I want to start reading the classics but where do I start! Favorites?
I want to start reading the classics but where do I start! Favorites?
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I want to start reading the classics but where do I start! Favorites?
Pride and Prejudice is funny and accessible. There’s a reason it’s classic.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Jane Eyre is by Charlotte Brontë is also fantastic.
Dostoyevsky
Little Women or Anne of Green Gables.
Little women
What era you interested in?
Rebecca by Daphne DuMarier. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
I read Wuthering Heights first but some of the language can be challenging. I found Merphy Napier on YouTube and she started with children’s classics. That may be the best method if you have trouble with the writing style like I did
Impressive what titles do you have. I have all of Jane Austen, Little Women, Jane Eyre, Little Men, Jo’s Boys
Dickens…?
Great Expectations
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Caroll
Yes this!!
That’s tough Moby dick, Jane eyre, count of Monte cristo, anything Jane Austen, um and Frankenstein
the cantebury tales
@Flordeliza I have almost everything lol. My top two shelves are puffin classics for children/young adults
The cloth bound books next to them is my Austen collection. Shelves 3 & 4 are my Penguin classics. Shelf 4 are my author volumes. Bottom shelf is pretty much entirely Tolkien and a few random that didn’t fit anywhere else.
Had to show mine off too. I obsessively collect classics, but haven’t read most of them yet.
Reading a classic is like running a marathon. You’ve got to train and persevere. Contemporary books are heavy on dialogue, minimalist in setting the context. Classics are extremely heavy on setting the context before even introducing a main character. It took me 12 looong chapters in Les Miserables to finally get to Jean Valjean. The author makes you work hard for a reward.
Charles Dickens, Mark Twain,
@Kayla I’ve been meaning to read All quiet on the western front
Anne of Green Gables
Little Women
Jane Austen (P&P and Persuasion are my favorites)
Tess of the d’urbervilles…I found it a little easier than Austen when first reading classics.
Gone With the Wind
It really depends on your interests.
I’ve not read it, but my husband is a big fan.
I completely agree with your description of classics. I read a few a year, but I still have a long way to go to get through all the great ones.
I started with Gothic literature or you could start with the Bronte’s or Jane Austen
If you’re not used to classics I’d recommend the easier shorter ones. Little Women, The Hobbit, Treasure Island, 5 Children and It, Grimms Fairy Tales, Robinson Crusoe, A Christmas Carol, Robin Hood, Narnia series.
Anything by George Orwell, fiction and nonfiction.
And DON’T read multiple other books. Classics are not some easy one night stand! They require monogamous commitment! Stick it out. Don’t skip pages! And don’t start too big or you’ll end up disliking a masterpiece for all the wrong reasons.
I started reading Sir Walter Scott for the first time last year. The English/Scottish was phonetic which was difficult even for me. It took me 6 months to read Rob Roy but it was a fantastic story. And I’ve been reading classics since I was 10.
To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favorites. White Fang was good too. The complete works of Sherlock Holmes.
White Fang is awesome
-Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
-Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
-The Grapes of Wrath, etc. by John Steinbeck
-Shakespeare’s plays/sonnets
-The Adventures of Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn, etc. by Mark Twain
-War and Peace, Anna Karenina, etc. by Leo Tolstoy
-Dracula by Bram Stoker
-The Call of the Wild by Jack London
-The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
-For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
-The Telltale Heart, etc. by Edgar Allen Poe
-A Tale of Two Cities, etc. by Charles Dickens
-The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
-In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
-Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes
-Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
Persuasion, North and South,(You need to watch the UK tv series after you read the book.) The women in white.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen pride and prejudice or Emma ❤️, North and south!
Theodore Dreiser’s American Tragedy, Sister Carrie. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I spent 4 years in college as an English major so I’ve read a huge chunk of the classics.
I actually disagree with you though, I find they’re much easier to get through when I’m reading other books at the same time. I feel that reading them in small chunks and then taking a break to read something more modern is the best way for me to get through them. Slow and steady.
I was around the same age when I started reading classics. I went as Anne from Anne of Green Gables for Halloween in both 4th and 5th grade. ?
I need to collect more classics
The Great Gatsby!!
Stevenson: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or Treasure Island.
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Grey.
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice.
Wells: Time Machine.
Orwell: Animal Farm.
theres a lot, https://amzn.to/2H49DqR
To kill a mocking bird
Jane eyre
The count of monte cristo
Lorna Doone
Far from the madding crowd
Of mice and men
Animal farm
1984
Any Dickens
Withering Heights! It’s a dark twisted tale that holds it own against the other modern thrillers out at the mo about messed up relationships! ??
The Count of Monte Cristo- I loved it
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
What interests you? Romance- Wuthering Heights or any Jane Austen. Horror- Dracula, The Isle of Dr Moreau, or The Invisible Man. Action- Journey to the Center of the Earth or Around the World in Eighty Days. Science Fiction- The Time Machine, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, or The Fantastic Voyage. Mystery- Any Sherlock Holmes or And then there were None (also titled Ten little Indians). So many choices and only one life!
Great Expectations!!
I second this
Jane Eyre. Wow.
Start with the year you were born
Animal Farm by George Orwell.
I just read that.
I hope you enjoyed it??
wuthering heights, gone with the wind, great gatsby!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Edith Wharton – The Age if Innocence
Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen
Anything by Austen really. P&P is the classic but Persuasion is my favourite 🙂
Dickens – Bleak House
If you want an old classic, Frankenstein. It is such a powerful book and so much better than the movies.
Heidi is short and sweet
Anything by Austin .
Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
Pushkin. Dostoyevskiy. Tolstoiy. Verne. Steinbeck. Stevenson. Shelley. Stoker. Hugo. Dante.
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great American Read Book Club has a list of 100 books. Check online, and also the TV program on PBS.
Lewis caroll alice in wonderland and through the looking glass
Or george orwell 1984
I second anything by Austen. The writing style might take some getting used to but it’s worth persevering.
Scarlet pimpernel