Could you recommend some classic literature to help me get back into reading classics?

[SweetSakura]

I seem to have swung from reading almost nothing but classics as a teen (because my parents house was stuffed full of them) to now reading nothing but contemporary literature.

I'd like to mix it up a bit but can't decide where to start!

I've read pretty much all Jane Austen/Brontes/Dickens/George Eliot/Thomas Hardy I think, although I guess it was a long time ago and I could re read them!

Tom Jones
Frankenstein
Dracula

Jules Verne? I found Round the world in 80 days an easy, interesting read

Madame Bovary?

I agree with Dracula (haven't read the others) but I found the first bit (until Whitby) dragged a bit. Definitely read it, but be prepared to keep going - completely worth it

Anthony Trollope
Elizabeth Gaskell

The Count of Monte Cristo is surprisingly gripping.

I'm currently reading Howard's End and finding it very interesting. Also would recommend some slightly less well known authors like Elizabeth Gaskell. Or you could go for older classics like Fielding or Defoe? Or Vanity Fair is an excellent read.

Easy. Trollope

I re-read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Jane Eyre recently, having first read them 20 odd years ago, and loved them. Otherwise, maybe Henry James, Balzac or Tolstoy, or go a bit further back with Virgil and Homer - Odyssey particularly is very readable.

Anna Karenina
War and Peace
Brideshead Revisited
Tom Jones is unputdownable
Moll Flanders
Old Goriot

I’d second Vanity Fair too.

It sounds like you like nineteenth-century literature in particular. I suggest you read Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone or The woman in White. Or Mary Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret. A bit of Victorian sensational literature is definitely the way to go (Victorian literature professor here, so I am a bit biased, but, seriously, check them out!)

Great suggestions to which I must add Emile Zola.

Les Mis is amazing, when I finished it I literally thought I needed to pay some a large wad of cash for the privilege.

I often read books with my young adult dds right now we are reading Dorian Grey by Wilde. They are at Uni and they like to a have a mini book club for the 3 of us to keep in touch.

Oh I loved Wilkie Collins! More along those lines would be great.

Am not set on 19th century literature I think it's just we had a lot of it at home. Possibly just because my mum was scandalised by anything more modern

I loved Candide, Madame Bovary, Tolstoy, Vanity fair. Hated Dostoyevsky!

Trollope is a good suggestion- don't think I've read any

Ah yes Dorian Grey is fabulous.

Elizabeth Gaskell - good idea don't think I have read any of hers!

Ooh Zola and Les Mis are good ideas, I'm trying to alternate reading in french and English this year so they can go on that list

Trollope is great. Bit of an acquired taste, but quintessentially Victorian. Try Orley Farm or Framley Parsonage

For American literature I love Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zola Neale Hurston

Also The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner

I love the idea of your book club @Tradeup ... I am currently reading my daughter's new favourite book so we can chat about it 😀 (she's 9 though so it's a rather lovely silly book called Stitch Head!)

My eldest DD (22) suggested it, they have chosen the books so far, I think we began during Covid . I have got 3 copies of Hags waiting in the wings if they ask me for a suggestion. When everyone gets really busy it can take a while, we get through them quicker in the summer.

Pride and prejudice - always makes me giggle and has made a happy retreat in tough times.

Dracula - I feel sorry for Dracula and his anger in grief which turned him into a monster.

Not sure classed as a classic but Kane and Abel - I found brutal yet outstanding.

The Sound and the Fury is true Southern Gothic, hard to believe it was published in 1929.

I thought The Woman In White was one of the most boring books I've ever read. Jane Eyre is brilliant.

Dumas is always where I retreat to