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There are some great short novels/novellas considered classics.
Try these two for starters:
The Pearl (John Steinbeck)
The Old Man And The Sea (Ernest Hemingway
Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
A Clockwork Orange
Catcher in the Rye
Can I not add Moby Dick to this list…… I got through it
Same here, just didn't think it was very interesting. Quite funny at the start, but pretty boring once they go to sea. Lots of whale facts, if you're into that sort of thing.
Jane Austen, Thackeray, George Eliot, Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell - I've been "getting into" the C19 classics now I have more free time. Having been cycling round the countryside a lot in the last year, they make a lot more sense to me now as I've been riding past villages not *that* much different from the settings of a lot of these.
I always like a good Dorothy Sayers too but possibly too modern / genre to be considered classics?
Although it’s debatable if they are “classics”, I really enjoy Robert Louis Stevenson
Definitely classics. As well as being enduringly popular there has been a real reassessment of RLS in academic circles. He was out of fashion in that regard in part because of his popularity but there's way more to him.
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes is superb, perhaps the best thing I've read in the last year.
Dostoevsky is very accessible
This is a joke right?
No joke - Dostoevsky is solid red route riding for the improving mountain biker, imho. Some rocky sections that feel tricky first time out, a few fast berms, a chute or two with some stepdowns. But excellent trail design with nice lines of sight and no mandatory air.
The Brothers K is a bit chewy, mind - you wouldn't start there. It's not hard on a page by page level but I found the story difficult to get into (which I think is a common complaint), and it's a big book to read if you're not really feeling the basic narrative.
Right any decent easy to read books from any era! 👍👍👍 I meant classics in a general rather than time sense.
Thanks be again for the suggestions.
Dostoevsky is solid red route riding
If someone asked me for easy mountain biking I wouldn't point them at a red! 🙂
It is a long time since I read Dostoevsky and it's possible there are better translations so maybe I should give him another go. I don't recall finding him difficult to read, just dull.
The Crow Road, by Iain Banks. Has possibly the greatest opening sentence of any book writ.
Ulysses
You have got to be kidding...One of the greatest works of literature, indeed.
Easy reading...no way...My paperpack fell apart before I finished it...
Candide by Voltaire is pretty easy reading. Short chapters, not complex, moves along
I greatly enjoyed the Dostoevsky red route analogy. Also totally agree with Candide. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Sant Exupery is also great, though not a novel. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding is a riot. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn also enjoyable. Just avoid anything by Thomas Hardy and Henry James.
Infinite Jest.
I promise there are no complicated words at all (maybe just some made up drugs in the footnotes, don't need to worry about those though)
As already mentioned:
Three Men In A Boat.
The Hemingway short stories.
Most Graham Greene.
The Conan Doyle Holmes stuff.
Anything by Rider Haggard.
And....
Huxley, Brave New World.
Most Isaac Asimov.
Spike Milligan's war memoirs.
Anthony Burgess, pretty much anything tbh.
Not sure I’ve seen many suggestions that are easy read yet! I guess that depends o where the OP is coming from but most classic books are nothing like easy read I guess.
But I’d suggest anything by John Steinbeck (I know he has been mentioned) but I’d start with Grapes of Wrath.
Infinite Jest
Worth the expense of getting a wood burner with all the damage to people's health that entails just to be able to watch it burn, page by turgid page.
IMO, of course.
Hunt for Red October.
Also currently working my way through Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books. Lots of shorter stories in there too.
Not sure I’ve seen many suggestions that are easy read yet!
In the beginning, there was F R Leavis.
Before The Great Tradition there were no 'classics'.
And now there are many, but Austen is brilliant, Eliot is measured, James i know nothing of, and Conrad is precise.
Of these, Conrad is probably more interesting, not just because of the whole 'chick-lit' variation, which i know is a bit shit because Middlemarch is obviously the better book here, but jeez look at the thickness of the thing, but i'm pinning it all on starting with The Heart of Darkness and then reading The Secret Agent, which is hugely underappreciated given its prescience.
Middlemarch is a great book.
Dickens is also a great shout, but not Bleak House, Great Expectations is a better 'in'.
