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.

Oldie but goodie - Crime and Punishment.
New ( ish ) - The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

One of those lovely threads you actually HAVE to post on before reading everyone else's - apart from the OP, which I couldn't avert my eyes off.

James Baldwin, Go Tell It On The Mountain - for my classic one.

Helen Simpson, any of her collections of short stories (Hey Yeah Right Get a Life is looking at me) - for my not-yet classic one.

Now, having looked at everyone else's, how about Madame Bovary (yes I know other people have proposed it) plus (here's the shtick) then Posy Simmonds's first marvellous classic re-imagining Gemma Bovery

Or, what about doing non-fiction? Let's say Gibbon, Decline & Fall ... followed by, well, I was going to say The Feminine Mystique, but they have notalot in common. Anyone suggest anything that matchingly pairs with D&F?

Classic - On The Beach, always makes me incredibly sad when I read it.

Recent - Through A Glass Darkly by Jostein Gaarder, written simply but with such hidden depths and very comforting in a strange way. It did make me cry but I won't spoil it by saying what or why.

Nicholas Nickleby
The Book Thief

Modern - The Rotters Club
Classic - Cranford

Message withdrawn

Alan Bennett, the Uncommon Reader - beautifully written, as always, lots of suggestions for other stuff to read, and a fascinating picture of how reading fiction changes you. (And quite funny as he's rumoured to have turned down a knighthood.)

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte - my favourite book.

Or, if you want to explore what literature means, Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road.

Modern: The Gate by Francois Bizot. Beautiful, intelligently written, infinitely sad.

Classic: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

Rebecca
Life of Pi

of human bondage - somerset maughm

Nectar in a sieve - karmala markandala

OK am trying to go for two that haven't yet been suggested
Classic (well its not very modern) The Member of the Wedding Carson McCullers
Modern Vernon God Little
Theme in common I think

So many good suggestions so far.

All mine are already up there

classic:
Jane Eyre
To kill a mockingbird
or the woman in white

modern:
A prayer for Owen Meany
the red tent
the time travellers wife

To Kill A Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye

The Secret History

classic: of mice and men
modern: restraint of beasts

mine match!

classic: of mice and men
modern: restraint of beasts

mine match!

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The God of Small Things - Arundhati (sp?) Roy

Enjoy

Just flicked through the rest of this ... didn't consciously make mine correlate as hadn't read it all...but they do (both written from POV of children)

For a good read:
Classic: Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn - except that in the book he doesn't say 'my dear')
Modern: The Shipping News - Annie Proulx or One Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley

lovin this thread.
Middlemarch
The Corrections (Jonathan Safran Foer).

I love SO many of these

the counte of monte christo alexander dumas
magician raymond e fiest..

Jane Eyre
1984 or Animal Farm