What’s your 10 favourite classic reads ? Note: if your new to classics and haven’t read 10+ yet, feel free to share a few of your favourites ?
What’s your 10 favourite classic reads ?
Note: if your new to classics and haven’t read 10+ yet, feel free to share a few of your favourites ?
In no particular order:
1. Les Miserable
2. The Three Musketeers
3. Rebecca
4. My cousin Rachel
5. Frankenstein
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray
7. 1984
8. Fahrenheit 451
9. Jane Eyre
10. All quiet on the western front
So tough to narrow it down , would probably be different if I wrote this tomorrow.
Good list, you need to throw a few Jane Austen’s in and balance it out a bit ?
There will be a lot of Jane Austen in here !
Pride and prejudice
Jane Eyre
Gone with the wind
North and South
Little women
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Wuthering Heights
David Copperfield
Les malheurs de Sophie ( I think that the English title for this novel is “Sophie’s misfortunes”)
@Neïla I loved pride and prejudice and David copperfield too? gone with the wind has been on my wish list for so long now
Jane Eyre
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Nicholas Nickleby
Anatomy of a Murder
And Then There Were None
Gone with the Wind
The Odyssey
A Wrinkle in Time
Little Women
Oliver Twist
@Barbara Connecticut Yankee is a good book ?
@Sean a hilarious political satire!
Love Jane Eyre, Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. Don’t know if they’d make my top ten, but only because George MacDonald and possibly C S Lewis would be dominating it!
Throwing in a mix of classics-is but I’ve got so many more
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Persuasion
3. Animal Farm
4. 1984
5. The Iliad
6. Lord of The Flies
7. The Great Gatsby
8. Hamlet
9. The Picture of Dorian Grey
10. Crime and Punishment
@Molly nice list , lord of quality books ? nice to Shakespeare’s too
The Count of Monte Cristo
Jane Eyre
Kristen Lavransdatter
The Divine Comedy
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (Dickens and Collins)
Great Expectations
The Hobbit
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Anne of Green Gables series
Jane Austen’s books
Oh! And Frankenstein, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Scarlet Pimpernel
@Philippa I’m reading and loving the count of monte cristo just know , if it stays as good as it has been it will
Be on my top ten
@Sean, one of my absolute favourite reads of all time!
Phillipa @Philippa I loved Kristin Lavransdatter too. I read it about 2 years ago but still think about it. 14th Century Medieval Norway, I loved it!
Not by Order:
1: Candide
2: Hunchback of Notre Dame
3: Madame Butterfly
4: 100 Years of Solitude
5: Old Man and the Sea
6: Moby Dick
7: Tale of Two Cities
8: Picture of Dorian Gray
9: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
10: Othello
Pride and Prejudice
Dracula
The Great Gatsby
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Catcher in the Rye
Wuthering Heights
Anna Karenina
Frankenstein
Macbeth
Little Women
Well this is near to impossible but I’ll try! This is an “as of right now” list in no particular order:
1. Frankenstein
2. Jane Eyre
3. Moby Dick
4. Dracula
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray
6. Gulliver’s Travels
7. Fahrenheit 451
8. The Island of Dr. Moreau
9. Orlando
10. Grimm’s Fairy Tales
I love wells but I’ve not managed to get a copy of dr.moreau yet
@Sean this was too hard to narrow down to ten. I could keep going…….the heart is a lonely hunter- Carson McCullers….?
Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Last Man, The Set of The a Three Musketeers, War and Peace, Dead Souls, The Captains Daughter, The Iliad, Little Dorritt, A Tale of Two Cities
@James who wrote the captains daughter?
Pushkin. There are many great Russian Novels I would add, but, I didn’t want to be too lob sided in my list
@James thanks you ?
@Sean, if you like Russian Authors, I can also recommend Turgenev
@James thanks again , I do like Russian lit
Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and A Tale of Two Cities are three of my absolute favorites!
Jane Eyre, Little Dorrit, War and Peace and A Tale of Two Cities are four of mine!
The Brothers Karamazov. Wuthering Heights. Anna Karenina. Les Miserables. Don Quixote. Gone With The Wind. How Green Was My Valley. Great Expectations. To Kill A Mockingbird. The Scarlet Letter.
David Copperfield, From Here to Eternity, Autobiography of Mark Twain, The Bible, 11-22-63, Slaughter House Five, Catcher in the Rye, Little Big Man, Catch 22, Hawaii.
Jane Eyre, Wuthering heights, Tess of the D’ubervilles, Dracula, and the picture of Dorian Gray.
They are in no particular order: 1) Jane Eyre, 2) Wuthering Heights, 3) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 4) Rebecca, 5) Jamaica Inn, 6) My Antonia, 7) Sister Carrie, 8) Great Expectations, 9) The Mayor of Casterbridge, 10) Lorna Doone. If I had to add one more book, it would be 11) Les Miserables.
