Classics I should read

[Larymarylary]

Now I’m retired I want to read some classic literature.

I’ve just read the first chapter of Animal Farm.

Please give me some suggestions of books I should read. Thanks.

Elizabeth Gaskell - I started with North and South.

Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd

Graham Greene - Travels with my Aunt

Betty Smith - A Tree Grown in Brooklyn and Joy in the Morning

Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey. I read it at 14/5 and felt that Catherine Morland was just like me. Read it again a few years ago and found it even funnier now I'm no longer a teenager with the tendency to become obsessed with a particular book/show.

My husband, who reads a lot but isn't particularly into classics etc - read the Count of Monte Cristo recently and was completely gripped by it. Says it's a great read. I've got it marked for a long plane journey.

These are the classics I genuinely thoroughly enjoyed (we all know some have bits that are like chewing wood):

Persuasion.
Pride and Prejudice.
Northanger Abbey.
The Woman in White.
Candide.
A Christmas Carol.
Great Expectations.
Rebecca.
Frankenstein.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Jane Eyre.
Wuthering Heights.

War of the worlds
Pickwick papers
Keep the Aspidistra flying (much better Orwell than 1984 in my view)
Lady Audleys secret
Crime and punishment
Bleak House
Sons and Lovers
War and Peace
A day in the life of Ivan Ivanovich
Moonstone

Read just one by Jane Austin if you have to read any at all
Same plot in all the books
Vacuous girls talking about who fancies who like 14 year olds at school in every book

Add, possibly as light relief but still classics:

The Pursuit of Love, and Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
My Family and Other Animals - Durrell
Also, Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford as a counterpoint to Nancy's books.

The Parasites is my favourite Du Maurier book with My Cousin Rachel a close second
P&P - a given. The spin off “the other Bennett sister” is being made. Into a miniseries atm. I enjoyed the book.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
I like the Russians - war and Peace, crime and punishment, the brothers karamazov, Bulgakov , Nabokov
I read Dracula for the first time recently and I was under the mistaken impression it was naff beyond imagining but I really liked it

There was a series of modern Shakespeare retelling recently.

Hagseed - The tempest - Margaret Atwood
The gap of time - a winters tale - Jeanette winterson
Shylock is my name - the merchant of Venice - Howard Jacobson
New Boy - othello - Tracey chevalier
Dunbar - king Lear - Edward St Aubyn

Not sure what “counts” as a classic tbh. The Secret History? 100 Splendid Suns, Wise Children? Never Let Me Go?

Hardy - The Woodlanders and the Mayor of Casterbridge. I read The Return of the Native for A level so it's not one of my favorites

Although it's a children's book the Wind in the Willows which I still haven't re-read this year

Don't think the following have been mentioned
To Kill a Mocking Bird
The Three Muskateers
Jamaica Inn

Rory Gilmore of the Gilmore Girls has many lists which you can google. Maybe not all are classics.

South Riding is really good, well worth a read. Written and set in the 1930s.

Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard.

Agree with the pp, Keep the Aspidistra Flying is good, distinctly lighthearted compared with 1984. ( Have also got The Road to Wigan Pier on my tbr pile but I think its going to be depressing..)

Madame Bovary
Crime and Punishment

Women writers tend to be under represented on “best of” lists, despite many enduring classics.

I started collecting “green” Viragos when younger and have found many great writers I would have otherwise missed, often writing about aspects of life overlooked by male writers of their day. Many of them are still available but their modern classics catalog can be found here:
https://www.virago.co.uk/imprint/lbbg/virago/page/virago-modern-classic-collection/

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

Thanks, yes I really like Dickens.

I reread Great Expectations recently and think all adults should read it!

Also;
Anna Karenina
Tess of.the d'Urbervilles
A room with a view
Anything by Kasio Ishiguru
Don Quixote
Count of Monte Cristo
War and peace if you like battles

Not sure why Steinbeck is problematic, I adore all of his books and highly recommend.

The Great Gatsby is perfection
Lord of the Flies

Middlemarch - and there's a very good TV adaptation on iPlayer at the moment.

They were sisters - Dorothy Whipple.
Little known but should be on all the lists
Stoner
Any Marilynne Robinson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The latter three are American

I'd include The Great Gatsby

HE Bates, especially The Sleepless Moon which is one of the most gorgeously written books in the English language in my opinion.

Not many votes for Anthony Trollope so far. The Warden has an investigative journalist. The 'political' novels, The Pallisers series are very amusing. They also feature women being pursued for their money. Anther that is deja vu all over again is "The Way We Live Now".
John Le Carre is a worth considering as a classic writer.
Patricia Finney aka. PF Gregory is a very accessible historical novelist. The Sir Robert Carey (a real cousin of Q E 1) series. These are set on the Sottish Border. Well researched, she is a graduate Historian.
Light Relief you could try PG Wodehouse.

@Larymarylary a https://persephonebooks.co.uk/

subscription would be a good thing to have on your Christmas list. Brilliant collection of (mostly) novels by 20th century writers who were sometimes less lauded because they were women. Beautiful artefacts, too.

David Copperfield
Great Expectations
Nicholas Nickleby
A Christmas Carol - obviously just the right time of year for it

Rebecca
Woman in White
Howard's End

All of Jane Austen

George Bernard Shaw
Checkov

All really entertaining reads in my opinion.

I don’t quarrel with the choices people have mentioned, but the thread as a whole presents an astonishingly narrow view of what counts as classic literature.

How about a few Irish classics:

Oscar Wilde - my favourite is probably importance of Being Earnest
Samuel Beckett e.g. Waiting for Godot
James Joyce e.g. Dubliners
Edna O'Brien
Bram Stoker
JM Synge

@MsOtisReflects I was wondering what exactly is a classic.

@hippospot no idea why I didn't put Stoner, one of my top 10 of all time that.

My brilliant friend by Elena ferrante, a modern classic, I think it won book if the century it's the first in a series of 5 although it could definitely be read alone. Bonjour Tristesse by François Sagan, it takes me back to summers when I was a teenager. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, it's really sad and timeless I nominated it for my families book club group abd everyone gave it 5/5, I think it's a text they use in American High schools.