Best classics

[Arcadia]

I am doing the 50 book challenge this year and as I am on track, but largely contemporary stuff, I now want to incorporate a couple of 'classics'. I want books that are not too long, and don't want to feel like it is 'hard work' ploughing through for the sake of it. Any recommendations?

[smugmumofboys]

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is good. It's long but a fast paced read.

[IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat]

It's a very long read but Vanity Fair is the best novel ever. Honestly

[Arcadia]

Have got free audio download of day of the triffids online and am loving it! Will try and do a jane Austen or similar after.

[Arcadia]

Just finished day of the triffids - really loved it!

[trufflepiggy]

I enjoyed:

Jane Eyre
Gulliver's Travels
Jamaica Inn
Rebecca
Mary Barton
Hard Times
Great Expectations
Of Mice and Men
1984
Animal Farm
To Kill a Mockingbird
Wuthering Heights
The Bell Jar

I've read loads of classics because I studied English Lit at uni but those are the ones that I raced through out of enjoyment. Some are obviously modern classics

[trufflepiggy]

I've read every single Virginia Woolf novel and hated them all.

Ditto Jane Austen don't shoot me

[OrsonWellsHat]

My favourites are:
Bleak House
Rebecca
A Room with a View
I Capture the Castle
Our Mutual Friend
Great Expectations
Howard's End
Tennant of Wildfell Hall
Jane Eyre
The Old Curiosity Shop

[OrsonWellsHat]

Also all Jane Austin, particularly Sense and Sensibility

[BuntyFigglesworthSpiffington]

Does Daphne Du Maurier qualify as a classic? I know they're classic thrillers, classic 20th century, but actual classics? I'm not sure about that.

[Iwasjustabouttosaythat]

Some great suggestions here. Makes me want to suggest a MN classics book club. Alas I have newborn twins and no time to read anything (except MN).

Triffids
P&P/any Austen except Mansfield Park - Lady Susan is great and tiny!
Cranford
Wuthering heights
War of the worlds
Dracula
Candide

[ThumbWitchesAbroad]

I'd offer:
Pride and Prejudice as being the only Jane Austen that I really enjoy re-reading
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - although is that a classic or a modern?
Dracula (Bram Stoker)
The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)
The Scarlett Pimpernel (Emmuska Orczy)
P.G. Wodehouse - any of the Bertie Wooster ones
Agatha Christie - most of them are good
Georgette Heyer - she might be a bit "lightweight" in terms of the romances, but some are better than others. An Infamous Army, for e.g., has details of the Battle of Waterloo and has been used in Sandhurst as being one of the best (and most readable) descriptions of that battle.
Also, her murder mystery books are good - but not Penhallow. Penhallow sucks. It appears she wrote it as a contract-breaker - it really shows.
Animal Farm is short, good but fuck me it's distressing!

I had a look at Goodreads recommendations for "easy read" classics and was quite amused at some of the suggestions - Moby Dick?! No.
Also, Catch 22 - I had to keep that in the loo and read it over several months, because it just didn't hold me. It's not a bad book though!

John Wyndham's books are good, easy to read.

[Iwasjustabouttosaythat]

Actually good point, any F Scott Fitzgerald.

[Sierra259]

I would also recommend Dracula, Jamaica Inn and Rebecca. The 39 Steps is good and quite short and I also like The Three Musketeers.

[PhoenixRisingSlowly]

I really liked Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, it's not particularly short but it is gripping and stays with you for a long time.

And I don't know if Daphne Du Maurier counts as classics either but Rebecca is very good as is The House on the Strand.

[minipie]

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - really good, simple and effective and short

Science fiction if you're interested - Asimov books are good, usually pretty short and not hard work. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and his wonderful short stories (eg Martian Chronicles).

Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - very easy to read

Little Women series
What Katy Did series
Anne of Green Gables series

[InsaneDame]

to Little Women. Read it for leisure and hated it, then had to study it a few years later and hated it even more!!

[minipie]

Yeah, they're a bit sanctimonious for my taste, but can be enjoyable if you ignore the preaching.

[InsaneDame]

What Katy Did and Anne of Green Gables on the other hand - brilliant recommendations!

[maamalady]

Just catching up with this thread, so many good suggestions! Absolutely agree with Flowers For Algernon, that is superb - such clever writing as well as engrossing storyline.

So pleased you liked Triffids, OP! You will never look at a plant the same way again

[user1473491125]

Wind in the willows - Kenneth Grahame
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

[OrlandaFuriosa]

Well, not your namesake, op. One if- the first?- English novels and interminable. Beats Moby Dick.

Agree nearly all of the above. I think David Copperfield more readable than Hard Times and better than, and more readable than Bleak House, though I prefer the latter.

For bizarre,
Confessions of a justified sinner. Readable

Wyndhams the Chrysalids is brilliant.

What about some poetry ? Really good for fraught mums too as can read one short poem and then change a nappy.

If single author,
Carol Ann Duffy, the World's wife. I defy anyone to read the one about Icarus and not laugh, though the second hand bed is v moving,
Wendy Cope, making cocoa fir Kingsley Amis
Larkin, the Whitsun Weddings
Simon Armitage, Gawain and the green knight
Heaney Beowulf
Hughes crow or the hawk in the rain.

If a collection

Poems on the underground, all short, brill collection
Set the echoes flying, a good anthology of classic poetry
Other men's verse, the classic anthology

All available through Abe.

[Shorteralls]

The sherlock Holmes's are a good read.

Our Man Havana, Graham Greene.