In no particular order: Gone With the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, Fahrenheit 451, To Kill Mockingbird, Madam Bovary, Little Women, The Catcher in the Rye, Rebecca, Twelve Years a Slave, and Animal Farm.
I need to squeeze Jane Eyre and A Doll’s House in there.
I feel like it’s not even worth commenting until I’ve read them all ? But SO FAR my favorites are
-The count of monte cristo
-A tree grows in Brooklyn
-the grapes of wrath
-little women
-anne of green gables
-jane Eyre
-pride & prejudice
-journey to the center of the earth
-robin hood (howard pyle)
-uncle Tom’s cabin
To Kill A Mockingbird
Treasure Island
A Tale of Two Cities
1984
The Merchant of Venice
Macbeth
Huckleberry Finn
Pride and Prejudice
Of Mice and Men
Catcher in the Rye…….. should I go on, and on, and on?
Only some classics here. In no order either.
1. Wise Blood by Flannery O’ Connor
2. And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave
3. We, the Living by Ayn Rand
4. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
5. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
6. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
7. The Outsider/Stranger by Albert Camus
8. ALL novels by Kate Atkinson
9. The Trial by Franz Kafka
10. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
So tough to only put ten. There’s at least ten others which I’m feeling incredibly guilty for not putting on the list ?
Although not classics, I HIGHLY recommend number 1 & 2
and the ass saw the angel…. i need to find that again… been years now.. and was excellent.
@Jeannie oh I was enthralled all the way through. Was surprised how good it was
You have a gothic theme going on here. Tried Carson McCullers, or Eudora Welty, Shirley Jackson, or Cormac McCarthy?
Don Quixote
Wuthering Heights
Scarlet Letter
Frankenstein
Fountainhead
Tale of Two Cities
Bleak house
Magic Mountain
Mid-Summer Night’s Dream
The Stranger
Jane Eyre, The Age of Innocence, The Count of Monte Cristo, Crime and Punishment, The Trial, Doctor Zhivago, Winesburg Ohio, The Catcher in the Rye, Rebecca, The Odd Women, Persuasion
@Trudy the trial by Kafka is very good ?
I have never heard of The Odd Women before. I saw your Post and just bought the book. It sounds fantastic. Thanks!
Enjoy!
Brave New World
Grapes of Wrath
The Phantom of the Opera
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
Rebecca
Of Mice and Men
The Pearl
Gone with the Wind
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
@Genna I loved the phantom of the opera too, it never made my top ten today but it has previously
Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Call of The Wild by Jack London
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Eyre
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly
Diary of Anne Frank
@Erica nice list , white fang and the call of the wild are both excellent
It was difficult to choose…my favorites can change from day to day with The Count of Monte Cristo never leaving the top.
1. Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
2. My Antonia by Willa Cather
3. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
4. The Secret Garden by Frances H. Burnett
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
7. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
8. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
9. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
10. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Tess of the D’urbervilles
Pride & Prejudice
Persuasion
Macbeth
1984
A tale of two cities
Dr Faustus
The bluest eye
A kestral for a knave
North & South
1. Jane Eyre
2. Rebecca
3. Vilette
4. Wouthering Heights
5. Jamaica Inn
6. De profundis
7. Scarlet Letter
8. Frankenstein
9. The picture of Dorian Gray
10. Secret Garden
@Xrysi I love du Mauriers too
I love De Profundis
Lynne Schumacher de profundis is very different from Dorian Gray. It’s very honest and autobiographical. I liked it more.. It’s a strong book!!
Very! It is Wilde pouring out his humble and defeated heart while in prison. He writes heartbreak like no other.
In no particular order: Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Testament Of Youth, Northanger Abbey, The Great Gatsby, Cranford, Sherlock Holmes stories, The Forsyte Saga, The Moonstone, The Lord Of The Rings
@Natalia nice too see more Shakespeare making the list ?
@Sean He’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to the English language, theatre and literature! ❤️❤️
@Natalia he’s awesome , big Shakespeare fan , I read a lot of his work last year , about 30 if I remember correctly
The count of Monte Cristo is a fantastic book. Has anyone read diary of a nobody? That book had me in stitches!
@James yes, I love that book!
Diary of a Nobody, that is
Jane Eyre
Wuthering height
King Lear
The glass menagerie
Things fall apart
1984
Dr.Faustus
Crime and punishment
Picture of Dorian grey
Pride and prejudice
Scarlet letter
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Rebecca
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. Little Women
5. Far From The Maddening Crowd
6. Frankenstein
7. The Picture of Dorian Grey
8. Emma
9. Gone With The Wind
10. Les Miserables
1. Frankenstein
2. Hard Times
3. Sister Carrie
4. Anna Karenina
5. Jane Eyre
6. Withering Heights
7. Rebecca
8. Winesburg, Ohio
9. The Count of Monte Cristo
10. Madame Bovary
Not necessarily into that order.
