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?

I much prefer Dickens on the screen to the page. The BBC adaptation of Bleak House was great.

Wilkie Collins wrote a better page turner in my opinion.

At the risk of repeating other posters Austen has got to be the top pick. I'd also recommend North and South or Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.
A personal fave is The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
Also, if you want a very easy way in try Georgette Heyer's regency romances. Not classics with a capital C but the best of their kind. The Poldark novels are good too.
If you chew up all those maybe try Trollope.

So many great suggestions here. I've bookmarked to make my own list! A couple that I would add are some of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. These were read by Stephen Fry on Audible and I was gripped. Never thought I'd like that sort of book but it was great. My other suggestion would be Wives & Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Can I also make a case for Barbara Pym? Stories about “spinsters” renting rooms in the 1950/ they are very light and humorous but brilliantly written.

and if you’d like something sharper try some Fay Weldon

Anything read by Stephen Fry is a winner. I have his P G Wodehouse Jeeves and Blandings and they are brilliant.

So true. I no longer trust the literary establishment. They have a sacred duty to judge books objectively, to be honest about the quality of writing and merits of the work, regardless of the author. They have abandoned that duty. Books increasingly win prizes, or get published in the first place, not because they are good but because the author ticks certain boxes. Harold Bloom warned about this decades ago. No one listened. I pretty much ignore the Booker Prize now.

Harold Bloom was a sexist prick whose adoration of the same old western canon, while he took potshots at women’s writing and working class writing (‘the literature of resentment’) and shagged his way through his female students, makes him a tiresome, dated oddity.

Try short stories? Somerset Maugham is a bit mean but hard to put down. Checov is very perceptive, Turgenyev too. Robert Musil, posthumous papers of a living author, is all atmosphere, but GOOD. G Buechner, Lenz, is weird and sad but good.

Never really paid much attention to the Booker although there's a few winners I've liked. Nobel prizes suffer the same process. Have to admit though one of the reading delights of my life was checking out NP literature winners and discovering Naghuib Mahfouz

To me classics and literary fiction are polar opposites.

Classics are classics because they are great books and enjoyable to read. Many were not regarded as worthy at the time of publishing.

Literary fiction is up it's own arse shite that publishers think is good but usually nobody remembers a decade later.

Obviously it's not black and white but I think the vast bulk of what's marketed as literary fiction is comparable or worse to other fiction. I particularly agree with PPs about the quality of a lot of literary prize winners.

Great thread. Mainly place marking for now but I think she could have recommended a lot of literature that sat in between easy reads and the stuff she listed. I read a lot of classic/high brow /niche literature but also just enjoy well written/thoughtful/funny stuff

Graham Greene
George Orwell
Katherine Heiny

Brain is fried but I'll come back and add some more later

PG Wodehouse
Sue Townsend
Jonas Jonasson
Elizabeth Stroud

(A random assortment of recently read books!)

About 20 years ago the BBC got together this list of books which are a good starting point
https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

I haven't RTFT, but if you enjoy Rebecca (I'm sure you will), there are plenty of other novels by the same author.

If no-one's mentioned Wilkie Collins yet, I highly recommend his The Woman in White, which though very long is a gripping and at times very funny Victorian thriller. The Moonstone is another mystery of his which is also pretty readable.

Agree with Little Women & sequels. A Little Princess is full of charm.

Jane Austen's books, once you get used to the archaic sentence construction, are full of wit and astute human observation.

Some great suggestions on here. I think the key is to expand on what you have been reading, and just read more.

Personally I have loved Anne Tyler and Margaret Atkinson. I have recently read Madeleine Miller recommended by my daughter and now I’m reading ‘Labyrinth’ by Kate Atkinson. I joined a local bookgroup (once a month in the pub) and have read some stuff with them I wouldn’t have read otherwise. Some of the members are massive readers and it’s always interesting to hear what they’re reading. However, I don’t want to join the for their ‘Mid-Week Special’ which is ‘Ulysses’. Apparently it’s hard going. And sometimes I read Popcorn, like Ben Elton, or Richard Osman and I love it just the same.

I give up on books all the time if I’m not enjoying them. And sometimes I listen on Audible, or watch the film or listen to a dramatised version instead.

Do what you want! It’s the ‘Rights of the Reader‘! I do very much recommend book group though.

