Classics you’ve always meant to read

Moby Dick, although I doubt I ever will read it.

Middlemarch is just wonderful. One of my favorite books.

I’ve never read a Faulkner novel. Which is the best one for a newbie?

Proust. A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Seriously. Once I saw a poll of 50 literature professors from the best universities across the globe. Unfailingly, this was hands down the most mentioned by a huge margin. I don't know if I could trudge through it all but it made me wonder why a massive majority mentioned this one.

r3: The Sound and the Fury.

Faulkner: start w As I Lay Dying. Faulkner' novels are all intertwined. Before you start, go to Wikipedia or find a good article on his mythical Yawknapatawpha County where all of his novels are set.

Dumas Malone's five part bio of Thomas Jefferson.

T E Lawrence's (Lawrence of Arabia) Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

The Magic Mountain

"The Man Without Qualities"

I started Moby Dick 2 years ago....

Anna Karenina

I was rereading Moby Dick the other day. I hadn't picked it up...well, I guess none of us has....It's worth picking up again.........It's about this whale.....

Both Buddenbrooks and Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann

Is Thomas Hardy worth reading?

James Joyce's "Ulysses" - Worth it?

R15, yes. Check out Tess of the d’Ubervilles.

^^ exquisite -

The Cairo Trilogy

100 years of Solitude was a slog. I'm glad I read it, and it was quite beautiful in parts, but it was a pain in the ass to get through...

Love in the Time of Cholera

I finally sat down to read Gone With The Wind. OMG! What a piece of crap! The movie is a classic. But the book is a shitfest. Selznick really was a genius after all.

I can understand never reading Mby-Dick, because it's long and has all those boring encyclopedic passages. Or Ulysses, because it's so long and hard.

But Jane Eyre? And one of Thomas Hardy's novels? They're incredibly (indeed, FAMOUSLY) readable, and they're just not that long.

You're just lazy if you're not read them.

Don’t be a book shamer, R23.

R13 hey, Roz!

I loved "Buddenbrooks" and "Moby Dick".

"War and Peace" and "Bleak House" are the ones I really keep meaning to dive into.

Haaaaated Tess; wanted to slap her and scream WAKE UP!

R2 Why is Middlemarch so wonderful?

1. Plot?

2. Prose?

3. George's innate good sense?

4. An excuse to escape from 6 weeks of ghastly modern life finding out about 19th century life?

(Does one need to be a Methodist to appreciate the myriads of nuance?)

I've tried connecting to Vanity Fair but I find it annoying and trivial.

I feel the same as R4. I own the set; I shall, I WILL finish it before I die, this I vow!

I have a BA in English lit, have read most of the above, but fully admit I can't get through Ulysses.

Portrait is great. The Dubliners is great. But I just can't with Ulysses. Have tried several times.

And don't even get me started on Finnegans Wake. I had PhD professors from good schools who couldn't make heads nor tails of that tome.

I honestly think Joyce was brilliant, but also nuts. And as time went on, he was very into himself and there was no one capable of editing him.

R19 The Cairo Trilogy is brilliant! If you're not reading it in Arabic, I found the Brit translation a better read than the American.

Sense and Sensibility, Austen

Our Mutual Friend (the only one of Dickens I haven't read)

The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendahl

The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy

Anything by Elias Canetti.

Jackie Collins Lucky.

Gone With The Wind

La Princess De Clèves

Ronna Jaffe The Best of Everything

La Rouge et le Noir

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Liaisons Dangereuses is good in French but not in translation. Its otherworldly. I never got around to La Princesse de Clèves.

Oh, smell R36!

R23 was trying to ruin the spirit of this thread.

Brideshead Revisited

I love Jane Eyre but have always found Wuthering Heights impossible to get through.

R31 If you have a degree in English, you should know it's "Dubliners," not "The Dubliners." No wonder you couldn't get through "Ulysses" (or do you call it "The Ulysses"?)

Tess of the d'urbervilles and Jane Eyre both must reads. Wuthering heights too.

I just read Jane Austen over and over again. She really was the perfect writer.

There's alot of stuff I want to read . . .

War and Peace

Remembrance of Things Past

Confederacy of Dunces

Gulliver's travels (reads passages of it in HS, but not the entire thing)

The Divine Comedy (read only Inferno)

Beloved

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The entire Canterbury Tales (and not just some of the individual stories)

Lord of the Rings (made it through the 1st book and the first quarter of the 2nd)

Middlemarch

Vanity Fair

The Iliad & The Odyssey (like with Chaucer & Swift, I read only passages in school)

The Dark Tower series (I read the first two books when they came out - LOVED the 2nd one in fact - but never continued after that)

The American

Back off, R41, being picky about Joyce titles is my purview.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I haven't read it yet because Hardy depresses me beyond measure as much as I like his work. There's no way I'm going near Jude the Obscure.

