so which 'classics' have you never read?

[iwastooearlytobeayummymummy]

For me it's Wuthering Heights and the Russian stuff: War and Peace and Anna Karenina
Also never read Madame Bovary, but I'm sure I've started it before now
I love Margaret Attwood but have not got round to the Hand Maids Tale yet ( but it is beside the bed)

never read austen, bronte and only one Dickens (I was always told as a child it was awful trite rubbish); never read any of those miserable Irish/French or Russians. Used to read lots of Hardy but now find it too despressing. Love PG Wodehouse, Flashman, Patrick O'Brian, Raymond Chandler, Cormac McCarthy, and you can't beat a Lee Child on holiday!

I've read most of the Brontes but always imagined I'd find Jane Austen a little middle class and 'polite' in comparison. In fact I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It is 'polite' but can be pithy and also very funny. If you enjoy Austen I'd also recommend Anthony Trollope (particularly The Warden, Barchester Towers etc). Also I did enjoy Vanity Fair by WM Thackeray.

I like George Eliot but there always has to be some tragic end which then pisses me off. Thomas Hardy's works seem largely very miserable indeed. I can't honestly be bothered after reading Tess.

I read Anna Karenina long before I tackled War and Peace. It took me about 5 attempts to get into War and Peace but I loved it when I did. Especially the characters of Natasha and Pierre.

Currently reading Brideshead Revisited.

Patrick O'Brian - oh yes! Read about the first five of the Aubrey-Maturin series.

I like Brideshead Revisited although do tend to agree with dd1 when aged 14, whose verdict was 'Well it's a good book but he doesn't half go on about the bloody Catholicism!'

Jasper Fffffffffffffffffffffffforde is silly and overly self-aware imho. I do rather like his portrayal of Miss Havisham though.

I liked Vanity Fair.

I minored in English Lit, tried to avoid every 'classics' module but sometimes couldn't.

Books I was supposed to read but didn't, then bought the York Notes for and blagged it through the seminars include:

Madame Bovary
Northanger Abbey
Wuthering Heights
Far from the Madding Crowd
some Dickens book I can't remember
loads of Shakespeare stuff

I made a brave start on War and Peace in January as a New Year's REsolution, but OMG, what a slow story! I see how it got to 1000s of pages. I've yet to pick it up for a second time.

I have a bit of an advantage because I've read a big chunk of the Russians (in Russian) for my degree - and I love Tolstoy, Bulgakov and some Dostoevsky, but found Turgenev and Chekhov less enjoyable, and the magic realists hard going.

I have also read most of Hardy, Trollope, Austens, Brontes etc, but I really haven't read many of the Classics - and wish I had a stronger grasp of the Greeks and Roman gods because they are so omnipresent in literary references. I'm interested that Margaret Atwood is perceived as a classic - I wouldn't have put her in that category, but I do love her work and read all of her novels

I guess my big gaps are James Joyce and the Irish novelists and poets, and classic English poetry - Shelley, Byron etc. I did enjoy Donne though for A Level.

I adore Les Miserables - I have read it so many times and find something different in it every time.

Essentially I spent my adolescence reading - I think that my mother was terrified I'd never meet a boy, let alone get married because all I did was read books and ride horses. As I'm about to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary, she didn't need to worry

Never been able to get into the 'Lord of the rings trilogy'. I might try again with the tip from Crystyclear. Did read The Hobbit at school, many a couple of years ago but it bored me rigid. So did Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, another school read. Shakespere..........zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Tolkien's books are not classics - they are fantasy novels.

Lots of classics I haven't (yet) read.

But people, give Tolstoy a chance. Anna Karenina is well and truly one of the greatest novels ever written, a wonderful read. I would even describe it as a "page-turner".

I love Austen, and love Charlotte, but hate Emily B. I loved DH Laurence too. Do not want to go near Dickens as I have never got further than p3 (apart from A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist). I used to like bits of De Maupassant. I managed Mill on the Floss but found it pretty turgid. Quite enjoy reading Shakespeare though.

MarianneM! OOOOOOOOO!! sorrrrrrry. I'll just go away and read my Jilly Cooper, I know my place.

Started Pride and Prejudice but never finished it - and I don't really know why, must try it again.Never read Dickens beyond a few pages of one of his.I do like the Brontes though, although I think I would appreciate Jane Eyre much more now than when I read it years ago.

