Name 3 of your favorite and 3 of your least favorite classics.
Name 3 of your favorite and 3 of your least favorite classics.
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Favorites: Native Son, A Clockwork Orange, and Cats Cradle. Least favorite: Finnegans Wake, Anthem and Moviegoer
@Caleb I must admit I have never read any on you list
Oh for real! My favorites were top of my head but all excellent reads. Native Son really changed my perspective on a lot of things. The other two are responsible for getting me to read more classics
@Caleb Cat’s cradle is excellent – it just blew my mind
@Caleb I just throw some out there too. What is the basis for Native son
About an African American living in poverty in Chicago 1930s. Dont want to give away to much but he gets into some trouble and it spirals out of control. Incredibly intense novel and one that offers up a perspective most of us cant fathom.
@Caleb LOVE A Clockwork Orange
@Laura, one i reread often and the movie is almost as good, which is rare!
Favorites-
Vita Nova
Frankenstein
Robinson Crusoe
Least-
20,000 leagues
Dorian Gray
Moby Dick
I forgot about Dorian Grey, def would add that one to my least as well
I didn’t mind 20,000 leagues, but some parts were boring.
@Inés I thought the captives as took weak and passive. My favorite character was the villain ?♂️.
I could easily add Catcher in Boring to my least list too. The most exiting part was when he put on a hunting cap.
I enjoyed Dorian Gray, but it would neither be near the top nor the bottom of my list in terms of favourite classics. To be honest, I thought Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales were better than TPODG.
@Caleb For sure
Favorite: Don Quijote de La Mancha, Pride & Prejudice, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Least favorite: Moby-Dick, Ulysses, The Catcher in the Rye.
@Inés those are so far my three favorites as well!
@Kristina So you’ve read Don Quixote? Yay! 🙂
@Inés I’m currently reading it and I’ve loved it from the first page!
@Kristina Glad to hear it! It’s really funny, but also full of wisdom. Enjoy!
@Inés I’ve been telling my 11 year old about it along the way and she’s excited to start it herself (we need to find an easier version!)
I love the humor, I love the characters, the storyline. I think it could have a terrible ending and I would still love it at this point ?
hahaha. I won’t spoil it for you. ;P What part are you in now?
Hope your daughter starts reading it, that’d be so cool. I read it for the first time when I was about her age. 🙂
Maybe it’ll get her into wanting to learn Spanish!
Inés Ramos Don Quixote is just amazing. But the first half is much better than the second half.
I am reading Huckleberry Finn for the second time! I love that book
@Allan, one of my very favorites. I’ve read it at least 5 times from cover to cover, plus countless times when I’d just open the book and read for a while. I love Mark Twain!
@Inés me too. It is hilarious. I am at the part where Tom comes in to help free Jim with his elaborate plans. ?. I even catch myself talking like Huck I reckon lol
@Allan I know, I can’t stop laughing. I also love the 1993 movie with Elijah Wood.
Favorites. Pride and Prejudice/Wuthering Heights/Les Miserables
Favorites: The Woman in White, Jane Eyre, Villette
Least Favorite: All Quiet on the Western Front, A Farewell to Arms, 1984
@Amber, love your favorites too.
@Amber love your favourites too ❤️
I’ve yet to read The Woman in White, but Jane Eyre and Villette are among my favourite classics too (didn’t mention them in my list, but they’re definitely up there!)
Difficult to choose but here we go: 🙂 Master and Marguerite by Bulgakov, To kill the Mockingbird by Lee and 1984 by Orwell. Least favorite: Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Atlas Shrugged by Rand and Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
❤️: A Handful of Dust, To the Lighthouse, Emma
?: The Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men, Nicholas Nickleby
?Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
?? Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
TWHF can hardly be praised too highly. Superb book, and it’s curious that Lewis at his very best became like his master George MacDonald in that those books have tended to be overlooked by future generations of readers.
Favourites: Edmond Dantes, Jean Valjean, Patrick Bateman
@Sean While I am well-acquainted with Edmond and Dantes, I have not met Patrick yet
@Czesar you may hate him ? he’s an extreme character
Favourites: Storm of Steel. One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest. Don Quixote.
Favourite: The Last Man, Day of the Triffids and Dead Souls. Least Favourite: Catch 22, Middlemarch, Fahrenheit 451
@James Catch 22 is terrible. Agreed.
@Adam I just never got it. At the end of each chapter it felt like a cheesy US Sitcom that went “well that’s the catch 22” – insert drum roll and canned laughter
Agree with these on Catch 22. I got one chapter in and felt like the 60’s period was so imbued in the narrative that Austin Powers had wrote it.
I love Middlemarch.
I just read Catch 22 last summer and I enjoyed it. I liked the strange dark humor.
@Cerys, I tried Middlemarch about 8 years ago and it defeated me. Then, I picked it up again two years ago. I am sure this next part is just pure coincidence, but, I say tongue in cheek, got to the same point, suffered a burst aneurysm lol……. Eventually completed it ✊
Favourites: Jane Eyre, War and Peace and Therèse Raquin
Less Fav: To the lighthouse, Tale of Two cities, Crime and punishement
Favourites: All passion spent, Tobias Smollett and The blue flower
Least favourites: The call of Cthulhu, l struggle with Ivy Compton-Burnet and Henry James
Have you tried The Edwardians by Sackville West?