I'd like to finish Les Misérables. I don't mind Hugo's style, but his plot contrivances annoy me.

Many "'classics" are just stories told in their time. Do not read them with today's sensibilities, just read and enjoy them for the story they told then.

Dracula

Frankenstein

The Fountainhead

The Once and Future King

The Great Gatsby

To Kill A Mockingbird

Brideshead Revisited

A Confederacy of Dunces

Candide

R42 do you mean The Tess of the d'urbervilles and The Jane Eyre and The Wuthering Heights?

Elias Canetti is hot!

Indeed, MOBY DICK will painstakingly tell you more about whales than you ever thought possible. But there are more than enough thrilling episodes throughout the book that will raise you up and may even make you delirious. The book more than earns its reputation for greatness. It was so good it propelled me to read both TYPEE and OMOO, but mileage may vary.

MIDDLEMARCH is graced each page by the exquisite writing of George Eliot. No writer I know can craft a sentence with the grace and beauty that flows from her pen. The ideas are big, but her brilliance in using words and her craft in creating sentences really is raised to the level of art. It is apparent passage after passage. The book is unforgettable.

[quote] I finally sat down to read Gone With The Wind. OMG! What a piece of crap! The movie is a classic. But the book is a shitfest. Selznick really was a genius after all.

The book is excellently done as a potboiler. But THIS thread is about classics, and GWTW, for all its pleasures, is NOT a classic.

What Happened? By HRC

How does Datalounge feel about Don Quixote?

R50 I read Don Quixote in the original for Spanish class. Never read it in English. In Spanish, it was a lovely story that I still remember all these years later. Also read Lope de Vega in Spanish, but not as memorable because I can't remember which of his books I read.

I finally got around to reading Wuthering Heights last month. I'd actually thought I'd read it in my teens but I was deluding myself. I imagined that it was a conventional romance on the moors bodice ripper and am surprised at how dark and brutal it is.

I'm a great fan of Vanity Fair and am reading it now for the third time.

Having read many of the books mentioned above, I would most highly recommend Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. It has great characters and the tension of actual plotting that truly makes you want to read each new chapter.

And there are plot twists you won't see coming!

I’ve never read any Dickens other than A Christmas Carol. What’s the best novel to read?

^ Great Expectations is the best because it has a plot with some psychological sense.

Most of the others are painfully episodic because he strung out them out with needless waffle to fill out 20 monthly issues of a magazines.

I agree about Great Expectations but I also loved David Copperfield, Bleak House and Dombey and Son.

But as humane and glorious as Dickens is, I really couldn't appreciate his writing until I hit my 50s.

Has Edith Wharton gone out of favor? She's rarely mentioned in these kinds of threads.

The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country and Ethan Frome are all must-reads. Odd, but I never cared for The Age of Innocence.

God, I cannot stand Dickens, and I hated Great Expectations; the plotting resembled daytime TV and the sentimentality was just off-the-charts.

The Lusiads

For an introduction to Dickens, I'd agree with Dombey and Son. It's actually quite dark in portraying how Dombey mistreats his daughter (and his son) and is concise compared to some others. I liked the Pickwick Papers too.

I liked "Sense & Sensibility" until the ridiculous ending. "Don Quixote" is very funny and touching.

I haven't read any Proust, and should soon.

Swann's Way was brilliant. Within a Budding Grove was a good read. Guermantes Way lost me ten years ago, and I've never picked it up again.

I've read all the Dickens novels. My favourites are Pickwick Papers (his first novel, popular from the start and still widely admired to this day) and Martin Chuzzlewit (not popular when first published and hated by Americans for reasons you'll discover when reading it). The only Dickens novel I'm reticent about is Hard Times because there is no humour to relieve the gloom.

I read The Mayor of Casterbridge in college and I remember it being very gripping (but that's a long time ago so I don't remember much else). War and Peace is actually extremely readable once you get past the first chapter (and I skipped through the chapters with Napoleon and the battle scenes). Anna Karenina is one of the few famous novels I've read more than once.

I was supposed to read Middlemarch for a course and could not get into it, and tried again some years later and still had the same problem. I'm not sure that I've ever tried another Eliot--maybe I read The Mill on the Floss or Silas Marner in my 20s but am not sure.

The Red and the Black (Rouge et Noir) is extremely readable--a great coming of age psychological novel, in some ways very modern. Not a slog.