In the circumstances, i'd second Clockwork Orange if you enjoyed Catch-22, you'll get into it if you let yourself go.
It is easy only once you have defeated its difficulty, and you will, and it will be rewarding.
Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Very short and easy to read but a great book with an inspiring message.
If you're the only person who didn't read it at school, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Hunt for Red October.
Easy to read but by no measure is it a classic book!
All of William Golding’s novels. A 20th Century great who won the Nobel Prize for literature. So much more than The Lord of the Flies to be discovered there. My favourite is the Rites of Passage trilogy.
Also see: Peter Carey, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Hilary Mantel (A Place of Greater Safety is a fantastic primer on the French Revolution).
Not sure how easy you're looking for, but:
William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man
Ursula Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea (and the other Earthsea books)
Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road
Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Very short and easy to read but a great book with an inspiring message.
+1, very easy to read. Though I did find it curiously like a good ‘Chinglish’ takeaway, ie utterly delightful and filling, then next morning I was more hungry than I was before I ate the takeout.
Still recommended.
I've skim read and not seen mention of Arthur Ransom yet.
When I was a kid I remember being given a massive 4" thick book, which was Swallows and Amazons and another book on the second half. Pretty daunting but I was hooked and have always read since. (It was thick as it was large print!)
Carefree adventures, boats, camping, adventures, what's not too like. Huge range of books based in The Lakes and Norfolk Broads. He has some older stuff about Russia which I didn't find as interesting.
Border Trilogy Cormac McCarthy
Easy, classic and I still love it as a grown up, Whinnie the Pooh.
.
Also any of the Jeeves and Worcester books.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Classic western - and an amazing book.
Reminds me, must give it another go!
any of the Jeeves and Worcester books
Heard they're a bit saucy
I think Dickens, you’re either enchanted by it or you just want to chuck it as far as you can
I'm in the "chuck it" camp: they're turgid victorian prose which might have made sense when you're stuck in a smelly steam train for a couple of hours and only have to read this week's chapter, but as a modern reader they're a nightmare of longwinded descriptions, with lots of fluff and little meat.
I'd suggest Shakespeare. Hamlet is surprisingly readable, once you learn to ignore the weird words (you can look them up later) and just enjoy the story. Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet - the same.
Count of monte christo is excellent
I found checkov the easiest of the Russian lot to read.
Sherlock's good and accessible too
Couldn't hack Dickens back in the day but in my 50s and with a better historic background it's a whole nother story. If stuff doesn't float your boat now just pick up something that does, it's still going to be there later if you change your mind 😉
DezB
Full MemberIn addition to those mentioned –
Nabokov – Lolita
The world of online noncery has cast a dark shadow on this book.
Thomas Hardy : Tess of the D'Urbevilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge are both easy reads and fantastic novels. I highly, highly recommend them both. Neither are exactly cheery though.
A few slightly more modern suggestions. If they're not classics yet then most of them bloody well should be soon
The entire Discworld series
The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series (a trilogy in 5 parts etc...)
The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit
The Harry Potter series (aimed at Kids but they're actually quite good)
The world of online noncery has cast a dark shadow on this book.
Maybe to you, but it's still a classic piece of writing and a very funny book, as far as I remember.
One classic I wouldn't recommend is Dracula. Seriously dull.
Quite a few suggestions along the lines of 'X is an easy read if you ignore...'
So not an easy read then.
Let's be honest, if you want an easy reading classic you want a good story well told*. No authorly tricks or overtly probing the human psyche. Just a good yarn who's depths reveal themselves slowly or over multiple readings. The ones that every generation keeps coming back to and finding something new because that's what a classic is.
*Which is the hardest thing of all to do.
a good story simply told
100% agree - hence my suggestions above
The entire Discworld series
The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series (a trilogy in 5 parts etc…)
The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit
The Harry Potter series (aimed at Kids but they’re actually quite good)
Despite their popularity these are actually a bit niche because as many people hate them as love them. Sci-Fi and Fantasy really divide people I think. And I say that as someone who loves some of your suggestions.
100% agree – hence my suggestions above
I edited that to well told. Do you still agree? 🙂