Classic lit

[Hitchington]

Slaughterhouse 5 - kurt vonnegut
The Wasp Factory - iain banks
The Illuminatus! - robert anton wilson

 

[Yellow Fang]

I've come to the conclusion that there are not so much books I want to read as books I want to have read. Still I think my near term reading list will include:

Wuthering Heights,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
Catcher in the Rye,
Lord of the Flies,
Catch-22.

Then I can tick off most the books all the intellektchuls refer to on Radio 4. I won't bother with On the Road. Longer term my reading list will include:

Emma, which would conclude 19th century British romantic fiction
Far from the Madding Crowd, one of Thomas Hardy's less miserable offerings
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Kim by Rudyard Kipling (as The Jungle Book was so good)
Something by Elizabeth Gaskell
Maybe something by Virginia Woolf
Probably For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
Maybe Middlemarch by George Elliot

Also books on my bookshelf waiting to be read:

New Grub Street by George Gissing
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Then I want to finish off George Orwell by reading:

Keep the Aspidistra Flying
The Clergyman's Daughter

Then I want to read some more Dickens:

David Copperfield
A Christmas Carol
A Tale of Two Cities
The Pickwick Papers
Oliver Twist
Another, possibly Barnarby Rudge

Then I'll get around to reading some foreign stuff:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Anna Karinina by Leo Tolstoy

 

[Salad Dodger]

Try a John Steinbeck novel: The Grapes of Wrath
or Of Mice and Men

 

[ASC1951]

I've come to the conclusion that there are not so much books I want to read as books I want to have read.

Classics they may be, but that is a gloomy list! I would settle for Kim and Catch 22 and leave the rest on the shelf.

I'm afraid I don't share people's reverence for Dickens. If you want social realism, try Emile Zola, especially Germinal or L'Assommoir - make Dickens look like the theatrical sentimental lightweight he was.

 

[swee'pea99]

Classics they may be, but that is a gloomy list! I would settle for Kim and Catch 22 and leave the rest on the shelf.

I'm afraid I don't share people's reverence for Dickens. If you want social realism, try Emile Zola, especially Germinal or L'Assommoir - make Dickens look like the theatrical sentimental lightweight he was.

Have to say I tend to agree. In particular, I'd personally avoid the likes of Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf like the plague. Why not leaven the load with a bit of, say, Jane Austen. She's easily written off as a kind of highbrow Merchant Ivory, but there are fewer defter exponents of le mot juste in the language (forgive me if that sounds a bit pompous, but I don't know any other way to put it), she writes truly profoundly about the human condition with a universality that enables seamless interpretations to anywhere from Bollywood to Beverly Hills, and she is genuinely laugh out loud funny - no mean achievement given a 300 year cultural gulf. Try Pride & Prejudice. If you don't enjoy it, check for a pulse.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I didn't think much of Dickens at school, but I thought I'd give him another chance on his 200th anniversary. I was surprised to find Great Expectations not as turgid as I remembered, and very moving. Sure, he's not very realistic. I have read quite a number of 'classic' books which left me totally unmoved.

 

[tyred]

After having been forced to wade through the Mayor of Casterbridge at school and having forced myself to endure Tess of the d'Urbervilles (sp?) some time later as I was always told it was very good, I have come to the conclusion that Thomas Hardy is the most depressing man to have ever walked the earth.

EDIT: Oh, and I think everyone should read Sherlock Holmes and the Professor Challenger series by Arthur Conan-Doyle

 

[swee'pea99]

After having been forced to wade through the Mayor of Casterbridge at school and having forced myself to endure Tess of the d'Urbervilles (sp?) some time later as I was always told it was very good, I have come to the conclusion that Thomas Hardy is the most depressing man to have ever walked the earth.

EDIT: Oh, and I think everyone should read Sherlock Holmes and the Professor Challenger series by Arthur Conan-Doyle

Try Jude the Obscure. Now that really is a laff riot.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Have to say I tend to agree. In particular, I'd personally avoid the likes of Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf like the plague. Why not leaven the load with a bit of, say, Jane Austen. She's easily written off as a kind of highbrow Merchant Ivory, but there are fewer defter exponents of le mot juste in the language (forgive me if that sounds a bit pompous, but I don't know any other way to put it), she writes truly profoundly about the human condition with a universality that enables seamless interpretations to anywhere from Bollywood to Beverly Hills, and she is genuinely laugh out loud funny - no mean achievement given a 300 year cultural gulf. Try Pride & Prejudice. If you don't enjoy it, check for a pulse.

Emma is on the list. I have already read Pride & Prejudice. I agree it was entertaining, and not at all turgid, which was how I remembered classic literature from school. It was as readable as a Nick Hornby. I cannot say I am really into romantic fiction though. Maybe I'll avoid Virginia Woolf. Thomas Harding's Far from the Madding Crowd is supposedly one of his happier novels. I liked the way he wrote about rural working life and his portrayal of characters seems so real. I just don't like what he does to some of his protagonists.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Hmmm, may have to add an Elizabeth Gaskell to the list. She wrote 19th century industrial novels. That does sound interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_and_South_(1855_novel)

 

[Ron-da-Valli]

All by Dumas: great adventures for us kids at heart.

The Three Musketeers is my favourite book by far! A recently discovered Dumas novel, " The Last Cavalier" is also a good read.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

The Three Musketeers is my favourite book by far! A recently discovered Dumas novel, " The Last Cavalier" is also a good read.

Never read that one: I'm on it, free download I think royalties are well expired!

 

[Ron-da-Valli]

Never read that one: I'm on it, free download I think royalties are well expired!

Apparently a researcher found it the Paris archives. I found a copy in Boundary Mill Shop in Colne near Burnley.

 

[Ron-da-Valli]

If you fancy some foreign classic lit, do give Don Quixote a go. It's a wonderful mix of satire, farce and philosophy.

I tried to read Don Quixote twice and failed after about 100 pages. Third time lucky!!

 

[Ron-da-Valli]

As for Dickens, the chav phrase, "jog on" was penned by the man himself!!
I think it was in "The Pickwick Papers" and read something like, " They came out of the inn and boarded the poste chaise and they jogged on."