Lord of the Rings is not IMO great literature, but they are great addictive stories and as I recall, I binged all four of them in a summer during college. Just because there are 4 books shouldn't make them seem like a chore. You will get hooked, I promise.

r57: I was a big Edith Wharton fan for a while. I think the House of Mirth was my favorite. I remember also reading a terrific biography of her that was from 1975 by RWB Lewis (just looked it up). It had a lot about her relationship with Henry James (they were close friends). There are newer bios that are probably very good as well.

I love The House of Mirth. It’s one of my favorite novels.

The House of Mirth is sublime. The film adaptation is also very good. It’s directed by Terence Davies who is soon to turn Richard McCann’s Mother of Sorrows into a film (starring Marisa Tomei and Paul Dano).

I keep saying I’ll read the classics and I get ten pages in and start thinking, even though the stories and struggles are universal to mankind, can I plove through this long-winded elderly white person world of boringness to get the moral at the end of the story. Or am I just a moron?

This is MY eternal struggle. Literature or Real Houswives. It’s so much easier not to think.

[quote]But Jane Eyre? And one of Thomas Hardy's novels? They're incredibly (indeed, FAMOUSLY) readable, and they're just not that long.

Once I started Jane Eyre, I couldn't put it down. I read it in high school. It wasn't required. It was just that good.

Middlemarch is a very good read, do it OP.

Moby Dick, anything by Faulkner or Proust. I don't think I would have read Conrad if it hadn't been on the syllabus. Cursed every single line while I was reading it. It wasn't that bad, but annoyed the hell out of my young self.

The final page of James Joyce's Ulysses is definitely worth it R16. You can read just that one, I've read it many times. The rest I haven't.

With R20 on 100 years of Solitude. It was unreadable and I managed to get through it somehow, and I guess I'm glad I read it, but man....

R31 thank you for your post. I loved Portrait of the Artist, which is why I gave it go with Ulysses and ended up with that final last page. Glad I did, it is worth it.

R35 Les Liaisons dangereuses is a fantastic read, I must have read it 2 or 3 times between the ages 16-25 and so had several of my friends at the time. It's not a difficult read and it's a very exciting book.

Same thing with Wuthering Heights R40. I've tried several times over the past quarter of a century, and failed each. I usually give up after page 3 (or is it page 2?)

Didn't love Jane Eyre as it was bleak as fuck, but managed to read it.

Adored Jean Rhy's Wide Sargasso Sea.

R45 you'll be pleased to know that Jude the Obscure is even more depressing than the film with Kate Winslet ("your child killed my babies"), if that were even possible. There's an epilogue in the book that wasn't in the film, and it is bleak, bleak, bleakest.

Flaubert's Sentimental Education. Balzac's short stories. The Cantebury Tales. Dune by Frank Herbert. Riddey Walker.

......In Spanish I wanna read: Isabel Allende, Julio Cortazar, Roberto Bolano.

Dickens recommendations: A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, with my favourite character names, Wackford Squeers and Newman Noggs

War and Peace

The Brothers Karamazov

The Count of Monte Cristo

Anna Karenina

iI loved Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo when I was younger. Those are rousing adventure stories. The sequel to 3M, Twenty Years After, I think it was called was depressing. Dumas was like James Michener, wrote a couple of good books and then afterwards just wrote outlines and had others fill in the rest. (For Michener, Tales of the South Pacific and loved Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo when I was younger. Those are rousing adventure stories. The sequel to 3M, Twenty Years After, I think it was called was depressing. Dumas was like James Michener, wrote a couple of good books and then afterwards just wrote outlines and had others fill in the rest. (For Michener, Tales of the South Pacific and loved Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo when I was younger. Those are rousing adventure stories. The sequel to 3M, Twenty Years After, I think it was called was depressing. Dumas was like James Michener, wrote a couple of good books and then afterwards just wrote outlines and had others fill in the rest. (For Michener, Tales of the South Pacific and Return to Paradise were good)

For the poster who couldn't get into Wuthering Heights. It's told as a flashback so the first chapter you could probably skip.

I 've read most of Dickens but the episodic nature and the sentimentality are too much now. Especially hated Little Nell. Bleak House I enjoyed and Great Exp. I even read Martin Chuzzlewit but don't remember a thing about it. Sometimes it's better to see the movie first to better grasp the overall story. Bleak House had a good one with Gillian Anderson.

Ive read some Balzac, a long time ago but I should try again.

Red and Black is on my list.

Does Rebecca count as a classic? I've been planning to read that for years, and never gotten around to it.

Ditto for Great Expectations.

Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel are really just early versions of bodice rippers, not great literature.

You might enjoy Rebecca if you've never seen the film and have no idea where it's going.

I haven't read Tess or Jude but Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native and Far From the Madding Crowd are all spectacular, sexy and not particularly bleak (for Victorian novels).

Hubert Selby, The Room.

