Home Forums Chat Forum Your favourite 'classic' read

Viewing 26 posts - 81 through 106 (of 106 total)
  • Your favourite 'classic' read
  • Northwind
    Full Member

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

    Kindles have opened up classics a lot I think, because they’re so often cheap or free. So I thought fine, I’ll broaden my reading a bit but frankly most are disappointing. A mix of age and expectations I suppose. Tale of Two Cities was the low point, it’s just nonsense. Manette’s letter’s possibly the most unintentionally hilarious thing in the history of literature… “I write this unbelievably florid and overly-wordy endless letter full of repetition and deviation with an iron spike on my own blood, using a convenient 500-sheet pack of A4 paper that someone left in my cell…”

    It’s got about 2 good pages, one right at the start and one right at the end. Cheers for that Dickens.

    monde
    Free Member

    Jock of the bushveld – Percy FitzPatrick

    A South African classic that I have reread a number of times since I was young.

    tenfoot
    Full Member

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

    Serialised on Amazon Prime and well worth a watch

    Favourite classic for me is War of the Worlds

    makecoldplayhistory
    Free Member

    Catch 22 by Heller

    It’s a good book but a share that Heller dropped the pages and couldn’t quite get the chapters back into the correct order.

    Nothing more than good though. Very over-rated.

    Malvern Rider
    Free Member

    (Lazy pics)


    ‘Noggin and the Dragon’ is a masterpiece.

    Malvern Rider
    Free Member

    And (thanks to this thread reminding me of Titus) found this stack of wood for just 50p whilst at the vets yesterday 🙂 Only ever read half of ‘Gormenghast’ and nothing else by Peake. That was decades ago so really quite looking fwd to it.

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    Fond memories of The Sydney Lending Library there.

    DezB
    Free Member

    Malvern rider, please turn your books the right way up or flip your photos.
    Or type the titles. We will believe you own them.

    (I see Lolita in there – great book)

    fatmax
    Full Member

    RLS – Treasure Island.
    Perhaps not the ‘best’ book but a great read.
    My dad read it to me a load as a kid (massively fond memories of him doing so), so I read the kids version to my son a few years ago and he’s now read it himself. Then I picked it up on holiday a couple of years ago and read it straight off…what a fantastic adventure story. Loved it, and the sort of book you could read time and time again.

    Kids books – The Gruffalo in Scots…is off the scale good 😀

    StefMcDef
    Free Member

    As a kid, I enjoyed animal stories – White Fang, Call Of The Wild, Watership Down.

    Became a bit obsessed with Orwell in my teens and devoured everything he wrote, with my favourite being Keep The Aspidistra Flying.

    Did a degree in English and was force-fed classics for several years, which pretty much put me off reading them subsequently.

    I enjoyed the Scottish Literature component of my course more than the rest of it. I remember being particularly taken with George Douglas Brown’s The House With The Green Shutters and the Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg.

    Northwood’s Kyril Bonfiglioli quote definitely struck a chord.

    whitestone
    Free Member

    Tess of the D’Urbevilles by Hardy is probably my all time favourite. Hard to pick a favourite from Conrad, maybe The Shadow Line.

    Did To Kill a Mockingbird as my O-Level (we’re talking mid 1970s now) English literature book so slightly overdosed on it.

    Cowman
    Full Member

    Robert A Heinlein – Starship Troopers. A modern classic.

    PimpmasterJazz
    Free Member

    LOTR.

    *thinks*

    Yeah, LOTR.

    Not sure if Shadow of the Wind counts as a classic, but I’d argue it has all the makings of one.

    anonymouse
    Free Member

    Code of the Woosters. Closely followed by any other Wodehouse.

    Malvern Rider
    Free Member

    Malvern rider, please turn your books the right way up or flip your photos.
    Or type the titles. We will believe you own them.

    yadayada. I just like posting pics. Anyway, which way do you read best? Vertical or horizontal? Can’t cater for everyone, tchoh! Tsk, &c 😉

    ‘Lolita’ – Mrs MR’s recent re-acquisition. I read it in my teens and remember how creepy it was. Haven’t the stomach for disturbing fiction these days, yet used to soak up horror and psych stuff up until my late twenties. See also ‘The Magus’ and ‘The Collector’ by John Fowles. Brrrr.

    joolsburger
    Free Member

    Add my vote for The grapes of wrath, as perfect as a book gets IMHO.
    The Iron Man by Ted Hughes just re-read with my lad and its such a lovely kids book.
    Not sure they are old enough to be classics but Louis de Bernieres South American trilogy are amazing reads.

    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    Brideshead Revisited.

    It’s as if Waugh took an indelible pen and drew a line under the history of Britain and from then on we set off on a new path.

    crashtestmonkey
    Free Member

    Not a single book but I love HG Wells (and to a slightly lesser extent Jules Verne). Sci-fi seen through the lens of turn-of-the-century technology and society, and with that era’s slightly florid prose (by modern standards).

    maxlite
    Free Member

    and another for ‘Crime and Punishment’

    Also slightly more modern ‘USA’ by John Dos Passos

    egb81
    Free Member

    Perfume – Patrick Suskind
    1984 – Orwell
    Galapagos – Vonnegut
    Slaughterhouse Five – Vonnegut
    The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

    Waderider
    Free Member

    Ripley Bogle eh? I remember Frank Ormsby, my English teacher reading this out in class. I subsequently bought it and read it many years later, excellent. But not a classic.

    Of Mice and Men? Orwell? Don’t know.

    Got Brave New World to read soon.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Never really been bothered with most of the so-called ‘classics’, I started reading SF pretty early on, and I’ve always been much more interested in speculative fiction than what’s already happened. I’ve read pretty much all of JG Ballard’s SF, including Crash, although I’m not entirely sure that can be classed as SF, though.
    Read LOTR and The Hobbit around the same sort of time, I doubt I could read them now.

    vickypea
    Free Member

    Thomas Hardy- Tess of The D’Urbervilles
    DH Lawrence- Sons and Lovers
    Emily Bronte- Wuthering Heights

    One of my favourite books ever is Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, but not old enough to be a classic

    ferrals
    Free Member

    Would say Cormac McCarthy counts, I’d go for The Road as an honourable mention.
    I’ll also have Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrants and Guildenstern are Dead. I know it’s a play but I’ve read the script loads.
    Final honourable mention would be Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding.

    All time best, hard to say but I’ll second bleak house for the reason it’s the only one mentioned so far that made me think, I’ll read that again

    Cletus
    Full Member

    Cider with Rosie – Laurie Lee
    Animal Farm – Orwell
    Cannery Row – Steinbeck

    funkmasterp
    Full Member

    Asimov’s foundation trilogy.

    The Odyssey.

    Gulliver’s travels.

    If any modern authors can be classed as classics I’ll throw in Don Winslow’s Power Of The Dog and Cartel.

Viewing 26 posts - 81 through 106 (of 106 total)

The topic ‘Your favourite 'classic' read’ is closed to new replies.