[Closed] Easy reading classic books?

Asterix.

Although it's debatable if they are "classics", I really enjoy Robert Louis Stevenson.

I re-read Kidnapped when walking the West Highland Way a few years ago and it was brilliant.

HG Wells as well. War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, loads more.

Also, they are available for free on https://www.gutenberg.org/

There's classics and there's classics.

Jules Verne (20k leagues under the sea is good)
Dracula

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Ooh, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a fantastic story and very much worth a read.

Sideways suggestion "little house on the prairie" series. Its not saccharine and icky like the TV series - its really nicely and simply written and tells a wonderful story of pioneering in the US. I really enjoyed it and its very easy to read.

The old man and the sea, you'll read it in a few hours, but it'll live on with you for a long time.

Three men on a boat is hilarious as well

Steinbeck
Although the angry raisins is heavy going.

Albert Camus - The Outsider

Anything by Orwell.
Anything by Conan Doyle.

1984

I've always found Kurt Vonnegut fairly accesaible.

Slaughterhouse Five obvs. but also Cat's Cradle.

Would heartily recommend Cider With Rosie - Laurie Lee.

Very accessible, absolutely *beautifully* written, evokes a bygone age, and really quite dark in places (not twee at all).

Sideways suggestion “little house on the prairie” series. Its not saccharine and icky like the TV series – its really nicely and simply written and tells a wonderful story of pioneering in the US. I really enjoyed it and its very easy to read.

They're fascinating bools, though they're easy to read because they were written for children. Also steeped in the inherent racism of Manifest Destiny and with some more overt dehumanising and objectivication of Native Americans.

Would heartily recommend Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee

Excellent call, worth following up with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment Of War.

My Quick list of would-recommend more modern classics would include (in no particular order)
Catch-22
The Great Gatsby
Orwell esp Animal Farm and 1984

Johnners - very much a product of their time indeed. I just found them surprisingly enjoyable - as much for the historical detail

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene is quite a short but very good read flows well and is very dark.

Oh, and another vote for Catch-22

Depends what you mean by 'easy' but Dickens books are surprisingly funny and quick to get through. Mark Twain is very funny too.

Three men on a boat is hilarious as well

Read this last month. Very funny indeed. Slightly dismayed to see the n word crop up at one point. Different times of course, but it really jarred! Still really enjoyed the book though.

Johnners – very much a product of their time indeed. I just found them surprisingly enjoyable – as much for the historical detail

Indeed they are, and I'd certainly be a lot happier having a bash at building a log cabin after reading a couple of them!

Slightly dismayed to see the n word crop up at one point.

I'm sure it's was in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer when I was kid in the 1970's?

Oh yes, another vote for Orwell. I'd read pretty much anything by him

I’m sure it’s was in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer when I was kid in the 1970’s?

I haven't actually read those! I've only read his travel stuff. But yeah, I can well imagine 😬

But yeah, I can well imagine 😬

A quick google shows the N word is used a lot.

Really interesting article on the censorship here.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable

To Kill a Mockingbird
Great Expectations (wrong century, but an easy read and definitely a classic)
Of Mice and Men
Ulysses
Lord of the Flies
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Brideshead Revisited
A Handful of Dust

Joking about Ulysses, of course

Electric Kool aid acid test,On the road,The Dice Man,Valis,Fear and loathing in Las Vegas,Junky,Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance(not so easy a read).

Excellent call, worth following up with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment Of War.

Have loved the Slad Valley and Laurie Lee since I moved to nr Stoud 10 years ago. We've just bought a house at Bull's Cross so The Woolpack is now my local 🙂

Really interesting article on the censorship here.

It's an interesting piece - I'd always rather read an unexpurgated original, uncomfortable as it can be at times. To do otherwise is as much editing the times they depict as the books themselves. I read Huckleberry Finn as a child in the early Seventies and have no memory whatsoever of finding the use of the n-word at all jarring or offensive. That also tells its own story about me and the time I was living in.

Fahrenheit 451.

Very easy reading. And a fantastic read as well. Scary how close to the mark he got.

I don't really agree about catch 22 be an easy read. It's great but it jumps all over the place. Or have I totally misremembered?

I read Huckleberry Finn as a child in the early Seventies and have no memory whatsoever of finding the use of the n-word at all jarring or offensive.

I remember the stories being very anti-racist. The characters who behaved in a racist manner, were the bad guys and made to look like ignorant fools.

Dostoevsky is very accessible and popular to this day - notes from underground (very short) and Crime and punishment are common starting points.

Was an epiphany for me reading these as I just read SF and fantasy as a teenager, couldn't believe something so old, dry-sounding and Russian could be such a pageturner. I think a lot of people experience Dostoevsky as a gateway author into more literary reading.

Orwell's essays are really good too

Thanks all. I've read and enjoyed Catch 22 so guess that can be used as a barometer!

I think in terms of 'easy' I've tended to discard books where every other word is deliberately complex. It's hard to explain but I once read a Will Self book that was hard going!

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I've read one and a half Will Self books, and I think that's enough for this lifetime!

Brave new world

Many of these were curriculum books I grew up with. They remind me of school lessons and forced reading to analyse the story. Shame it's put me off what are no doubt great reads.

In addition to those mentioned -
Nabokov - Lolita
O’Connor - Wise Blood
Norman Mailer

then go back and read them as stories rather than future exam questions. I reread 1984 recently and while it does still make you think, it's on my terms now.

Can I not add Moby Dick to this list...... I got through it, in the same way as Cav got through the Pyrenees.

Evelyn Waugh: Work Suspended & other stories (a compilation of beautiful short stories).
George Orwell: Down & Out in Paris & London (A stunning & evocative memoir).
Hemingway: Paris, a moveable feast. (Memoirs of his time in Paris as a young writer learning his craft).
Hemingway: The first 49 stories (a lovely compilation of early short stories).

Dickens is actually really readable. Don't be intimidated by the size of the books - they were the equivalent of soap operas in their day and were serialised in magazines so the chapters are short and often end on a cliffhanger. Great Expectations, Bleak House and David Copperfield are probably the big three. The stories are timeless and there's much more going on than in the TV adaptations. I'm also a fan of Conrad and Hemingway - again really easy to read, with short, to-the-point sentences and generally no messing about with time shifts etc.

The Three Musketeers series is well worth going through... I always thought it’d be stale but it rolled along nicely. Funny as f with some really inventive dick jokes.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

In cold blood
Truman Capote

I think Dickens, you're either enchanted by it or you just want to chuck it as far as you can. I've never quite understood what defines a classic author and why old is regarded as a quality. Modern literature (literature as opposed to churned out pap) can be fantastic. Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, written in 1470 is a brilliant (if impenetrable to start with) read.
I don't want to just list authors, but Evelyn Waugh, Tom Woolfe, John Le Carre, Jane Austen, PG Wodehouse, Jonathan Coe, Stephen Fry, Anthony Powell (wrote a 12 volume novel where nothing happens - brilliant!) might get you on a path from which you can explore. I just love the way you can delight in rolling the phrases around on your tongue.
Don't try David Mitchell (the author not the comedian) without a user guide and a safety net though. Ian Rankin and Iain Banks, while popular, are first class writers.
And I quite like the definition of a novel, a a story which describes the life of a person experiencing events which means that they are a different person at the end. A good novel should "inform you on the human condition". Not necessarily tell you how many baddies you can shoot.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

good call