Sorry, repeated several paragraphs there. Tablet is a bit wonky.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Woman in White

Under the Volcano

Augustus Carp, Esq. by Himself (Henry Howarth Bashford

Middlemarch

100 Years Of Solitude

Midnight’s Children

Madame Bovary

War And Peace

Tristram Shandy

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

I got through 'The Hunchback Of Notre Dame' but it's unbearably prolix.

It's like picking a scab.

You peel off the basic story that was used in the film versions but there's a whole underworld of extra tedious unnecessary characters underneath and the author's antiquated social commentary.

Under the Volcano is very dense and took me all summer to get through. It's a very bleak story. Be prepared.

I really loved 100 years of Solitude, and want to assure those who haven't read it to please give it a try. The last 20 pages of the book do everything but lift you out of your seat and toss you in the sky. It's one of the books that I count as a privilege to have read.

r88 that was a VERY difficult read

Couldn't agree more, r94, especially your comment about the last 20 pages.

The Three Musketeers is fun. I recommend it as well as other classic adventure novels, e.g., Lorna Doone. They're classics because they're fun, not because you're [italic]supposed[/italic] to read them. I admit I gave up on Kidnapped when I was in my classic adventure phase.

Someone upthread mentioned Dune. This is a classic because it has many interesting ideas in it, not because it's well written. If you've never been into sci-fi, don't force yourself to read it.

I've been meaning to read Stendhal. I started Charterhouse of Parma years ago, then lost it. And I should give Russian literature another try. I've read Dr. Zhivago and that's it. I became frustrated because I couldn't follow the nicknames and patronymics and threw some book against the wall.

r97: I read a number of Dostoevsky novels the year after I finished college (I was an English major so reading Russian novels was reading for pleasure for me--I could choose what I wanted to read). And now there are all those much better translations than back in the old days, but even then, the only D. novel I couldn't get into was "Crime and Punishment." I always stopped (tried several times) when it became obvious how grim things would turn. But Brothers Karamazov, the Idiot, The Possessed are all highly readable and not a chore. These days I don't read classic novels; just good detective stuff (Michael Connelly, Jo Nesbo), but I am older and I just gave myself permission finally to give up on cultural self-improvement (I was raised by a culture vulture mother). But I might read a classic again--try some more obscure writers maybe, like Mrs. Gaskell or Elizabeth Taylor (the writer).

The Red and the Black is a good read. I read it for the first time about 10 years ago and was quite taken with it.

The Alexandria Quartet.

r100: Same here. Alexandria Quartet was just pretentious twaddle to me.

Glad to see A Tale of Two Cities mentioned as a good Dickens to read, R80.

How about Infinite Jest? I know it isn't a 19th century classic, but I consider it a classic in the sense of it being a major work by a brilliant author. I made it the whole way through, end notes included.

Always wanted to read Buddenbooks cause I was just so taken with the title!

It didn't strike me as great literature, just a long and somewhat tedious family saga with the inevitable decline of values and finances, a German version of The Forsyte Saga.

I've just ordered The Red and the Black, due to the recommendations on this thread.

Though I dearly love much of British Victorian literature, I've never been able to get into the French. I never finished Madame Bovary or Cousin Bette. But I'm hoping Stendahl doesn't disappoint.

Never got around to it-no wonder Grindr has been so useless...

I've never read "The Forsyte Saga", but "Buddenbrooks" is anything but tedious. The psychology of the characters involved in the family's struggles is fascinating, and it's a good story to boot.

I'm saving this post for my own reference. I haven't read a word of Faulkner but I have read In Search of Lost Time. Those novels are an immersion into another set of habit and morals. Thanks, everyone, for your recommendations.

The Forsyte Saga is wonderful. I mean yo get to Thomas Mann.

I respect your opinions but I found both Buddenbrooks and The Forsyte Saga shallow storytelling. I didn't get much depth or psychological insight into any of the characters. They both felt like Masterpiece Theatre serials. Good reads for sure, but not much more.

Not that it's exactly a family saga, but Trollope's The Way We Live Now is my kind of epic.

The Sheep Look up by John Brunner, A House of all nations by Christina Stead. I have been meaning to read any good novel by Ian M Banks.

Really delighted to see Under the Volcano mentioned by R90; it's one of my favorite novels, but it is, as R93 mentioned, very dense and very bleak.

I read Madame Bovary and loved it because it was the topic of Avital Ronnell's wonderfully fucked-up Crack Wars: Literature Addiction Mania. I used to want to learn French but I'm still learning small talk in Spanish. Unfortunately it is harder to find Spanish novels that are as sexy as French novels, unless anyone has novel recommendations.

Former English major here and love this thread. You guys are inspiring me to read more deeply. Middlemarch has always been on my list, now I want to tackle it.