Never very sure if the books I had to read for school or uni 'count', in that I had to keep going with them whether I was liking them or not! Read Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Tess of the D'Urbervilles for my school dissertation and loved the first two, only finished Tess because I had to!

If you're finding War and Peace a slog I would recommend skimming the 'War' bits to help you move it along (naughty!) because it is ultimately worth it.

My book group recently read Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier and I absolutely loved it, couldn't put it down.

I suppose it depends how you define a classic doesn't it? I've read all of Margaret Atwood's novels but she's a writer of texts that have become modern classics. Likewise Steinbeck. (And the reason Of Mice and Men is read by so many GCSE students is not because that's all English depts up and down the country want to do; it's because of the dreadful constraints of time forced upon us by controlled assessment).

I've read the classics I want to read and some I didn't want to read. I won't be recommending Emma or DH Laurence to anyone in a hurry. Generally though I rather read contemporary fiction.

Classics are what it says on the tin label, and for bloody good reason. The language is rich and colourful; the stories are transporting; the characters are alive and engaging. I can only read classics - must be at least 50 years old. Oldest book I've read was Samuel Richardson's Clarissa - 1750ish? I've tried contemporary books and just find them so superficial and badly written. What I'm trying to say is I need help Suggestions very warmly received.

Will shortly be starting Proust!

Jane Eyre is really good - if you only read the 2nd half of it and be prepared to skip bits after that! The first half is awful - and the bit with that stupid missionary man is even more awful - but the Rochester bits are fab. :)

I recommend John Crace's digested read series. He reads the classics so you don't have to. I think there are even digested digested reads.

Eg. Moby Dick: Man finds whale, man loses whale, whale finds man. The end.

I have recently read Moby Dick. The summary is accurate.

actually I agree with Marianne re Tolkien but LOR is still my favourite read/reread
The important rules of reading are:
1)read what you like
2)like what you read
3)like to read
I have read between 5 and 10 books a week since childhood-the good,the bad and the truly awful but I have kept the rules and liked some really awful stuff in my time :)

I loathed everything I had to read for A-level, I suspect mainly because I had to read it. (ooh, except Yeats in fairness). I reckon I put on 5 pounds reading Bleak House because it required constant chocolate sustenance to survie. We read Emma which is still my least favourite Austen but I do love it and the others.

Then I went to uni and had to read books like Pedro Paramo. Everyone in it is dead, all they talk about is death. So for my final, I revised the theme of 'death in Pedro Paramo' - well, bugger me, my lecturer managed to make up a question that wasn't about death, and I had to answer it. So I just blagged it - made some stuff up comparing it with Greek mythology and my lecturer thought this was brilliant, I've never had the heart to tell her it was all a con.

Love Jasper Fforde.

I made the mistake of telling my mum before Christmas that I was ashamed of my classics-reading-record. Cue lots of Dickens, Virgina Woolf (who I hated) and War and Peace I dread even picking it up. It's the size of a breeze block and everyone has about three names.

Of the authors mentioned I loved Dickens (copperfield,greatexpectations,tale of two cities,bleak house little dorritt) and cannot walk some streets in London without thinking of him. The same about Wuthering Heights and walking in the Pennines. Love Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, All Shakespeare.

Couldn't stand Proust, Anthony Trollope, Stendhal

Amazed by Graham Greene, Henry James, EM Forster, Mark Twain, JD Salinger, Steinbeck, Tolkein, Zola, Dostoyevski, Kafka, Koestler could go on forever. I dont ever get tired of To Kill a Mockingbird. So glad I can read. Saki.

Also MacCauley (life of Hastings), Pepys, Jonson, Dream of the Rood, Beowulf etc. Didn't like Chaucer so much.

Never did Eng Lit after GCSE btw. Read 1-2 a week still. An amateur reader. One of those who reads and runs.

wuthering heights.

honestly.

no, honestly!

well, ok, i have. but it's not relevant. it was just a good line.

:o at madwoman .

DH always wants me to read Moby Dick, but I just can't do it.

I haven't read any Tolkien. Just can't. A lot of Dickens is VERY hard work. I've read Madame Bovary but I hated her, same with Becky Sharpe, couldn't stand her. Can't do the Bröntes either

Love Atwood but haven't read Hanmaid's Tale, much to my shame, am struggling to read any fiction ATM though. It's as if my brain can't cope with plot since DS's birth