What classical books do you love?

[AtroposHeart]

Jane Erye

1984

Animal Farm

Wuthering heights

Catch 22

Count of Monte Cristo

The Jungle

To kill a mocking bird

Slaughterhouse-five

[Witsec7]

To Kill a Mockingbird

Grapes of Wrath

Word Virus

Golden Bough

A Room of One's Own

Ulysses by Joyce

The Jungle

It Can't Happen Here

Antic Hay

[Glass Cowcatcher]

The Metamorphosis

Canturbury Tales

Bless Me Ultima

[Just_Jane]

Jane Erye

Dracula

The House of the Seven Gables

right now I am reading Great Expectations. I've never read it before.

[ElphabaGalinda]

What makes something considered a classical book? Just being old? I'm not sure how that's classified.

[Aerial312]

To Kill a Mockingbird

Pride & Prejudice

The Catcher in the Rye

Much Ado About Nothing

The Great Gatsby

My Antonia

Lord of the Flies

[Arete]

The Sun Also Rises

The Iliad

The Catcher in the Rye

The Grapes of Wrath

The Brothers Karamazov

The Life and Times of Alexios Zorbas (Zorba the Greek)

The Inferno

The Master and Margarita

1984

[CanadianHippie]

To Kill a Mockingbird

All Quiet On The Western Front

Anything by Shakespeare

Black Beauty

Anything featuring Sherlock Holmes

[ADoyle90815]

To Kill a Mockingbird

1984

Jane Eyre

Anything by Shakespeare

Sherlock Holmes stories

The Catcher in the Rye

The Iliad

Animal Farm

[terranova]

What makes something considered a classical book? Just being old? I'm not sure how that's classified.

I work in a bookshop and for shelving purposes, we loosely classify anything pre 1900 as "classics" and any post 1900 goes into the regular fiction section. This is purely our system and mainly for space reasons more than anything. So Austin etc are "classics" and the likes of To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye are modern classics, but shelved with the rest of the fiction.

[freejoytoo]

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Middlemarch

A Room of One's Own

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Catcher in the Rye

North and South

Mary Barton

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

No Name

Rebecca

The Power and the Glory

Brighton Rock

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Probably more!

Experiencdd,what it is you like about Ulysses? I had to read that a few times for my degree and whilst I thought it was a good piece of literature I was very relieved to put it down!

[delilahdog11]

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Middlemarch

A Room of One's Own

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Catcher in the Rye

North and South

Mary Barton

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

No Name

Rebecca

The Power and the Glory

Brighton Rock

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Probably more!

Experiencdd,what it is you like about Ulysses? I had to read that a few times for my degree and whilst I thought it was a good piece of literature I was very relieved to put it down!

I have only been able to read parts of Ulysses. Many an English professor and my 10th & 12th grade teachers said that very few people have or are able to read the entire thing. Not aure how accurate their statements were and are. I do know there is a celebration in Irleland were they either read the entire novel out loud or just the last chapter. I remember hearing the last chapter read out loud and I feel in love with the book. Not so much when I tried to read it.

Love, love: Middlemarch, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Room of One's Own...as well as Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Yellow Wallpaper, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, Pride & Prejudice, A Brave New World, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, My Antonia, Ethan Frome, The Turn of the Screw, Tom Jones, The Color Purple, Song of Solomon and many others. Equal to the ones I don't like.

[Terrie]

I have only been able to read parts of Ulysses. Many an English professor and my 10th & 12th grade teachers said that very few people have or are able to read the entire thing. Not aure how accurate their statements were and are. I do know there is a celebration in Irleland were they either read the entire novel out loud or just the last chapter. I remember hearing the last chapter read out loud and I feel in love with the book. Not so much when I tried to read it.

Some books seem to work better as audio books. I love Jane Austen, but I have to listen to her books. Every time I try to read them, I make it about 10 minutes before I'm distracted.

I love I, Claudius by Robert Graves. My copy fell apart after getting left in the car (the glue went brittle in the heat), so I need to get a new one.

[Funky Chicken]

If you like I, Claudius, there is an outstanding TV series, starring Derek Jacobi when he was younger. John Hurt plays the creepiest Caligula ever.

[Witsec7]

...

Experiencdd,what it is you like about Ulysses? I had to read that a few times for my degree and whilst I thought it was a good piece of literature I was very relieved to put it down!