Personally I'd never recommend Moby Dick or the Faulkner novels. Very overrated and Faulkner much like Joyce in his obtuseness and opacity. Just one man's opinion.

For a classic that's right up the average Datalounger's Alley, try Balzac's "Cousin Bette"! Cray Cray spinster (and how!) spends much of the novel plotting "revenge" on her extended family, with one helluva twisted ending!

Regarding Edith Wharton, her short story "The Bunner Sisters" defines tragedy.

Trollope's "The Way We Live Now" may seem daunting because of its length, but it's really an extended soap opera satire. It's also one of the few times where I might recommend people to watch the video, starring David Suchet (Poirot), first before tackling the book.

R113 - we read "A Light in August" for college lit class which was more than enough Faulkner for me.

The Bible, in any of its incarnations. I've tried several times but all that begatin' made me wanna begettin' outta there.

r112: Javiar Marias is the most famous living Spanish novelist. The only one I've read is "Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me" (which is a line from Shakespeare. It's strange, funny, and like nothing I've ever read. I really liked it I have another of his books sitting on my shelf, "A Heart so White" which apparently was THE Marias novel people read in the '80s, according to the literary friend who gave it to me. There is also the late Roberto Bolano (Chilean by birth I believe) whom I've never read, but who has been very popular in the last 15 years or so--"Savage Detectives" is also sitting on my shelf. There is another one of his that I think won a lot of literary prizes "2666"--very long but people raved about it. I imagine there is a Bolano fan lurking somewhere on DL. (Bolano has a tilde over the N but I don't have a Spanish keyboard).

Bolano-mania seemed to peak just as he died -- there was a frenzy about 2666 -- but his star seems to have faded a bit over the past decade.

Thank you R116. Bolano's Savage Detectives in English has been siting on read on my bookshelf for a few years. I think It will be great when I do get around to reading it. Bolano's star seems to have faded and that reminds me of the same thing happening to David Foster Wallace. Javier Marias is one I have heard of, I shall look for his novels when I go to the bookshop today.

My favorite Trollopes:

The Way We Live Now

He Knew He Was Right

Orley Farm

They're all stand-alone novels, not part of his popular Barchester or Palliser series.

The Red and the Black is really cool, R84. You would enjoy it.

R104, try Maupassant. Bel Ami is fantastic, so are his short stories (Boule de Suif !!!!). Une Vie is utterly depressing but it is a great book. Recently translated to the silver screen as A Woman's Life. Just as depressing as the book. The others I mentioned are not depressing, and he is an outstanding writer/novelist with a very keen eye for character.

For those of you reading classics in translation, a translator can make or break a book. Publishers of classics use in-house translators, and translations vary between the American edition and the British/Commonwealth edition. If the American edition doesn't move you, try acquiring the British edition. In some instances, older editions are better translated than the newer, reissued ones, and vice-versa.

About Javier Marías....I love his novels in Spanish. But, from what I have heard, his style does not translate into English at all (long sentences, and endless descriptions, very little action). Bolaño is also very difficult, pretentious, and endless. I have read 2666 but I could not get through Savage Detectives. Life is too short. For 100 Years, I would recommend to get one of those genealogical/tree maps to trace all the Buendías. It is easier to follow. I think it is the perfect novel.

r122, who are the best translators of Russian literature in your opinion? And French?

TIA!

Many people over the last 15 years or so have raved about the couple Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I have never read a book translated by them--I read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in the old Constance Garnett version and still loved them. But there are even more recent translations of Anna Karenina (I think) that devotees recommend. You could probably start by reading sample chapters on Amazon and see who appeals to you. I would google this for the best and most recent results.

Constance Garnett produced that major emotional-manipulator, sook, and part-time gay called David Garnett

r126: "sook"?? Was that meant to be spook? Asking, since I don't know much of anything about David Garnett.

Garnett looks like a sook and he behaved like an over-indulged sooky cry-baby.

Sook-ie!

War & Peace. I'll probably read it within the next year.

I recently have been going back and reading a lot of the classics I've always meant to read, and they are classics for a reason. I've really loved them, many of them mentioned here: Thomas Hardy, Middlemarch, Bleak House.

r128: Sook is not American. Now that I know what it means, I agree--he looks like a sook. Sure had a lot of children for a gay guy.

The Bobbsey Twins Merry Days Indoors and Out Nancy Drew and the Quest of the Missing Map The Hardy Boys Service Hot Daddies The Dana Girls the Mystery at the Gatehouse

Sook = wuss.

Yeah, I googled it (sook). Apparently only used in Australia and New Zealand.

[quote]You peel off the basic story that was used in the film versions but there's a whole underworld of extra tedious unnecessary characters underneath and the author's antiquated social commentary.