Favorites:
Jane Eyre
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Anatomy of a Murder
Least Favorites:
The Great Gatsby
Catcher in the Rye
Anything by Ernest Hemingway
Favourites: Persuasion, A Tale of Two Cities & Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Least Favourites: Madame Bovary, Picture of Dorian Gray & Brave New World
Favourite: wuthering heights, the trial, the fountainhead
Least favourite: to kill a mockingbird
Fav’s: Boccoccio’s The Decammeron, Cather’s My Antonia, Laclos’ Dangerous Liasons. Worst: Gatsby, Henry James, Catcher in Rye.
Favorites: Don Quixote, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Mysterious Island.
Least favorite: War and Peace, Moby Dick.
That’s hard to do!
Favourites Dombey and Son, Ulysses and Madame Bovary, least favourite Dracula, Heart of Darkness and Kim.
Dombey and Son is one of my favourites too! (and I also wasn’t very keen on Kim, though I may give it another chance-it might have been the wrong book at the wrong time.) I’d add Robert Falconer and Waverley to make up my 3 favourites, and, if I keep Kim as one of the least favourites, I’ll add Gulliver’s Travels and Sunset Song to make up the numbers.
@Antonia my favorite Dickens novel is Dombey and Son
@David and @Stacey we Dombeyites are very few! A pleasure to meet people who have actually read it!
Agreed, @Antonia! Exceptional story for many reasons, but the genuine pathos of the broken father child bond is key to its impact, and I think Dickens conveys it with great skill.
Little Paul Dombey’s death as he watches the Thames from his window gets me every time I read it. Dickens had already created one of the most beautifully written deaths with Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop – when Thackeray read of Little Dombey’s death he exclaimed ‘He’s done it again!’. I also love how Dickens writes about how London changes with the dawn of the railway. Fantastic book.
@Antonia I read it years ago. I probably could do a reread.
Richard’s death in Bleak House is another one, though he’s a young man rather than a young child, and even the scene between Oliver and Fagin when the latter has been sentenced to death by hanging is a real tear jerker.
But yes, the Dombey one followed by little Nell are probably the most moving IMO.
I’ve just realised I answered this completely wrong, I thought the post said characters instead of classics ??
Favourites: The Count of Monte Cristo, The three musketeers and Les Miserable.
Disliked: the heart of darkness, to the lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway
@Sean I’m reading The Count of Monte Cristo right now.
@Cerys how are you finding it so far ?
@Cerys how are you finding it so far ?
@Sean I’m liking it a lot but I’m less than quarter way through so far.
@Cerys it’s a good size , enjoy ?
Two kicks to Woolf?
@Gee I didn’t want to use all three on her ?
Is it her writing style? Her snobbery? Her mouth wash? I understand the Conrad.
@Gee ? I think it’s primarily her writing style, she’s just not for me. I really wanted to like the heart of darkness but I’d heard it was a “must” read book and it just didn’t live up to my expectations
Woolf was an adjustment for me at for while reading to the Lighthouse. Have dropped two others though. Will only attempt the Years now.
@Gee I’ve tried Orlando too, I think I’ve gave her enough chances now , I’m done ??
@Sean Ha! Orlando was the last that feel from my grip without a care. I only tried it because I enjoy Jeanette Winterson, and it influenced her quite a bit.
Top 3:
Far from the Madding Crowd,
Wuthering Heights,
Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Bottom 3: The Monk, Gulliver’s Travels,
Coriolanus.
I enjoyed The Monk (although it was very long). He was so evil!
@Jodi just freaked me out too much, I think.
I really disliked Coriolanus on first reading, but ended up liking it when I had read Plutarch’s account and Brecht’s modern version.
@Antonia I might like it better now. I read it at school when I was 15.
the Count of M/C. Brave New World, The grapes of Wrath. I can’t think of anything I really disliked.
Favorites: Jane Eyre, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Anna Karenina. Least favorites: Moby Dick, Moby Dick and Moby Dick.
Favorites: Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair. Least Favorites: The Grapes of Wrath, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury.
Laura Arlt Gerold I had such a hard time getting through The Sound and the Fury. I havent touched another Faulkner since ?
That’s exactly how I felt. I love his short stories, but I have a really hard time with his novels.
Favorites: Persuasion, My Antonia, The Scarlet Letter. Least favorites: Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair, anything by Hemingway.
Favorites: The Aeneid by Virgil, The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, and The Trial by Franz Kafka.
Least favorite: If Ayn Rand is deemed a “classic” author, then that’s three already: Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged (by far the worst-written book I’ve ever read). However, I don’t think of her as a classic author. She’s only assigned in schools because of the Ayn Rand Institute bribing its way onto the curriculum with its scholarship prize. Otherwise, she’d probably be completely forgotten.
So I’ll choose three Early Modern plays that struck me as quite mediocre: The Tragedy of Hoffman by Henry Chettle, A Woman Killed with Kindness by Thomas Heywood, and The Maid’s Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Even then, I wouldn’t say they were appallingly bad, but merely nothing special.
It’s hard to choose favourites among the early classics. Like you, I could’ve chosen Virgil, Ovid, Lucien, others. Very personal territory here. ? I’m looking forward to reading The Canterbury Tales to compare with Boccaccio.
Top 3: Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, Great Expectations
Least favorites: The Outsiders, Finnegan’s Wake, Lord of the Flies
What did you like about Gatsby? It disappointed me no end.
Top 3: The Jungle, Dracula, Lord of the Flies
Least 3: Ulysses, Ethan Fromme, Silas Marner
Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Anna Karenina/ least favorites are anything by Hemingway