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.

[Thefearlessfreak]

Off the top of my shelf/head and a bit random

Madame Bovary

& Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris very funny

[Litchick]

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

[Bink]

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.

[Bink]

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?

[TwoIfByScream]

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.

[Saturn74]

Nicholas Nickleby
The Book Thief

[tigermoth]

Modern - The Rotters Club
Classic - Cranford

[christiana]

Message withdrawn

[edam]

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.

[edam]

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

[SalLikesCoffee]

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

Classic: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

[RunningGirl]

Rebecca
Life of Pi

[kalo12]

of human bondage - somerset maughm

Nectar in a sieve - karmala markandala

[soyabean]

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.

[Troutpout]

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

[naturalblonde]

To Kill A Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye

The Secret History

[BBBeeast]

classic: of mice and men
modern: restraint of beasts

mine match!

[BBBeeast]

classic: of mice and men
modern: restraint of beasts

mine match!

[rachels103]

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

Enjoy

[rachels103]

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)

[SweetPea99]

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

[phantasmagoria]

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

I love SO many of these

[ellenmary]

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

[Jux]

Jane Eyre
1984 or Animal Farm