What's your favourite classic book? What classics do you recommend? Is a classic more than just "required reading"? Why? What do classics offer that differentiate them?
Ooh, fun. I think my favourite classic is The Count of Monte Cristo. Then perhaps War and Peace. Hm, there are so many.. The Iliad and The Odyssey are the only classics I've reread multiple times. I only consider these books required reading simply because they are still so enjoyable, even many hundreds of years after they were written. Plenty of classics are simply no longer accessible to most modern readers. I wouldn't recommend anything as required reading if it's not enjoyable. Ones where I felt like, "I just can't," are perhaps Lord Jim and Bleak House. I'm not educated in literary theory or anything, so I'm not that aware of why some unenjoyable books are put on a pedestal. I just like what I like.
My experience with reading the classics is limited, but I have read Moby-Dick and most of Twain more than once. Oh, and 1984 and Brave New World. I wonder what makes a book a 'classic'?
Well, here is one writer's opinion, Italo Calvino's 14 criteria for what makes a classic: https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/07/06/italo-calvinos-14-definitions-of-a-classic/
For pure enjoyment of the language, the words, the prose, I nominate Fanny Hill, by John Cleland. (published 1749) Words turned into art.
He makes a great case; my favorite point is number 9: "Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them." I'm running into that when pursuing my project of watching movies that everyone talks about, but which I've never seen. Especially true of The Green Mile (didn't think much of The Shawshank Redemption, and hated Pulp Fiction).
For me, a classic speaks to the universality of the human experience. I suppose, of Calvino's criteria, #10 comes closest to that. A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans. The books I would call classics made a big impact on me. I thought about them when I was away from them, and long after I had finished them. Two books that really got me thinking: Things Fall Apart, but Chinua Achebe As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
I don't read enough classics. I tend to prefer shorter ones, though. Animal Farm, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 immediately come to mind as things that are still quite accessible. I want to read Frankenstein. Have heard good things.
Frankenstein is very strange. It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember the creature making incredibly long monologues in very proper Victorian English. I also remember the whole story hinging on a series of extremely unlikely coincidences. Apparently that was very common for stories of the time though. Aside from that, I did enjoy it, but found it quite a slog. I greatly preferred The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Tale of Two Cities, and Moby Dick.
Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, Gargantua and Pantagruel, The Monk, Carmilla, and Melmoth the Wanderer are some of my favorites. One thing that strikes me about these books is that none of them would find a publisher today. Apart from being great reads they serve as reminders that so much of what is considered good writing today is quite arbitrary.
Great book—one of my all time favorites. I also quite like The Brothers Karamazov, which was my favorite novel for many years. But when I read Woolf’s To The Lighthouse I thought about it constantly for about a month and then decided to re-read it. I know Woolf doesn’t necessarily write conventional novels in the style of those most referenced in this thread (except for The Voyage Out, I guess) but have any of you read To The Light House? What she does in that novel is tremendous, especially given the fairly short length of it. It’s haunting and memorable and offers more to the reader with each subsequent read. I need to read As I lay Dying. It’s sitting on my shelf right now, along with countless others.
I have always despised classics. However, I would have never thought of "The Count of Monte Cristo" as a classic, because it's actually a good book, in fact, one of my all-time favorites. ;-)
How could I forget the novel that made the biggest impression on impressionable teenage me? Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. The memory is seared into my brain of sitting in my desk at school and turning the last page and, jaw hanging, being utterly transported. The movie was really good, too.
I quite like Jane Austen. Brontë is a few decades later—would you say they are similar in style? Classic 19th century English novels?
I would think so, but I have never read Jane Austen. Only saw all the movies! But Jane Austen has quite a remarkable fan club Jane Austen Society of North America
To Kill a Mockingbird Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer Things Fall Apart Pride and Prejudice, however, I actually read the one with Zombies (could tell the difference in the authors)
I’ve wanted to read this for many years. I picked up a copy once - from where I remember not - but it was falling apart so I never started.
