To roll my eyes when someone says their favourite book is a classic

[Eyeroller100]

I'm an avid reader and I'm always looking for new books to read so I often ask people what their favourite books are. AIBU to roll my eyes every time someone mentions one of the classics.

I know people do love them and they may well be their faves, but I am quite skeptical as if they are saying it to make themselves sound better.

I've tried reading a lot of classics and I just can't get into them at all! They are pure effort

opportunity

Kauzuo Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors. His books are remarkable.

I like Ishiguro and David Mitchell- particularly the last section of his most recent book.

(Also Sebastian Barry, Niall Williams, Alice Munroe, Colm Tobín, Carol Shields, Margaret Attwood)

Mairead, I have similar taste. I love Atwood, Tobin , Ishiguro and david Mitchell.
From the classics, I loved Jane Austen, Dickens. I enjoyed many others but don’t often reread them.
More recently, i’ve really enjoyed Donna tartt, Phillip Roth and Mark Twain and love j.D. Salinger.

Ooh and Tolkien, Neil Gaiman and Ursula McGuin

Are we just discussing our favourite books and authors now?

I have enjoyed this thread, I'm a proper re reader and also love children's literature.

When I first saw the ops question. I would answer Foucaults Pendulum. My favourite book. I would say that to anybody and long for the day that somebody wants to talk to me about it.

But I just love them all, I will always have time for pg Wodehouse at home, Austen, Benson (or whoever wrote Lucia) mostly I like humorous writers. I also love Anne of gg, Northern Lights, Frances Hodgsen Burnett.

Anybody who sneers at children's literature should also think, how can we let our dc read them without reading them first ourselves, and the majesty that is Coram Boy.

I don't believe that anyone, apart from Betteridge, has read and enjoyed Robison Crusoe. I only read it because of the Moonstone. It is terrible. Maybe if you're devout you could like the clunky style and biblical quotes. Absolute shocker. If you haven't please don't.

Rosemary I adored Foucaults Pendulum. Wouldn’t say it’s my favourite ever but wow it’s a totally amazing book. I remember grinning about halfway through because it’s just such a brilliant mix of clever and silly. The first chapter is real hard work but after that it’s so enjoyable.

Rosemary - I loved Foucault's Pendulum, too.

However, about this:

"Anybody who sneers at children's literature should also think, how can we let our dc read them without reading them first ourselves"

Very easily. They get on with reading their books and I get on with reading mine, having no interest whatsoever in suffering through stuff meant for children.

They get on with reading their books and I get on with reading mine, having no interest whatsoever in suffering through stuff meant for children.

What a lot you miss by dismissing an entire genre because it’s not meant for you. Sort of like men who won’t entertain reading ‘women’s’ literature. A bit childish, ironically.

Some people are more influenced by publishers’ marketing than others

"Suffering through." You have no idea what you're missing out on!

Re: Foucault's Pendulum - I found it really hard work, but I adored The Name of the Rose which one people have hated.

Jassy 😁 see C Sir Lewis quote some pages back - very childish!

What a lot you miss by dismissing an entire genre because it’s not meant for you

This. Some of the books dearest to my heart are "children's books". It's even more special now I have a daughter who loves reading and we can share books.

Frizzy- almost snap apart from Tolkien and le Guin, but I realise that's my shortcoming rather than theirs!

@CoteDAzur - I still reread some childrens books - I think the mark of a good children's book is that it is readable for both children and adults, and a well written book is fun to read, no matter who it is actually aimed at.

For example, I am just finishing reading the Harry Potter books again, and I love Elizabeth Goudge's books, some of which are for children. I occasionally dip into the Arthur Ransome books, the Chalet School series and Noel Streatfield's books.

Sometimes I need the familiarity of children's books - and I am a fast reader, so I usually find something new, or something I'd forgotten when I re-read any book.

I am an avid reader but definitely enjoy "easy-reading" over what you call "classics".

They are very hard work! The only one I managed is George Orwell's 1984, couldn't put it down, although I did have to read a few of the pages more than once!

STDG, one of the things I definitely got from Brent-Dyer as an adult was a contemporary, non-political or historical view of Nazi Germany and the war. Any time the apologists for the Mosleys and others say ‘well, they can’t possibly have known about concentration camps and things before the end of the war’, I’m reminded that a children’s author was writing about concentration camps and the persecution and murder of Jews in 1939 and 1940. In a school story.

Were they really written that early, Jassy?

I always assumed the ones about fleeing from the Tyrol were written after the war.

Good grief. Have googled.

They really were contemporaneous with the second world war. That does put a different light on the supposed ignorance in the UK of events within Germany...

I hadn’t realised that either, @Jassy!

I forgot about John Irving, Peter Carey, Anne Marie McDonald and marvellous Marilyn thingy (Gilead etc). I'm not sure they will be classics but they certainly aren't chewing gum. Oh and Graham Swift!

And Joseph O'Connor!

The grapes of wrath is the most heart wrenchingly tragic and beautiful book I've ever read.

They really were contemporaneous with the second world war. That does put a different light on the supposed ignorance in the UK of events within Germany...

I know! Exile was published in 1940 (I’m lucky enough to have a first edition. It really is quite something, her depiction of the Anschluss, and informants, the murder of Herr Goldman and his wife, and Herr imprisonment and death, and the feeling of accuracy of how those stories were told, against the later ‘we had no idea!’ protestations.