How to get into reading classics and literary fiction?

[BunchofPocus]

I do like to read but mostly I read young adults books, chick lit and other genre type books usually with a strong (cheesy) romance element. Nothing wrong with any of that but I am now in my 30's and I just want to read better books!

I have a friend who has always had more literary tastes and has read a lot of classics and I also find her to be wise and insightful which she says comes from reading so much. I saw this https://www.newschool.edu/pressroom/pressreleases/2013/CastanoKidd.htm
which would seem to back up her sense that reading books has helped in this sense.

I asked her how to get into more literary fiction and classics especially, she recommended books like Dracula and Frankenstein as good entry points for classics but I just couldn't get into either of them, they were both such a hard slog even though I know both stories are good. For literary fiction she recommended an entry point list including works by Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Banana Yoshimoto and Ottessa Moshfegh but again after trying quite a few I just can't get into them, my friends description of them sounds great but when I try to read them I just get bored.

I feel a bit defeated because I really wanted to elevate my reading and to feel like I was actually learning something while being entertained but perhaps I'm just not smart enough?

Jane Austen is so beautifully comic, none of them are very long. Try them?

If you enjoy Rebecca you could give Jamaica Inn a go.

I didn’t mean all the books but I’d say the OP can go through the lists and find something that clicks with her. Just like we all do when it comes to selecting books. She wanted suggestions of where to start and nominated books are a good start.

You could try the dailylit.com website, you pick a book and it emails you a chapter a day. Can be a good way to get into something without feeling like you need to wade through the entire book at once!

There's some good ones that have won for sure - I liked The Old Devils, Disgrace, The Sea and Wolf Hall

There's definitely some names that "fit" though

A couple more short ones
The Thirty Nine Steps
The Catcher in the Rye
The Bell Jar

I agree with the PP who suggested looking to recent Booker shorlists for ideas - modern literary fiction buy the likes of Claire Keegan, Ian McEwan, Maggie O'Farrell; also I wanted to suggest short stories - fidna volume of "classic" short stories e.g Muriel Spark, Katherine Mansfield, O Henry, Edgar Allen Poe. that will perhpas help you adapt to a different or denser style of writing without the sense of ploughing through pages and pages without feeling you have accessed the plot.

Try some modern classics? Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is very readable and though recent is now a set text for a-level. Zadie Smith - White Teeth was a hit when it came out but I also enjoyed North by North West very much.

Going back a bit, Possession by AS Byatt is a page turner though quite long. And Secret History by Donna Tartt is very good for theory of mind - she convinces you one whole thing is reasonable then turns it around on you. She also wrote The Goldfinch, also v strong.

Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith is a cracking book-literary but as addictive as a thriller. As is Paying Guests. Pride and Prejudice is funny and observant. Lark Rise to Candelford is charming. Cider With Rosie. Try female fiction first-or men who write good female characters. William Boyd is a good writer as is early Robert Harris-try plot driven Fatherland or The Ghost.

William Boyd is very good - A Good Man in Africa and an Ice Cream War in particular

Colin Bateman and Chris Brookmyre write sharp stuff - The Sacred Art of Stealing by the latter is one of the best books I've read

I really liked The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier.

There are some great suggestions here. My advice fwiw, as a regular reader who was a bookworm when young but who is now rather tired and short of quality reading time is to build up. So, don't jump from shopaholic(funny) to Dracula but rather firstly to more dense

Apologies,.. clumsy thumb!
Move on to the Anne Tyler type suggestions and mix it up. If you have lots of time eg on holiday you can read something a little more demanding but if you are very time poor and only get minutes to read then a lighter book ( I like crime) will keep you going. Audio books are great for the car or when you are walking and there is no reason not to include these while you are broadening your choices. My other suggestion is to look at the senior school reading lists and tick a few of those books off. They tend to have accessible ideas and language while the lists are designed to stretch the students.The more variety of language, genre and style you read the better your skills will be.

I agree that Pride & prejudice is very funny and an easy read. so is Northanger Abbey.

A great modern classic is The Color Purple. Very sad but deeply affecting.
The Kite Runner is another good modern classic.

Anything written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Jhumpa Lahiri is a safe bet.

So many good suggestions! Definitely yes to I Capture the Castle, especially if you like romance. It's such a charming, funny book.

And yes to Sarah Waters. The twist in Fingersmith! She's such an excellent, sensuous writer. The Little Stranger is a brilliant ghost story.

Loads of good recommendations. Thumbs up for George Eliot, Jane Eyre, Lewis' Narnia books (beautifully written), Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Kipling, The Great Gatsby, etc.