Have you read any Jane Austen - they are all good although Pride and Prejudice is my very favourite. Or Jane Eyre? Both may fit well with your current tastes?

Oh, and A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. Brilliant.

I haven't read many 'classics' either OP. Just looked at my lists of books I've read since 2019 when I started a log. I did enjoy Fahrenheit 451, War of the Words, 1984, Gone with the wind, The Woman in Black & Uncle Tom's Cabin though. All easy reads and about subjects that interested me. Sometimes I read lots of books in a row by the same author or about the same subject matter- ie Greek mythology ones (like Circe, The Song of Achilles, The Silence of the Girls etc) or books about the Black Death or Stephen King etc. I'm reading the 2nd Thursday Murder Club book atm & loving it. If I don't like a book I'll stop reading it & maybe try it again in the future. Life is too short to read books that bore us! I've given up on Moby Dick (for now) & The Count of Monte Cristo. Maybe I'll try them again, maybe not.

Edith Eger- the choice (read recently, v powerful)

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451

JG Ballard (dystopian literature)

Anne Franks diary

To Kill a Mockingbird

Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath

All quiet on the western front

I read most of these from about 12-15 so pretty accessible but thought provoking

Literature is so subjective and just because a book is seen to be a classic or highbrow, does not make it any more worthy than another. I am an English Lit graduate and yes, I agree with others that Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Jane Eyre and Rebecca are great reads, that means nothing if they don’t hit the right spot for you.

I loved A Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments (the follow up). I really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha and Brave New World. Nick Hornby books are good (especially Feverpitch and High Fidelity). Death Comes to Pemberley (a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, written by PD James) was excellent, and I enjoyed reading someone else’s vision of what happened next with characters I’d loved and invested in. Toni Morrison is good (Beloved is beautiful for its bleakness) but happy endings aren’t guaranteed. For all of these books, I still love reading things like Twilight, Hunger Games etc and my go to books these days are actually Tess Gerritson - Rizzoli and Isles books and Terry Pratchett Discworld (especially the Witches books).

Trying new things and trying to broaden your literary horizons is great, but don’t be afraid to bail on a book if it doesn’t hook you. Read books that bring you joy.

Rebecca is a good one to start with and I think Jane Eyre would be too. Just avoid James Joyce, I’m a massive fan of classics and Ulysses made me want to weep it was so difficult to read and so unenjoyable.

Oh god don't read Frankenstein. THE MOST annoying hero in the whole of literature. He is so self centred and keeps having gothic swoons while self effacing women run around looking after him.

I like trashy romance and classics equally and classics I've totally loved are: Pride and Prejudice (and any Jane Austen), Grapes of Wrath, Middlemarch, Henry James, Stella gibbons, enjoying war and peace at the moment but have been warned the war parts get heavy. More modern ones include any Kazuro Ishiguro, Jonathan Franzen, Karen joy fowler, Jeanette winterson. Also love plenty of more lowbrow: Jilly Cooper, Agatha Christie, PG Woodehouse, Ken Follet, lots of young adult, trashy Christmas romances found in charity shops.

Hate Thomas Hardy (monumentally depressing!) dickens (needs massively shortening, where was his editor?) all Brontë sisters (too gothic and women too subservient) catch 22, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and lord of the flies (boy books, I'm pretty girly)

Basically try lots of stuff, either reading or as audiobooks, and don't be afraid to ditch it if you're not enjoying. You may hate what others love and that's ok (see paragraph above). Maybe try your library so you can try things risk free?

Step one: watch Jane Eyre (the language in the book is quite stilted so not the best starting novel)
Step two: read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys- it’s Jane Eyre from the mad wife’s point of view.
Step three: other Jean Rhys books
Step four: anything by Mitch Albom, or David Benioff.
Step five: anything Man Booker Prize nominated.

but not Booker prize nominated. It’s a vital distinction.

Another vote for Jane Austen - it's classical chick lit. Then, if you want something heavier, try Middlemarch. It's hellishly long but her observation of human character is outstanding.
I loved Wilkie Collins' "Moonstone", if you like a mystery. The story is told through the evidence and POV of various different characters and witnesses - interesting and clever but not too heavy.
If you are into really creepy/ghost stories try M. R. James.
I don't enjoy much modern "literary" stuff, hate the "magical realism" genre, eg. Beloved, Wide Sargasso Sea. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson is a good read.