I think it's like abstract jazz or listening to a John Cage composition,one has to learn how to read it. I first read it in '69 and didn't get anywhere with understanding it. A decade or so I read some Gertrude Stein and was listening to more abstract music, and tried it again. It took almost 6 months, and lots of margin notes, but I enjoyed that voyage. By 1991 I could listen to Coltrane's Ascension all the way through and 'got' it. I knew it was time for me to give Ulysses another try. I liked his metaphor, I liked it because it was visceral and I didn't need to consume it. I also took the time to read it out loud to myself, to phrase his writing and take on the voice of Bloom. Modernist writing isn't for everyone, I think it takes a real presence for someone to plow through Ulysses. Most folks to give up on it after their first attempt.

[freejoytoo]

I've read it three times but didn't try to make sense of the plot! I had to read it because I had to write 7000 words about it for m degree. I don't think I could got through it with any other tutor - my one was so passionate about it.

[Sweetpea1]

North & South

Anything by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre (If you like this, try The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde)

Anything by Ray Bradbury (if that counts as classic.)

I'll think of more later.

edited because spelling and grammar skills are rusty at best (and because I'm somewhat brain dead today.)

[latraviata]

Dante, La vita nova

Honoré de Balzac, Grandeur et décadence de César Birotteau/ Eugénie Grandet

Albert Camus, L'Étranger

Mark Twain, The adventures of Tom Sawyer

James Arthur Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (not a book, but quite long)

Goethe, Torquato Tasso

Homeros, Odyssee/Ilias

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear (actually everything)

[Terrie]

I should add that I love most Shakespeare, but hate how most people interpert Romero and Juliet. It's a play about being young, "in love" and stupid. Seriously, they could have avoided massive amounts of trouble if anyone had sat down to think things through.

[Conuly]

What makes something considered a classical book? Just being old? I'm not sure how that's classified.

An excellent question. Maybe we should insist it had to be written in Latin or Ancient Greek to qualify...!

More seriously, though, it tends to mean something like "Books we assume nearly everybody has heard of and that most educated people*, even if they haven't read it, can loosely identify the plot or some quotes from it".

Like, I've never read Moby Dick, but I know it's about crazy Ahab chasing a whale. Lots of people have never read A Tale of Two Cities, but they can still all recite the opening sentence.

* Some books are only "classics" in certain subgroups of the population. If that's the case, for "educated people" substitute "member of this subgroup".

Seriously, they could have avoided massive amounts of trouble if anyone had sat down to think things through.

Yeah, but what would have been the point of that? The play would have been, like, twenty minutes long!

[JesusFightClub]

Dostoyevsky's The Possessed and Crime and Punishment.

Anything Jane Austen wrote ever.

1984 and Animal Farm, well pretty much whatever Orwell wrote apart from "...Wigan Pier"

I read a lot of old communist classics from different traditions too.

[OddlyAmused]

1984

Brave New World

The Master and Margarita

Pride and Prejudice

Sense and Sensibility

Candide

The Jungle

Hamlet

A Doll's House

Much Ado About Nothing

There are probably more, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

[valsa]

Does A Separate Peace count? It's one of the few classic-ish books I loved. Partly because we had to read it in school and I trolled an English teacher I didn't like by arguing the most homoerotic interpretation of it that I could (which he acted surprised by but shouldn't have as... well... it leans kinda hard in that direction anyway)

I dislike the Romeo and Juliet play but, much to my secret shame, I actually liked the Romeo + Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. I know, I know.

[wtfrenchtoast]

Brave New World

1984

Gone with the Wind

Pride and Prejudice (which was preprogrammed into my nook when I got it. Love!)

I'm not really one for reading much "literature". I HATED my lit class in high school. I have always been of the opinion that analyzing writing for its deeper meaning is totally pointless. So I tend to like things with stories that capture my interest, which the above do. I especially like 1984 and Brave New World because I'm into futuristic utopian/dystopian books.

[Naga Viper]

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Sister Carrie

Wuthering Heights

Frankenstein

I must not be one for "literature" either, because thinking back on all the stuff I've read, there weren't many books that I disliked but not that many I feel all that passionate about now, though I can name my favorite Poe stories (Cask of Amontillado, House of Usher, Black Cat) or Shakespeare plays (Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Tempest) at the drop of a hat. And one of the books I like going to for inspiration? A Hans Christian Andersen anthology.