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Original poster

50 Classics to read before I am 50

40 replies

desiretochange · 08/02/2011 15:39

On another thread, I wrote that I want to compile a list of 50 things to do before I am 50 (in 2 years), and a poster suggested that I read 50 classics, any suggestions??

OP posts:
belindarose · 08/02/2011 15:43

Everything by Dickens, if you haven't had the pleasure already. 'And The Count of Monte Cristo'.

Original poster
desiretochange · 08/02/2011 16:06

Thanks Belinda, it has been years since I read any of the Classics!

OP posts:
BendyBob · 08/02/2011 16:10

Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola

BelligerentGhoul · 08/02/2011 18:00

All of Jane Austen's

The Woman In White and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Dracula

Frankenstein

Brideshead Revisited

Lolita

1984

compo · 08/02/2011 18:02

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
all the Harry Potters ( they will be classics)
all of roald dahl

dh Lawrence sons and lovers

George Eliot mill on the floss

GeorgeEliot · 08/02/2011 18:02

Middlemarch

zabwino · 08/02/2011 18:02

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. Don't be put off by the size, it is a fantastic book.

winnybella · 08/02/2011 18:06

Heart of Darkness

Gulag Archipelago

All of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov

Master and Margarita

Jane Eyre

All of Austen

OfflineFor30Seconds · 08/02/2011 18:08

Count of Monte Cristo

Jane Eyre

She

Frankenstein

Dracula

Midnight's Children

Don Quixote

Heart of Darkness

If this is Man

onimolap · 08/02/2011 18:08

Vanity Fair (Thackeray)

The Bible (and other great sacred texts)

Paradise Lost (Milton)

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)

Beowulf

A La Recherche des Temps Perdus

We have to talk abut Kevin (Lionel Shriver)

The Secret History (Donna Tartt)

Lace (Shirley Conran)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)

....... might be back later with more.

OfflineFor30Seconds · 08/02/2011 18:09

If this is a Man

PotteringAlong · 08/02/2011 18:11

Peyton place

Marjorie morningstar

To kill a Mockingbird

Rebecca - infect anything by Daphne du Maurier!

mycomment · 08/02/2011 18:13

Not 50, but 5 from me:
Milan Kundera - the book of laughter and forgetting
Italo Calvino - invisible cities
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 100 years of solitude
Arundhati Roy's - the god of small things
Salman Rushdie - midnight's children

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 08/02/2011 18:18

The History of Tom Jones - Henry Fielding

Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (or just "all")

Woman in White AND The Law and the Lady - Wilkie Collins

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe

The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (Neville Coghill translation is good but sure there are newer ones)

The Decameron - Boccaccio

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Nights At The Circus - Angela Carter (ok maybe not a classic yet but it will be)

Little Women - Lousia May Alcott

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 08/02/2011 18:18

ooh yes I vote The House On The Strand - Daphne du Maurier

and I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith

Batteryhuman · 08/02/2011 18:23

Have to have something by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana or
The Power and the Glory get my vote.

Camus - L'Etranger (The Outsider)

1984

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

ThisIsANiceCage · 08/02/2011 18:29

A Testament of Youth (Vera Brittain)
The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco)
The Antiquary, Ivanhoe, Rob Roy (Walter Scott)
Beloved (Toni Morrison)
Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)
The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie)
Woman in White, The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins)
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson)
North and South, Wives and Daughters (Elizabeth Gaskell)
I Claudius, Claudius the God (Robert Graves)

All of Austen.

Dickens...hmm. He wrote some right dogs, IMHO, so if you haven't tried him before and don't like the one you start with, don't be put off. I'd try:
A Tale of Two Cities
Bleak House
David Copperfield.

SandStorm · 08/02/2011 18:32

Rebecca

Hunchback of Notre Dame

Lorna Doone

Uncle Tom's Cabin (tissues a must)

Empire of the Sun

Madame Bovary

Anything from the Discworld series because one day it will be a classic.

stripeywoollenhat · 08/02/2011 18:35

at swim two birds

maryz · 08/02/2011 18:43

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PureBloodMuggle · 08/02/2011 18:48

I've just download 'Great Expectations' audiobook from my library. Never read Dickens before was it the wrong one to start with? (even though I'm not offically reading it!!)

PotteringAlong · 08/02/2011 18:50

Time travellers wife

Brideshead revisited

love in a cold climate

ThisIsANiceCage · 08/02/2011 18:57

Yes, it's loathsome. Only you can say, Muggle.

The bloke in my bookshop says he re-reads it regularly and thinks it's a boy/girl dichotomy - men see in Pip their adolescent selves; women want to slap him.

Tale of Two Cities, however, is for me one of the finest books in the English language.

PureBloodMuggle · 08/02/2011 18:58

Oh sorry did give you any books!

Here's the Telegraph's suggestion of 100 novels everyone should read

Off this list I've read just three!!

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Evidently I should go for a less highbrow list Grin

PureBloodMuggle · 08/02/2011 19:04

Oh darn it ThisIsANiceCage well at least it's just a library audiobook and will be out of my possession in 21 days and cost me nowt (bar the slight confusion as to how to download)