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?

Stoner

My favourite book
Just wonderful
A true classic

@ImportantWater
Thank you so much for your Cambridge reading list. I’ve been trying to find something similar online for a while.

No dissing Remains of the Day please @Reginabambina! Every time I read it I learn something new about myself and how people are.

Posted too soon @Reginabambina

It's the only book I managed to read in the last 18 months while my mental health is poor. After two weeks of working on my concentration, I have read a few pages of something new today. Today is a good day.

I love Hardy. My dd3 is called Tess. My favourite is The Return Of The Native.

I hate Dickens and I Hate Robert Burns.

For Non Fiction I really like AJ Jacobs - modern, funny.

@Disfordarkchocolate remains of the day is a brilliant novel, definitely do not mean to dismiss it but the unconsoled is a new level of masterful.

Placemarking

If you're struggling with "reading" War and Peace* try an audiobook of it, a change of format can really help.

*Or any book really

I’d suggest :

Robinson Crusoe
The Count of Montecristo
Mill on the Floss
The Mayor of Casterbridge
The Law and the Lady
Vanity Fair

If you’ve read Jane Eyre, you have to read Wide Sargasso Sea.
It’s the mad wife’s story/ perspective, and the best written book I’ve ever read.

@Gilead I hated Jane Eyre too, Rochester especially. You should definitely read Wide Sargasso Sea.

The 39 Steps -John Buchan

Where Eagles Dare - Alistair MacLean - so much better than the film

Hamilton - Catherine Cookson

The Moon's a Balloon - autobiography by David Niven, fascinating insight into the golden age of Hollywood

High Stakes - Dick Francis

If Only They Could Talk - James Herriot

Hi @PointOfTipping, I'm up for reading along with you. This could be the start of a book club. I would start with the dystopian classics which resonate with what is happening in the world today:

1984
The Handmaid's Tale
Brave New World
Children of Men

I second Jean Rhys' wide sargasso sea: good for starting a coversation around gender, race, and colonialism

There is a book called The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer which details a reading list and how to read the books spanning different genres in order to educate yourself. I meant to do this years ago but didn’t get beyond Don Quixote. Didn’t have much time on my hands at that time though so maybe it’s time to give it another go!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a good pick too.

Have we definitely settled on 1984 for the first book then @PointOfTipping?

If so do we have a target date for completion and dicussion?

Some philosophy?
Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety.
An interesting and quite easy read.

Most books by Vladimir Nabokov; he has a way with language that is so unique yet spot on. It always amazes because his mother tongue was Russian.
Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Strangers on a Train and Carol by Patricia Highsmith
Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo)
Anne Frank's Diary

Les Miserables, definitely, but be careful which translation you choose. The earliest ones were heavy going - they're also the ones that are free on Kindle/available cheaply, so people often try them and think they don't get on with LM. I did exactly this, years ago! The Julie Rose one is excellent and my favourite (it's since become my favourite book and I've read pretty much all the translations).

@Emmapeeler1 I am currently reading a recent translation of Les Miserables on my kindle (on the bus) and really enjoying it so far. 10% in!

Is it Christine Donougher's translation of Les Miserables (where the title of the novel has also been translated to 'The Wretched')? I read it a couple of years ago on my Kindle and loved it.

My husband has a battered paperback copy of the Norman Denny translation. I compared the occasional paragraph (particularly of the more famous scenes) and it's fascinating how the translations were quite different, although (presumably, as I can't read French that well) were both accurate.

I found myself chuckling away at a few scenes in the Donoghue translation, but when I compared them to the Denny translation, his was so much "straighter" and dry.

Sorry to go slightly off-topic, but its interesting what a difference various translations of the same book can make to the reading experience.

I'm glad it's not just me that struggled with Dickens. Loved A Tale of Two Cities (and see the Dirk Bogarde film, it's great) but everything else left me cold. Great Expectations was one of my set books for O'Level. Got about 100 pages in and couldn't read any more so winged my exam on the back of seeing the David Lean film with John Mills.

To be going on with:

Pride and Prejudice
Wild Swans
The Diary of Anne Frank
Wolf Hall
Bringing up the Bodies
The Forsyte Saga
The Great Gatsby

Not sure if this one has been mentioned yet as haven't read through the whole thread but 'If this is a man' by Primo Levi is incredible. It's often published in one volume with the follow up 'The Truce' which is also excellent.

God I hated War & Peace.

The classics I've enjoyed are: Emma, Bleak House, little Women, Moby Dick (loved), To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair.

I hated Anna Karenina. I have an MA in literature so have read a lot of classics. While many are great works of their time... damn some are hard work. I prefer modern fantasy, American novels between 1850 and 1950 are good too and some Dickens and Austen.

God I hated War & Peace.

The classics I've enjoyed are: Emma, Bleak House, little Women, Moby Dick (loved), To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair.

Contrary to a PP I also loved The Odyssey and The Iliad.

I hated Anna Karenina. I have an MA in literature so have read a lot of classics. While many are great works of their time... damn some are hard work. I prefer modern fantasy, American novels between 1850 and 1950 are good too and some Dickens and Austen.

Lots of my favourites mentioned already.

How about one volume of In Search of Lost Time by Proust. The whole 6 volumes may be hard going!

Also something by Iris murdoch - The Sea maybe?

I’d totally second the suggestion of The Women’s Room by Madeleine French which is one of the first feminist polemics but very readable, and Sophie’s World which is a great into to philosophy.

If you like historical fiction I also really liked Robert Harris’s trilogy about Cicero

@ACupOfCoffee yes it is the Donoghue translation I am reading. I am really surprised by how much I am enjoying it, especially as most of the first part is about the Bishop! I have also chuckled a lot in places.

I also really enjoyed the Madame Bovary translation I read, I think the one by Geoffrey Wall, which I found both amusing in places and a page turner.

Both I chose after reading Amazon reviews about which translation to go for as I know what a difference it can make (having read most of my MFL degree texts in translation out of laziness )