LOL, you didn't get that the book was about exploring types of love, and that each character was an archetype.

Great thread.

Chekhov.

R135 No, I didn't get that Hugo's book was about exploring types of love at all. I was 22 years old when I gallantly (and foolishly) took on this 400 page monster.

Now I'm older I've decided that reading a novel in translation is a fake experience.

R124 I like the Scott Moncrieff / Kilmartin translation of Proust. Many consider it old-fashioned and too British but I think it sounds truer to the time period described in Remembrance of Things Past. I highly recommend Chasing Lost Time - Jean Findlay's biography of C.K. Scott Moncrieff . He was a fascinating guy.

[quote][R135] No, I didn't get that Hugo's book was about exploring types of love at all. I was 22 years old when I gallantly (and foolishly) took on this 400 page monster.

Eh, well, if you ever decide to give the book another go, here's a run down:

Phoebus=man slut/pussy hound who slept around and saw all women as cum dumpsters, so he represents pure wanton lust/libido

Dom Frollo=represents dark obsession/possessive love that often results in fatal attraction (as in, "if I can't have you, nobody can")

Gringoire=love of knowledge/books/reading/writing, but at the expense of personal relationships

Esmeralda=immature love of a teenage girl, based purely on looks and status (looking handsome, being a knight in shining armor or Prince Charming), so represents the silly "puppy dog crush" and teen idol worship

Old Penitent (or whatever the old lady in the cell was called; I forget)=maternal love

Quasimodo=first represents a "dog-like" love that a child has for a guardian or parent (slavish devotion regardless of how mean or abusive the guardian is), but then develops the purest love there is, completely devoid of any cynicism (for Esmeralda)

That is a beautiful analysis, R139, I'm still not getting near that book again (I'm not R137, and I was way too young when I tried the first time).

Although I might be tempted... but noooo!!!

Regarding best translators/translations, skip individual translators and go with publisher editions: Penguin Classics, Wordsworth Classics, Oxford (World) Classics, Vintage Classics, Everyman's Library, Contemporary Classics. May I also suggest perusing the various editions on the Book Depository (bookdepository.com) site, which, in addition to offering a wide range of both US and UK editions, also offers free worldwide shipping.

Pere Goriot

The Grey sex series! Now that is great literature!

R113, do go for it! MIDDLEMARCH has a tremendous number of votes in this thread. Especially when you consider it weighs at least 22 pounds in any edition. The writing is magnificent.

Thomas Hardy Books

I put off reading Middlemarch for years because I always thought it would feel like homework. But I found it utterly delightful start to finish. Really fun read.

Vanity Fair

Middlemarch is great but it's not where to start if you've never read any Victorian literature. I mean, c'mon!

My vote would be Great Expectations or The Mayor of Casterbridge.

This thread has convinced/guilted me into borrowing the Kindle version of "Far From the Madding Crowd" from my public library.

I don't think 19th century novels are readable on a Kindle.

I lose track of the plot amongst all that prolix verbiage.

Totally disagree, R148. I think even if someone has never read any book before, Middlemarch is where they should start.

Kind of obscure, but Wilkie Collins "Armadale" is gay, gay, gay!

I'm a slow reader, but zoomed through "Vanity Fair". It's a very entertaining story, but I thought the last 50 or so pages kind of dragged and seemed like padding.

I know it is a cliche of fusty books earlier generations were forced to read, but I finally read Eliot's "Silas Marner" a few years ago and found it quite touching and interesting in depicting what was probably epilepsy. Might be a good start before attempting the more ambitious (and richer) "Middlemarch" or "Daniel Deronda." (I've never attempted "The Millon the Floss"). I think Dickens is easier and more fun-- and "Oliver Twist," "David Copperfield," and "Great Expectations" are the most accessible. I hope to read "Domgey and Son," "Little Dorrit," and "Our Mutual Friend" this winter.

Hardy is my favorite of the late Victorians/early modernists. "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Return of the Native" are my favorites, though "Tess" may be more iconic. "Far from the Madding Crowd" is good, but less satisfying. my friends tell me "Jude" is impossibly depressing.

Ditto Vanity Fair and the Mill on the Floss.

This is a great thread. Two classic works I've never got around to reading are "Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather and "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers. I've heard both novels raved about, but never picked them up.

I'm one of those people who has lots of never-read books on the shelves.

R156, I absolutely love The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Wonderful.

