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'll happily be an uneducated philistine if it means I never again have to attempt Moby Dick...

@Offcom , ditto to Lucky Jim!
Set in the 50s, some of it will be seen as sexist/misogynist now, but to me it’s still a hilarious ‘comfort’ read - or rather re-read.

An Equal Music, Vikram Seth. It just draws you in.

I forget who mentioned ‘Heart of Darkness’ (Conrad) - it was on the syllabus list when I did the OU 19thC novel course years ago, and TBH I was glad it was so short - I’d have given it an enjoyment score of 1/10.

Middlemarch, OTOH - I still love that.

What a fabulous thread and so many recommendations/things to add to my list.

I loved Brothers Karamazov, Madame Flaubert, the Forsyte Saga, Count of Monte Cristo and Umberto Eco, Orwell to name a few

Any Human Heart stayed with me a long time, very poignant and funny.

Ulysses is great, though Stephen Dedalus can be somewhat tiresome fictional company compared to lovely Leopold Bloom. I tend to suggest anyone who’s struggling with the beginning (especially the second chapter, ‘Nestor’) to start with ‘Calypso’ (fourth chapter) where we first meet Bloom, and circle back to the first three later when you’ve got your eye in.

Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, Frenchman’s Creek - Daphne du Maurier

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Oroonoko - Aphra Behn

The Awakening - Kate Chopin

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf

The Diddakoi, The Doll’s House - Rumer Godden

Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day - Winifred Watson

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

Possession - A S Byatt

The Camomile Lawn - May Wesley

Chocolat - Joanne Harris

'Great books' as in classic literature? I'd personally say Jane Eyre is my favourite, Pride and prejudice, all Jane Austen are great really. The Catcher in the Rye honestly felt like an utter waste of time, the same for The Great Gatsby.
I'm a big fan of any short story by M.R James and E.F Benson if you like spooky ghost stories.

Jane Austen' and Anthony Trollope!

Also Cold Comfort Farm. Cloud Atlas.

I enjoyed reading all of Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Hardy, Gaskell, Trollope.

Dostoyevsky less so.

Authors I was surprised to enjoy as an adult, Robert Louis Stevenson (love Treasure Island and Kidnapped) and Arthur Ransome.

@Offcom I would definitely say it's a harder read than take a break 🤣🤣

I found reading it in a group very helpful. It's a difficult, challenging, sometimes frustrating book but it's also really funny, clever, heartbreaking, surprising, endearing & unforgettable.

I honestly struggle to read other books since finishing it earlier in the summer. I keep coming back to it & its 100% my roman empire topic. I think about it multiple times a day every day!

@IdgieThreadgoodeIsMyHeroine

😂😂

Lots of people moan about Northanger Abbey, even Austen fans. But I find it hilarious! If you take it is as a satire of the time rather than a serious story it’s very funny! I didn’t like Emma much though.

Thank you for this thread, I am late to the Jane Austen world and definitely want to read more from that time period, some brilliant suggestions for me!

I couldn't get into it either 🤷🏻‍♀️
I did read wild swans but I can't say I especially enjoyed it 😶

Kim Stanley Robinson
2312
the years of rice and salt
Galileo's dream
I couldn't get into any of the Mars books though.

I liked The Catcher in the Rye
Wolf Hall was good but dense going.

Because reading is so subjective, I can go out on a limb.
Wuthering Heights is in my opinion the most self indulgent pile of pitiful wank ever written. There. I've said it. (Although it does have a redeeming feature in that it gave rise to one of the most brilliant songs ever.)
Dickens is tricky because he's so long winded. Great romping stories though, and the more popular ones are referenced frequently.
Balzac was a great writer, often churning out books practically overnight to pay off his debts. Daphne du Maurier and John Wyndham were also superb for both storytelling and writing style and Jane Eyre is and will always be wonderful. For modern classics, anything by Penelope Lively is worth a read. Oh and Brave New World.
Great thread. Always lovely to have an excuse to talk books instead of do work...

In addition to Austen, Dickens, Eliot etc which I absolutely love:

Wilkie Collins, not only Woman in White but No Name and Armadale. Fantastic.
East Lynne by Ellen Wood (Mrs Henry Wood).
Lady Audley's Secret
Noel Coward complete short stories (fucking brilliant)
For comfort I do love the Little Women series as well as Anne of G Gables.

I am fascinated by this topic!

Which early 20th c women writers have disappeared and which do you think it would be great to see back in print?

My favourite books I have read over and over again as an adult and are like old friends
Jane Eyre
Wide Sargasso Sea
Age of Innocence
House of Mirth
Ethan Frome
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Jude the Obscure
Far from the Madding Crowd
Oliver Twist
In Cold Blood
Brighton Rock
1984
Turn of the Screw
The Portrait of a Lady
Rebecca
My Cousin Rachel
Lady Chatterley
Grapes of Wrath
The Blind Assassin
The Pursuit of Love
Sophie's Choice

The Catcher in the Rye honestly felt like an utter waste of time, the same for The Great Gatsby.

Holden Caulfield and Jay Gatsby are both deeply unlikeable characters, and Nick Carraway (narrator of The Great Gatsby) isn't an awful lot better. But the insight into the workings of an overprivileged teenager's mind and the veneer overlying the corruption of wealthy jazz-age American society are interesting.

I've read The Catcher in the Rye three times, and I've liked Holden Caulfield less each time. But I also found it impossible to have any positive feelings about Sal Paradise or his astoundingly self-centred partner Dean Moriarty in On the Road. I don't get that book at all: it's just two idlers driving back and forth for no reason. The road-trip aspect of Robert M Pirsig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (my favourite novel of all time) was fascinating, and it was also a hook to hang some philosophical exploration on (like the whaling voyage in Moby-Dick). But I couldn't see what On the Road was supposed to show me apart from two young men with a contempt for everyone else. The description of the jazz gig in San Francisco was great, but I didn't enjoy anything else about it.

Going back to Steinbeck, as we're talking about American novels. I didn't really like East of Eden when I reread it, having greatly enjoyed it the first time a few years before. But I absolutely adore In Dubious Battle, which rarely gets mentioned among Steinbeck's great novels. The Grapes of Wrath (Exodus to East of Eden's Genesis) is truly great.

Oh, I forgot The Forsyte Saga! A cracking read.

I’m going to add Barbara Pym, since she’s been called a modern Austen.

The Enchanted April is my comfort book.

Shakespeare. Jane Austen. Wuthering Heights. Frankenstein.

Flaubert?