1. Persuasion 2. Frankenstein 3. Great Expectations 4. The Outsiders 5. The Overcoat(short story) 6. My Cousin Rachel 7.A Christmas Carol 8. Sense and Sensibility 9. The Color Purple 10. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Les miserables, turn of the screw. Right you are if you think so, wuthering heights, vanity fair, much ado about nothing, othello,
@Karen iago is one of my favourite Shakespearean characters
I always have had hate but curiosity toward Iago. He never explains the reasons for his deeds.
I have read contrived version of Les Miserables as a child, and I loved it. But I still haven’t read the full version of it
hmm…very interesting because I am learning about some more classics….mine are….
1: Siddhartha
2: Crime and Punishment
3: War and Peace
4: Great Expectations
5: Great Gatsby
6: A Scarlet Letter
7: Hundred Years of Solitude
8: She
9: The Grapes of Wrath
10: In Search of Lost Time
and many more…. 🙂
In no particular order:
Pride and Prejudice
David Copperfield
Anna Karenina
Middlemarch
Sense and Sensibility
Vanity Fair
Silas Mariner
Little Woman
Beloved
Go Tell it to the Mountain
Great Expectations
House of Mirth
Listening to the audio version of David Copperfield right now
1. Hamlet
2. Villette
3. Jane Eyre
4. Tess of the D’Urbevilles
5. Withering Heights
6. Crime and Punishment
7. The Portrait of a Lady
8. Lord of the Rings
9. The Picture of Dorian Gray
10. Wives and Daughters
❤ Bronte sisters!
Anything Shakespeare, Hemingway (Men without Women), Faulkner (As I Lay Dying), The Woman in White, Ulysses, OConor’s Wise Blood, JRRT Lord of the Rings, Greene’s Quiet American, Heller Catch 22, Calvino If on a Winter’s Night The Traveler
@Accalia any particular favourites by Shakespeare? I love his work too?
Other people keep the Bible on a nightstand but I keep The Riverside Shakespeare. I can’t pin down a favorite because I love his plays and sonnets. He is my go to when I am bored with current best sellers.
1)Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare, 2)Major Barbara, Shaw, 3)An Enemy of the People,4) A Doll’s House, 5)Ghosts, 6)The Wild Duck, Ibsen.7)the pearl, Steinbeck 8) My Antonia, Willa Cather 9) Richard III, Shakespeare 10) The Seagull, Chechov
@Rose Titus andronicus is my favourite by Shakespeare too ?
I love it, and am forever recommending it, Ever the optimist, I gave my youngest a copy of Shakespeare’s plays and demanded (yeah right) she read that first.
@Rose I recommend it a lot too , it’s doesn’t get mentioned enough ?
I know, though I don’t understand why, it literally has everything
(maybe not literally)
@Rose ? it’s a pretty gnarly plot
that it is @Sean, leave it Master William to think that one up, genius
Far from the madding crowd
Wuthering Heights
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Lorna Doone
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Madame Bovary
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Jamaica Inn
David Copperfield
Of Human Bondage
Crime and Punishment
The Invisible Man
The Great Railway Bazaar
On The Road (by Kerouac)
Jane Eyre
Tom Jones
Far from The Maddling Crowd
Lorna Doone
@Rashiid you are my brother from another country. I could copy paste your list.
I loved seeing everyone’s top ten list! And because I’m a little obsessive, I figured out the top books from all 39 people who responded to this post. I’ve read 4 of them so I guess I’d better catch up!
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
Picture of Dorian Gray, The
Frankenstein
Rebecca
Crime and Punishment
Little Women
Sense and Sensibility
In no particular order:
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Idiot
Moll Flanders
Moby Dick
A Tree Grows in Brooklynn
Don Quixote
Lonesome Dove
Murder on the Orient Express
Out of the Silent Planet
Frankenstein.
And please try the short story: The Yellow Wallpaper!
I could particularly go on for the list of Agatha Christie’s, but your choice is great!!
@Claire Murder on the Orient Express was my second AC mystery and I feel it’s an excellent expression of her talent.
War and Peace (Tolstoy)
Hopscotch (Julio Cortázar)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Márquez)
The Little Prince (Saint-Exupéry)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
Dracula (Stoker) or Frankenstein (Shelley)
Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut) or Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
Peter Rabbit (Potter) [… this is my “plus one”]
I’ll limit myself to one from each author…1) Sir Gibbie (George MacDonald) 2 The Great Divorce (C S Lewis) 3) Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) 4) Kidnapped (R L Stevenson) 5) Waverley (Walter Scott) 6) Dombey and Son (Charles Dickens) 7) LOTR (J R R Tolkien) 8) The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame) 9) The New Testament in Scots (William Lorimer) 10) War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy). This list could easily change, depending on the day!