This thread has made me realise just how many classics I've not read - no Hardy or Dickens or Proust or Thackeray. With Austen I've only read Pride and Prejudice but enjoyed it a lot - I like how one character will essentially tell another to 'go fuck yourself' but in the most genteel of terms. I like Wharton as well R57 but must admit the hope of a comeuppance for the odious main character was what kept me going to the end of The Custom of the Country. She's one of the most unpleasant characters I've ever encountered and I've read Dracula! This is a great thread for giving pointers of who to read and where to start with them. Wuthering Heights is brilliant once you get into it - very dark and passionate as has been said. Another classic that I've meant to read is Nineteen Eighty-Four but it feels like in this day and age it will feel uncomfortably close to reality.

I love Fanny Burney and heard that The Wanderer was her finest novel. I took it on vacation, got about 250 pages in and---it was interesting. The mystery at the heart of the story was engaging. The portion of the story where I stopped had the heroine searching for a place to live with no money and no friends. It was strikingly resonant with America today.

But I could not go on.

Also, I have read The Woman in White, Armadale, No Name, and The Moonstone, but could not get into The Haunted Hotel. Wilkie Collins' long books enthralled me. The short ones are dull.

My local library is having a book sale. I went last night, but wish I had read this thread first!

I've always wanted to read Edith Wharton, so I picked up Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence. I passed up House of Mirth...I guess I need to go back!

My favorite classic is Great Expectations. I only read the crib notes when it was required reading in high school, but as an adult, I've read it three times.

The anti-heroine of Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country Undine Spragg is surely a forerunner to Scarlett O'Hara.

Yes, she does get her comeuppance by the end of the book but I think Wharton is just showing us where Undine was always meant to be (no spoilers here!). I'm surprised the book was never made into a film. It would have been a perfect vehicle for the young Lana Turner back in her 1940s MGM days.

BTW I should mention that Nathaniel West should be a must for some of you as well. I've read all of his stuff - he's written only a few things - but The Day of the Locust is definitely one to check out, particularly given our current political climate.

What about the other Nathaniel? Hawthorne?

Does The House of the Seven Gables or The Scarlet Letter still hold up?

Sorry R161 but there wasn't near enough 'come' in the 'uppance' for me. I wanted much much more. I've not read GWTW but my impression is that though the main character is at times a Scarlett O'Horror* she has admirable traits as well whereas I found nothing to like or admire in Undine. Without giving anything away, I wanted the ending to involve the Titanic or a runaway horse and carriage.

* courtesy of A Confederacy of Dunces

Re: House of the Seven Gables

I'm going to strongly recommend that one listen to that as an audiobook. Back in the day these classics were read aloud, often to an assembled family by the father. I have heard reports that reading this one in print can be very tedious and discouraging as it relies on mood, which can be set better by a narrator than a modern reader, used to movies and television, can get off a printed page.

R159 - No Name was both suspenseful and funny.

The greed exhibited in The Way We Live Now struck me as timeless.

I would think, R165, that people interested in a thread about classic literature are well read enough to handle a book without it being read aloud to them.

Classic literature is like any kind of literature - it can be gripping or dull. I don't see what's wrong with recommending an audiobook.

By the bye, if you haven't got around to reading Mansfield Park because it's possibly the most disliked Austen book, Karen Savage does an excellent audiobook which you can download for free from Libravox.

A critic once said that James Joyce's prose was even richer when read aloud. Isak Dinesen loved to read her stories to friends. Some fiction is well-suited to audio narration.

I have always wanted to read Memoirs by St Simon. He was an aristocrat very witty, very lucid about the great men of his time (the king included). He inspired Balzac, Chateaubriand (not a favourite of mine), Stendhal. But, 20 volumes....

The only work of Voltaire's I've read is |"Candide"; other suggestions?

R170 the litterary legacy of Voltaire is not so obvious. Maybe Zadig could be a good choice. The very interesting aspect of Voltaire is his life. I don't think he would have been a very good diarist or memorialist. He always preferred to live his life than to write about it ( but he loved to talk about himself). The Voltaire by Jean Orieux is the best biography ever written about le roi Voltaire. If Zadig pleases you enough to spent more time with Voltaire that is.

I mentioned the audio of House of the Seven Gables as I've seen people, who are reasonably well educated, say that they just couldn't get into it.

The Insiders by Rosemary Rogers

R163 I read The Scarlet Letter for uni and honestly it was like a class on how to write a classic. Very good book. And the intro about working in the civil service still holds up today.

That's Librivox, R167. I participated in one of those a long time ago, it's fun but also a lot of work. Some of those readers have real theatrical talent. Those voices!

R169 The only Saint-Simon I've read was in school. I loved it. Promised myself I'd read the whole thing one day, but as you said, 20 volumes...

Just checked though and apparently it's only 3000 pages. Honestly they should make it 3 volumes and be done with.

Manuscript at link

One version of the Mémoires du duc de Saint-Simon.

