Your favourite 'classic' read

The Alchemist, To Kill A Mockingbird and some Hemmingway.

The Magic Faraway tree – Enid Blyton.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Have you read Birds Without Wings? Same author, set before and leading into (kind of) Captain Corelli. Best book I’ve ever read. It’s like Captain Corelli but on a much grander scale.

To be honest, everything De Bernierres has written is gold. His South American Trilogy is utterly captivating.

I have Flying_Ox. My 5 year old recently saw a Top Gear with Clarkson and told me, “That man or bikes are on the front of all your stories Daddy”. It’s true. I’m a magazine-on-the-bog man. I do love everything LDB ever wrote and that’s an exception to someone who generally sees novels as a bit of a chore.

The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman comes a close second to CC’s Mandolin, but there’s just something about the latter that makes it perfect IMO. Birds Without Wings was excellent: perhaps just a little too dense for me.

Anything by PG Wodehouse.

Intereted to see someone listed Moby Dick – I’ve just read that. Had great moments, but is padded through most of the middle of the book with information about fish/whales/whaling which, though interesting, doesn’t make for an exciting read. The language is also so far removed from modern day writing that I couldn’t call it a favourite.

I’d list:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Lord Of the Flies
The Fight (Norman Mailer)
Long time since I read any Hemingway, so hard to pick a favourite.

Just thought of another couple –

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
Brighton Rock

The Snail and the Whale.

Gold star:

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

And written in his third language, utterly extraordinary

As for Steinbeck it’s very difficult to choose a favourite or a best, I thought I’d never read anything to match Grapes of Wrath but then I read East of Eden. The only conclusion I came to was that for me he’s the best writer I have ever read.

Catch 22 by Heller

Everything else by him is dross though – that was clearly a fluke.

The Snail and the Whale

Pffft, not even the best book by that author.

Grapes of Wrath is a one time read, all be it a great one…it actually got to the point where I was dreading the next page.

Grapes of Wrath is a one time read, all be it a great one…it actually got to the point where I was dreading the next page.

But then, when you read the final page, the whole story becomes clear. It is a thing of beauty. So often when I read a book I get to the end thinking either:

1 – Thank god I have got through that, it was rubbish.

or

2 – Ohh please don’t let this be the end, I want it to carry on forever.

But with Grapes of Wrath you know that the story has reached a perfect conclusion and there is nothing left to say.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Honourable mention:
Catch-22

Both “modern” classics, but important nonetheless.

Oh gawd, how could I have forgotten:
Wise Blood (Flannery O’Connor)
and The Harder They Fall (Budd Schulberg)

OP said pick 1 – so: Cuckoo’s Nest. The rest very honourable mentions 🙂

Fwiw most of the ‘classic’ classics listed above I read decades ago. I feel no compunction to go back. But these I do:

Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis. Probably gets it. Most reread book.

Earthly Powers – Anthony Burgess. Too prolific, needs reappraisal.

The Witsun Weddings – Philip Larkin. It’s a book. Also a classic.

And I dunno

The High Window – Raymond Chandler, or
Bluebeard – Kurt Vonnegut or some
Mid-period Elmore Leonard

Hang on, late entry…

The Goldfinch – Donna Tart. Might actually displace Lucky Jim, disrupting the emergent middle-aged misanthrope white guy theme…

If This is a Man, Primo Levi

Mid-period Elmore Leonard

Love him, but I don’t think he’s regarded as a classic writer, yet.

I thought we’d settled it that classic means classic?

The Snail and the Whale

Pffft, not even the best book by that author.

It so is. It’s a perfect, beautiful, poetic nugget of loveliness.

You’ve been snared by the crass commercialism and populist thrills of the authors other works.

You’ve been snared by the crass commercialism and populist thrills of the authors other works.

Well I think we have most (if not all) of her works and I have to admit to having a very soft spot for the tale of the mouse in the big, dark wood but I am actually quite fond of the big bloke in the nice clothes.

I have a signed copy of Cave Baby. 🙂

pfftt, if we’re talking of her works, then the clear winner is the one about the disparate group seeking accommodation on the main protagonist’s perambulatory device, and how such a disparate group all contribute to the overall success and ultimately demise of the journey.

A Clockwork Orange in first.

August 1914 – Solzhenitsyn.
The Sun Also Rises – Hemingway.
Three Men In A Boat -JKJ.

Just read, for the first time, To Kill a Mocking Bird. Really enjoyed it, beautifully written.

Plus 1 for catch 22.

Just finished reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, (of Bladerunner fame).

Very interesting read set post WW2 where Germany and Japan have won and split the US into three differently controlled zones.

Everything else by him is dross though – that was clearly a fluke.

Aye absolutely, Catch-22 is my favourite book ever though so he nailed that one in my eyes

To kill a mockingbird and M*A*S*H are my other two. All first read in my teens and are the only books I’ll return to again and again to read

johnx2 – Member
Fwiw most of the ‘classic’ classics listed above I read decades ago. I feel no compunction to go back.

I’ve stuffed my Kindle with lots of the dirt cheap/free ‘Complete Works’.

It’s freed a lot of shelf space and I’ve reread much I’ve not read since a teenager.
Dickens I prefer as an adult, still can’t stand Hardy and Chesterton, in hindsight, is a bit of a windbag.
Rereading and enjoying Margaret Atwood at the mo.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Catch 22
Lord of the Rings.

honourable mentions to most of Kafka’s short stories, and a lot of Gunther Grass plays.

Moby Dick was entertaining enough, despite the padding. I tried some Solzhenizyn, but I think Cancer Ward was a bit too daunting for a 16 year old. Might try it again now I’m in a better position to understand it.

Got put off Dickens by a dull English teacher who managed to make Bleak House a chore. Might give him another go.

Oh, and I need to read some Steinbeck.

Aye absolutely, Catch-22 is my favourite book ever though so he nailed that one in my eyes

Best book ever written, by a country mile IMHO. We were chatting about our favourite books the other night, and I was only thinking how I’ve not read it for a few years, so its due for its periodic re-reading 🙂

Are we classing JG Ballard as ‘classic’? Anything he’s ever written is worth a read, and will definitely stand the test of time, I would think

But with Grapes of Wrath you know that the story has reached a perfect conclusion and there is nothing left to say.

Agreed.

perchypanther – Member

The Snail and the Whale

Pffft, not even the best book by that author.

It so is. It’s a perfect, beautiful, poetic nugget of loveliness.
If we’re talking childrens books, my favourite is ‘some dogs do’, it’s ace.

If we’re talking childrens books, my favourite is ‘some dogs do’.

Agreed.,, It’s a belter…..His dad turned out be a bit of a dark horse, didn’t he?

#plottwist

There are so many fantastic children’s books. Unfortunately my two are having Emily Feather read to them as their bedtime book right now – bloody awful, barely readable.

Puckoon – Spike Milligan

I’ve never read Under Milk Wood but listened to it countless times, it’s superb.

Enjoy

The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
The Color Purple – Alice Walker

I have read all of these over and over again ! I like epistolary novels, it seems.

I’ve always liked:

3 Men in a Boat – Jerome K Jarome
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
Coming Up for Air – George Orwell

For sheer pride in having completed it,
Ulysses – James Joyce

No you didn’t. It is a well known fact that no one has ever finished Ulysses.

“You cannot learn too early in life that most classical literature is both dull and unimportant.” Kyril Bonfiglioli. [/quote]

Homer finished Ulysses. Whereas Nobody has heard of Bonfiglioli, which is obviously a made-up name.

So, “To the lighthouse”. I’m not afraid of her.