Two things I'd add to the excellent replies. First, trust the classics. They are classics for a reason. Every generation has admired Pride and Prejudice, Moll Flanders, Middlemarch, David Copperfield, etc. People who argue that the classics are overrated, or that we need a new literary canon, are breathtakingly arrogant. So the best minds of each generation are all wrong about Henry Fielding and Voltaire and Homer and Daniel Defoe and Tolstoy...but you are right. You've seen through all those generations of professors and intellectuals. When some smug little 18-year-old, with a rolled up copy of The Guardian under her arm, lectures me on the canon, and explains that it's a 'bourgeois conspiracy,' I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Second, it's often worth persevering even if you're not enjoying them. Great literature can work on you at a subconscious level. Often, a book will sort of grow on you, even though reading it was a chore. I had that experience with Joyce's Ulysses, and also with Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence.

When I was a young teen and later in early 20s, I loved Jane Eyre, and read it perhaps twenty+ times. Now, in my 50s, I'm reading it with my son (Year 9) as they study it this year, and I'm not feeling the same love. Too much moralalising, and Mr Rochester is truly awful. Being in a position of power, he plays with poor Jane like cat and mouse.
May I suggest Gerald Durrell's My family and other animals? Funny, entertaining, and easily a modern classic.
Mary Stewart's trilogy, The crystal cave, The hollow hills and The last enchantment.
Le Carre's The murder of quality

Read a few classics. TBH I think they are overrated. The language is often wordy or difficult to understand and makes the reading and comprehension tedious and the whole process utterly unenjoyable.

A lot of it is better consumed by watching the TV series or movie or theatre. Shakespear for example I don't think was meant to be read or analysed but enjoyed by an audience.

Reading a lot of classics is like setting fire to your own hair.

I would head for some of the more modern stuff.

There are a few standouts amongst older fiction though. 1984 is a great book for me.

Don't know if anybody has suggested Nancy Mitford? Full of humour and a window into a rarefied and vanished world. I would second Daphne Du Maurier, Orwell, Graham Greene - The End Of The Affair is my favourite.

Oh and definitely Muriel Spark - if you dislike writers who are overly-verbose or feel intimidated by a massive tome I can highly recommend her books; she was the master of the art of saying a lot in as few words as possible.

Also, have you tried any of the Virago Classics? There are some great authors among them; I particularly like Rosamund Lehman and Rebecca West.

If you like humour, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons and Diary of an Edwardian Housewife are very enjoyable.

If you want to go further back, and you've never tried any of the Brontë's novels, can I suggest Agnes Gray by Anne Brontë? It's short and full of humour and far less "gothic" than her sisters' novels.

Think about the types of stories you like - do you want grand themes or insights into people’s lives.
Austen is image of upper middle class life on a small canvas beautifully drawn. Moby Dick or Heart of Darkness are dark challenging examinations of human behaviour.

One might appeal but not the other. They are all “classics” but won’t necessarily appeal to the same reader.

Dracula and Frankenstein are not easy reads I think partly because the characters have become so well known outside of the books that the original stories can feel heavier and slower than you expect.

Another relatively short book to add to your list would be Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Audible helps

I would go for more recent classics (20th century stuff rather than Victorian) and start with something funny. Nancy Mitford, Stella Gibbons etc like pp suggested.

I loved the Victorian/Georgian stuff when I was a young teen (and still do in theory, still Brontë obsessed) but weirdly don’t think I would have the attention span to read them now! So wordy.

Oh and I love Evelyn Waugh. Readable, often funny, and Brideshead Revisited is so moving.

Try some classic 19th century children’s literature to start with:

Treasure Island
Black Beauty
Huckleberry Finn
Children of the New Forest
The Jungle Book
The Princess and the Goblin

I’m an English lit lecturer and I strongly advise not pushing yourself to read books just because they’re considered ‘classics’. I don’t rate many of the classics personally, few exceptions like Wuthering Heights and Ulysses but by and large, I’m more into Orwell and writers like Bukowski, Twain, Sartre (hence username) and Camus.

We all have our passions, not every book is for everyone. I also can’t stand Dracula or Frankenstein and I’m not even that into Shakespeare, much to one of my colleague’s disgust! I just don’t rate them and felt I had to drag myself through reading them which isn’t pleasant.

Yes I just love Daphne de Mauriere. Rebecca is a great start. All get books are so intriguing you won't ever put them in the drawer. There is a reason she wrote the way she did, but I will not spoil or say more