What great books are actually worth reading?

[Viou]

Just that, so many “great” books are dull and esoteric.

But which did you actually enjoy?

I personally loved Love In The Time of Cholera and Anna Karenina

You?

I want to read more

I have not really read many classics as I tend to read more modern books but I like all John Wyndhams books especially day of the triffids and Web and I thought that A town called Alice by Nevil Shute was really good

Heinrich Böll

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

I love this book.

Donna Tartt is right up there too imho. See The Secret History and Goldfinch.

yy to these lists. They didn’t get to be classics because they’re rubbish.

Virginia Wolf, Jane Austen & George Elliott are my comfort reads.

There’s loads of humour in Middlemarch. It’s a brilliant piece of work.

American Dirt

If they’re not worth reading, they’re not great, imo.

I love George Eliot and Mrs Gaskell, while loathing Thomas Hardy and Dickens.

Flowers for Algernon

The Reader

Jude the Obscure needs to come with a massive trigger warning, imo. It’s unreadably tragic.

I have never been able to finish a Dickens book, although I enjoy TV adaptations. I don't know why.

Because the TV producers have to fit it into four 45-minute episodes, so they cut out all the boring bits.

Germinal by Emile Zola

I also thought like others East of Eden was phenomenal.

Ulysses - a truly life changing read. I'm obsessed.

I studied Middlemarch for a level so many years ago and the characters have never left me.

I forgot to say this is a great thread & I'm really enjoying all the chat about books!!

I wish MN had more of this

Not just Lolita....i found Nabokov's novel Pale Fire jaw-droppingly brilliant. It starts off slightly weird and funny and ends up breaking your heart. Then making you laugh out loud.

The Great Gatsby!

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Jane Eyre
I also like Siddartha and Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.

I'm teaching Steinbeck this year, and am reminded, once again, of his singular genius. Also : 'Bleak house' : The short stories of Carver and Joyce, 'Women who run with wolves', (because every woman should read it) 'The life of Pi': ' The Great Gatsby' : ' Brideshead revisited: 'Wuthering heights': 'One hundred years of Solitude'. I'll stop there!

Read;

Persuasion,
Pride and Prejudice,
The Woman in White,
Vanity Fair,
Stoner,
Brighton Rock,
Anne of Green Gables,
Jazz,
The Code of the Woosters,
The Age of Innocence,
Rebecca,
The Count of Monte Cristo,
Hangover Square,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The Secret Garden,
The Invisible Man,
Diary of a Nobody,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,

AVOID; Jude the Obscure!

Frankenstein- deserves a couple of reads to be appreciated
Dracula
dr Jekyll and mr Hyde
the Scarlet letter
H.G Wells- the invisible man, the war of the worlds, the Time Machine

enjoyable in their own right, but also all of the above have had an enormous impact on horror/sci fi in all forms across the world.

I want to love Bleak House. I think that Dickens wrote with ‘threads’ if you could pick up and grasp the threads they are amazing stories. Bleak House was an exercise in frustration… I could sort of see the threads but was not able to grab hold of one. I’ll try again in a few years! That’s one I won’t give up on.

All writers use threads really - but maybe just not for you. Do watch the BBC
serialisation though - it's fab!

Yes. The BBC adaptation of Bleak House is so good. I would never have read the novel, but have watched the series several times.

Machivelli the prince

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is almost perfect. Or as close to perfect as any book I’ve ever read.

Anything by Camus is wonderful but the First Man, his unfinished novel is just sublime.

I’m reading Demon Copperhead at the moment. She’s a magnificent writer. I’m sure it will become a modern classic. The Poisonwood Bible is on my list next!

@BeatsAntique you’ll love Poisonwood Bible!

So, mine (in no particular order) are:

The Poisonwood Bible (superb)
Vanity Fair
Villette
Jane Eyre
1984 (also like his Clergyman’s Daughter, very underrated)
Down and Out in Paris and London
Sherlock Holmes (prefer the complete short stories)
Of Mice and Men
The Moonstone

Also collected poems of Tennyson