of years ago or so there was an attempted Middlemarch readalong, but it was thwarted by those who had already read it! Someone would post, "Oh, I don't like Mr X," and a wise sage would barge on and say, "Ah, but in chapter 18 Mr X does blah de blah". GRRRRR.

Great idea for a thread, OP!

Anything by Raymond Carver. Albert Camus will definitely make you think. I have a fondness for Annie Proulx (but have never read Brokeback Mountain).

This is the list for those who were interested, bear in mind it is 25 years old, and was supposed to be “preliminary reading” - I don’t think it is in any way supposed to be definitive!
Leaving aside massive tomes like the Aeneid and the Bible (!) we have
Foreign authors: Death in Venice, Buddenbrooks, The Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, War and Peace, Don Quixote, Crime and Punishment.
Eng lit: (I am missing out plays and poems) , Pamela, Emma, Villette, Middlemarch, Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations, Portrait of a Lady, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Mrs Dalloway.
More recent: The Power and the Glory, Company of Wolves, the novels of Kingsley Amis, Anita Brookner, Malcolm Bradbury, Peter Ackroyd. (tutor admits this is her own taste really).
I still hope to get through it all some day...

any by Oscar Wilde

Limited choice of novels. He only wrote one.

the catcher in the rye
animal farm

Down and Out in London and Paris- George Orwell

North and South- Elizabeth Gaskell

The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy

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