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 Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (classic)

Beautiful Lies - Lisa Unger (I am obsessed with this book at the moment)

I Capture The Castle by Dodi Smith (well, it's a classic for me!)
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Seeker - I agree entirely with your choices in the OP.

Can I also add a non-fction? "Paula" by Isobel Allende.

Pah, was going to say Woman in White & Case Histories but ahundredtimes beat me to it.

So it's:
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson

Only theme is they both made me cry

three men in a boat
birdsong

Portrait of a Lady (Henry James) or Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

or Cider House Rules...

Staying On by Paul Scott

Notes from an Exhibition

The Aeneid.
Vurt by Jeff Noon

Classic: Return of the Native
Modern: The Line of Beauty (or Birdsong. Both are magnificent).

What's wrong with Brideshead Revisited?

Classic - Middlemarch. It's just so, so... someone help me describe Middlemarch. I love it.

Modern, my modern probably is a classic, Brideshead Revisited or The Great Gatsby.

Really modern, no one's read it, Lorelli's Secret. I lent it to someone and never got it back. Need to get another copy. Brilliant book.

Notes on a Scandal? Similar to Middlemarch in a funny way.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - M Pirsig (I think thats his name) - Classic.

Modern - you probably have them all listed already

OK, that woud probably be, by everyone elses definition 'modern' not 'classic'

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

Behind the scenes at the museum - Kate Atkinson

Hmm, today I think I'll choose:

The Fountain Overflows trilogy by Rebecca West

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Glad others rate Middlemarch - not sure what adjective is georgimama - delectable, maybe? A treat. A box of chocolates without the calories or orange cremes. One of those books you don't want to end, despite its impressive length.

Have to add a sneaky extra vote for Decline and Fall while I'm at it.

So what are you reading first seeker?

Well, others have put Primo Levi under 'classic', but I'm going for

Classic: Dante's Inferno (yeah, yeah, I know I'm sooooooo predictable )

and

Modern: Primo Levi's If This is a Man (which references Dante directly in the 'canto of Ulysses' chapter)

modern: book thief/birdsong
classic: the magus

There are a lot of contenders for my modern one already mentioned, so I'll go for The Corrections by J Franzen which I read recently. It is about a hideously disfunctional family and is a love or hate it book. It certainly kept me going!

Classic...more difficult. Just bought The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge which I read as a child and loved. Will I still love it? We'll see! I really enjoyed a lot of French stuff (dates from my A level) Dangerous Liaisons - Choderlos de Laclos. Where do you stop??

Gah mumofmanyboys you just pipped my classic suggestion - I was popping on here being all smug, thinking 'no one will have suggested Les Liaisons Dangereuse yet'. Absolutely brilliant book, repays a second and third reading too.

Modern: The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty. It falls apart a bit towards the end but is a fantastically sustained black comedy up until then. His second novel, Tuff, is also excellent in a completely different way - dreamy and sad and , well, tough.

BTW I love The Little White Horse too.

The Magus by John Fowles
or
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

What constitutes a classic? ie is anything pre 1900 classic and everything else modern?

what about modern classics?

and thinking about it, there are dozens more I could list

Hangover Square

The Grass Arena

Madame Bovary

The Great Gatsby (but, if that's too classic to be modern, then Oryx and Crake)

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse

Religion and the Decline of Magic - Keith Thomas

and The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley