OK - I want new things to read. Please can you list two books- one classic, one modern- you think everyone shoulf read.

[seeker]

I'll start. Pride and Prejudice and The Kite Runner, by Khalid Hosseini.

the red tent, (does that count as classic? )

call the midwife

oooh hard.

I have lots of classics. erm
probably either "1984" or "if this is a man"

i don't read a huge amount of modern stuff but will have a think on it!

Wilkie Collins 'The Woman in White'

The Time Travellers wife

Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

American Pastoral - Philip Roth

Jane Eyre

The Secret History

ooh and Papillon - Henri something

Charriere?

Anna Karenina
Birdsong

DH's suggestions:

The Brothers Karamazov

Fever Pitch

The Catcher In The Rye
Rachel's Holiday

My fave classic and not so classic

Middlemarch, and

Birds of America (short stories by Lorrie Moore). American Pastoral great too, but Lorrie Moore is way more entertaining and I feel redeemed by Sebastian Faulks recently including it in his "20 immortal books I own" or some such list...There is a collected short stories out too. I am going to start reading it again as soon as I've finished it - and I never do that.

1984 or catch22 (wasn't sure if that was a classic)

Good Omens, my favourite book ever ever, or The Handmaid's Tale.

I'm obviously not very good at the one thing lol.

Agree with 1984.

Was about to say Kurt Vonnegut "Slaughterhouse 5" but now thinking Margaret Atwood "Handmaid's Tale" after reading Kittyfloss's reply.

Undecided!!

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

The Republic of Love - Carol Shields

(or White Teeth - Zadie Smith )

Rebecca
Time Travellers Wife

Vanity Fair and The Crimson Petal and the White (am obsessed by this book)

Brideshead Revisited, evelyn waugh
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, haruki marakumi

Bleak House
WOman on the edge of time - Marge Piercy

Madge, not Marge

Or Vida- Marge Piercy.

We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Hmmm. Classic? Lady Chatterley' Lover.

The Periodic Table/If This Is a Man - Primo Levi
The Corrections - Jonathan Frantzen

The weather in the streets (Rosamund Lehman)
Wise Children (Angela Carter)

Oh no, actually, I'd say my 'classic' should be Bram Stoker's Dracula.

ooh but you have to read Invitation to the Waltz first mi. love both of them.

how about:

Greek Myths, robert graves
Cazalet Chronicle, elizabeth jane howard