@David I say that same thing, subject to change!
Grapes of Wrath; Scarlet Letter; To Kill a Mockingbird; Charlotte’s Web; The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; A Lesson Before Dying; Dante’s Inferno; The Stranger; My Antonia; Dracula……………….
I’ve not read many classics but Rebecca is one of my favorites.
Tolstoy
Hemingway
H.e.bates
Graham Greene
Bronte sisters
Dickens
Jane Austen
Chaucer
Robert graves
Shakespeare
It depends on how one defines classical literature.early 20th century can be defined as classical.writers like Ezra pound,graham Greene,john Galsworthy.probably in years to come bestselling writers today will be classified as such.
@Sean Help ?
I forgot to mention “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote. It is masterfully written and even the background information about Capote and Harper Lee working together to research it for the book is very interesting.
@Melinda the short answer is no ? I’ve asked this question a few times and the answers always vary, which makes it difficult to select one definite definition
Most definitions of a “classic” book tend to be a book from a previous time that continues to have relevance to the modern reader.
It’s the time period that tends to cause the debate. Feel free to join in that one!
@Sean Thank you. for your efforts.
Moby Dick
Tess of the D
Of human bondage
Moll Flanders
Barnaby Rudge
Ethan Frome
The Lancaster witches
Flappers and Philosophers
This side of Paradise
I have not read any of them!Tess of the D is already on my list. I will have to Google the rest….. (apart from Moby Dick)
@Sandra Moby is a project! Tess is wonderful! Lancaster witches scared the hell out of me!
@Febinger Of Human Bondage is at the top of my list.
@Amy mine too, I was blown away by it. I finished it on Thanksgiving evening, laying on the couch in a shirt soaked with dishwater praying for a happy ending!
@Febinger I love it!
The Little Prince
The Wizard of Oz
The Story of My Life (Helen Keller)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Ella Enchanted
Pride and Prejudice
The BFG
The Happy Prince
The Secret Garden
Les Miserables
Today.. chronologically before WWII..
-Gulliver’s Travels
-The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë)
-The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
-Moby-Dick (Melville)
-Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
-A Tale of Two Cities
-Crime and Punishment
-Orlando (Woolf)
-All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)
-Brave New World
@Melinda I purposely kept my list to pre-WWII to make it easier to cut my list ?.
1. Little Women 2. Jane Eyre 3. Demian 4. Knulf 5. Little Prince 6. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 7. Hamlet 8. The Secret Garden 9. Anne of Green Gables 10. Oliver Twist
Dickens, Charles Great Expectations
Adams, Richard Watership Down
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities
Goethe Faust
Burgess, Anthony A Clockwork Orange
Hesse, Hermann Steppenwolf
Tolkien The Lord of the Rings
Kafka, Franz Metamorphosis
Frank, Anne Diary of a young Girl
This was hard.
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston. The Overcoat Gogol. Persuasion Jane Austen. My Cousin Rachel by @Daphne. Frankenstein Mary Shelley. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison. Native Son Richard Wright. Great Expectations Charles Dickens. To The Lighthouse Virginia Woolf. Howard’s End E.M.Forester.
Hannah, I could take your list and just tack it onto mine for an additional ten! Except I haven’t read The Overcoat or any du Maurier yet. I swear I’m going to finally read Rebecca this year! Invisible Man and To the Lighthouse kept making my list and then getting bumped for other things. I should have just been a rebel and made them 11 and 12.
@Tracy the overcoat is a short story & I have read it several times. I am obsessed with the movie The Namesake so I had to read The Overcoat & it just enhanced my movie & book experience. All these books have been so life impactful for me. I hope u get around to reading them?
1) Pride and Prejudice
2) A Room with a View
3) The Color Purple
4) Washington Square
5) Jane Eyre
6) Much Ado About Nothing (right up there with King Lear for me, but that’s hard to reread because, you know, tragedy)
7) O! Pioneers
8) A Tale of Two Cities
9) Kindred
10) Sense and Sensibility
In cronological order:
Les illusions perdues (Lost illusions), Balzac 1843
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronté 1847
War and Peace, Tolstoi 1865
Therese Raquin, Zola 1867
Fortunata y Jacinta, Benito Perez Galdos 1887
Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy 1891
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck 1939
The Grass Harp, Truman Capote 1951
Cien años de soledad, Garcia marquez 1967
Mirall Trencat (Broken Mirror), Mercé Rodoreda 1974