Classics

[mummycan]

Hello all of you lovely ladies I wonder if you can help me?

Growing up I used to read loads (still do try but less time with DD and being SAHM as have no commute)but then and now I would generally read relatively modern books.

Have recently started to read Jude the Obscure for Book Group and am absolutely loving it.

So my question is which of the classics would you recommend that I read? I must admit I do struggle with the language in some classics (I'm not stupid but it takes me a ling time to decipher "olde" english)and so please take pity on me and recommend the ones that are "easier" to read to start with. Will happily try something more challenging once I get going.

That ladies, if you choose to accept it, is your challenge .

TIA

MC
x

Wuthering Heights
Jane Austen
Villette
Vanity Fair

Oooh, there's a challenge.

My first recommendation - for the simple reason I loved it so much - would be Middlemarch by George Eliot. When I lived in London, a really good book might make me miss my tube stop. Middlemarch once made me miss five. But it's a bit of a doorstop, so perhaps might not be a good place to start. No probs with the language though.

Have you read Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre? Also pretty much any Mrs Gaskell - North and South is particularly good.

emile zola is great, l'asommoir (sp?), germinal or nana.

tess of the d'urbervilles for more t hardy

camus 'l'etranger'

Hard Times, if you want to do Dickens. One of his shortest and best.

Moll Flanders.
Wuthering Heights.
Any Jane Austen but especially Emma
Jane Eyre.

The rainbow is my favourite Thomas Hardy.
Of Mice and Men is another fav 'classic'.
And Catcher in the Rye.
You could wait until your lo s are doing gcse lit and read them all then!

Wow ladies - thanks so much for your quick replies.

I have to go off and do some work now but will check tomorrow evening and make some additions to my Amazon basket.

Please continue to add suggestions - all posts gratefully received.

Middlemarch
Jane Eyre
Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice
Madame Bovary
Anna Karenina

The Rainbow is by DH Lawrence.

Thomas Hardy v good: Tess of the d'Urbervilles is fantastic. Also love Jude the Obscure - the first book to make me sob my heart out.

Also you can't beat Jane Austen for her social commentary.

Zola Therese Raquin
Nabakov, but not lolita, go for the real life of sebastian knight
katherine mansfield short stories
fitzgerald the great gatsby

I think great expectations by dicken is good. Jane eyre is a good one too.

oh and Anthony Trollope - but don't think you have to read a whole load of novels about life on a cathedral green. Either start on the Palliser novels with Can You Forgive Her? or go the whole hog and read The Way We Live Now, which is just great. But be warned, they are an addictive and easy read....

Durrr so it is chipbutty. What a fool...
And they let me teach children.......
Thanks for that!

Thank you so much ladies for all your fantastic recommendations - will not print this thread for future reference.

MC
x

I do of course mean that I WILL print this thread out - and reboot my brain!

Jane Austen - Emma
Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Troloppe - The Warden (1st in Barchester series)

Bleak House or Nicholas Nickleby. Actually Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby. I disagree about Hard Times - I think it's one of his worst.

Anything by Mark Twain. But especially Huckleberry Finn.

Middlemarch

Zola's good. Balzac's better, imo. Try Cousin Bette or Lost Illusions.

Anna Karenina

I know this is near heresy, but I just can't get into Jane Austen. There, I've said it.

Middlemarch
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
North & South
Wives & Daughters

Hi,
The ones that spring to mind for me:
Trollope - He knew he was right
Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone
George Elliot - The Mill on the Floss (made me boo my eyes out at the end)
Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind. That is really long, but absolutely brilliant, and infinately better than the film.

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Daphne Du Maurier

Wuthering Heights
Poe's short stories are good
A Room with a View