What are your favourite classic books?

[yugflalska]

I haven’t read much…if any…classic literature, beyond what I needed to read at school. I’m a modern thriller via audiobook kind of person usually. We are getting some shelves fitted and I’ve decided to buy some classic books to help fill them. I’m worried I’m going to find it a tad impenetrable, but would love some recommendations of classic books people genuinely enjoyed reading.

Rebecca

If you like thrillers, try Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, or The Woman in White/The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

And Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen for a great spoof of the Gothic

I love the Penguin clothbound classic edition of Les Miserables. It has been re translated and is actually readable.

All of these, brilliant recommendations. I also love the Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë and the Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Plus anything by Agatha Christie - she must count as classic by now!

For a classic - George Orwell - Animal Farm, or thriller - 1984.

North and South

Here for the recs 👀🥰

The Secret Garden.

Jane Eyre.

I actually enjoy Shakespeare. But only if I've watched the play first.

A Christmas Carol.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
White Boots
A town like Alice
brave New World

All of Jane Austen's novels (I'm a bit obsessed!)
Middlemarch
Wuthering Heights
War & Peace (skipped over all the war bits!)
Brave New World
Sons & Lovers
A Passage to India
Anna Karenina
A Tale of Two Cities
Far From the Madding Crowd

I agree with most of these - but also try some Dickens. Great Expectations is a good start - they were written as serials for newspapers so had lots of 'cliff hangers'.

I capture the castle and A tree grows in Brooklyn. Please read them!

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists
The Handmaids Tale
The Stepford Wives
The Bell Jar
The 39 Steps

I'm sure there are some that don't start with 'the' 😅

Ivanhoe.
Last of the Mohicans

1984 - I read it for A level and have read it a few times since. I also like The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and Adam Bede by George Eliot

On the Road Jack Kerouac

The Odyssey - Homer
The Crucible - Arthur Miller

Even Moby Dick
Never read it myself

Some more slightly modern classics ideas…

Requiem for a Wren and A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute)

Howard’s End

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

The Great Gatsby

The Camomile Lawn

A Single Man

Revolutionary Road

Beloved

Black Beauty
Jane Eyre
Jamaica Inn

A Little Princess
Thr Secret Garden

Also a minor Scottish Classic

The Yellow On The Broom

A travelling woman’s (Betsy Whyte) tale of the travelling life between the two wars. It’s an absolute delight.

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
JRR Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

And non-fiction:
Ronald Blythe - Akenfield (social history, based on interviews with people in a Suffolk village in iirc the 1960s)
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (philosophy, but nice short chapters and very approachable. Basically the notebooks of a Roman emperor - one of the better ones)

This has made me think that I should go back and reread some classics that I enjoyed first time around, like The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorn).

Cider With Rosie
Cold Comfort Farm

Thanks all, Amazon list looking very full, especially loving the pretty Penguin clothbound versions!