Yes, indeed, R139. That is an attractive analysis contending that Hugo's book was about exploring types of love.

I’m an architect manqué so I like how some works of art can capture beauty within a strong structure.

I like how Virginia Woolf created a plot with a lead character who changes sex over three centuries.

And another of hers where the plot is presented via the soliloquies of six characters.

And it’s almost a cliche that so many current fiction writers present ‘prismatic’ plots split according to the perceptions of the different characters.

But I have to say, I suspect Hugo’s wish to present different types of love was subsidiary to wanting to tell a good story.

But I can’t prove my suspicion because I won’t be picking up his fat book again because —as I mentioned earlier— I’ve since decided that reading a novel in translation is getting only half of what the author intended.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding

Spring flowers spotted rains by Dean Corl.

R176 Nice to meet someone interested in St Simon. On my to be read shelf, i count exactly 22 volumes of Memoirs by St Simon. With such books, the reader needs to refer to annotations. If not, the reader gets lost in the myriad of historical characters. The French court at the time was worth ten War and Peace regarding the number of courtiers.

Thank you for that image R182, I love it.

Mea culpa, R175, thanks for the correction. It's a great resource.

R20 As was Looking be in the Time of Cholera. Good story, if you can get past all of the confusing crss names and sideline plot.

100 Years of Solitude was an easier read for me.

That should be "Love in the Time of Cholera"

Finnegan's Wake is a personal challenge. I pick it up every few years, read a page or two, research each sentence on those few pages, and then put it down again.

"Pumping Iron." The film was good, but I don't think it did the book justice.

I loved Love in the Time of Cholera R185. The title was what first attracted me to it. A book called that has got to be good I thought and indeed it was. It has one of my all time favourite endings to a novel. I enjoyed one of his short story collections (No One Writes to the Colonel IIRC) as well. Not read 100 Years but have meant to for years, along with Catch 22, another classic I never got around to reading.

A wild sheep chase - Murakami If on a winter's night a traveler - Calvino Philosopher or dog - Machado De Assis Last temptation of Christ - Kazantzakis Fools and mortals - Cornwell Middlmarch - Elliott Brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao - Diaz

There are a few more that I cannot remember.

Always felt like I missed out as a child because I read very few of the kiddie classics. I never read: Secret Garden, Little Women, Little House on the Prairie, or any of the Dumas, Stevenson, Verne, the Twain or Dickens for children.

Now I am getting into 20th century American novels that were part of the cultural zeitgeist: James Jones' From Here to Eternity trilogy and Some Came Running are up next. I've never read Peyton Place or Valley of the Dolls.

This thread needs a collective "MARY!" You do realize that most straight men have never heard of these "classics" or have an interest in literature.

Who gives a shit about straight men.

Also, a lot of straight men are cultured and have read the classics.

Not the type of straight alpha muscle post-frat jock studs I enjoy flirting with and salivate over.

Hell R194, straight men, and women, WROTE a lot of the classics. Maybe they just wrote them for DL'ers of the future and never actually read them themselves.

yeah, r194, but did those straight men have visible abs or baseball-sized biceps? I think we all know the answer to that.

R192 is a Philistine.

[quote]You do realize that most straight men have never heard of these "classics" or have an interest in literature.

Some might say most straight men don't have an interest in anything but themselves.

As someone with a couple of English degrees, I can say that with one exception, all of my male college professors were straight.

Getting back on topic, I haven’t read The Good Soldier since college and would like to reread it. Any fans?

I've also always meant to read some of the mid-century literary best sellers like From Here to Eternity, The Adventures of Augie March, Marjorie Morningstar, The Nun's Story and Raintree County. They were all books in our family bookcases that my mother bought through the Book of the Month Club back in the 1950s. If I ever asked her opinion on them, I've long forgotten.

The Good Soldier is a book you feel was written to be analyzed, every line and every page. I read it for, a test I eventually didn't take. Mostly I miss not sharing a class to read/analyze it together. It was an entertaining "intellectual" read, but I felt I was on my own there. Read it in the Norton edition - don't even know if there is any other.

R201 - I've never read Marjorie Morningstar, but both The Winds of War and War & Remembrance are immensely readable. . .

R149 checking in. I have to admit I'm having a hard time getting invested in this Thomas Hardy novel.

I started “Middlemarch” but became tired of analyzing each sentence to get the meaning. While it’s lovely prose, it’s densely, highly detailed, overly descriptively written. Given the positive reactions on this thread to it however, I’ll give it another shot. It is frequently mentioned as one of the best novels of all time.

Several years ago, I bought the entire set of "The Diary of Samuel Pepys." I'm a big Anglophile and I love history. I've started it about 5 times, but have only got through about 1/4 of Book 1. I'm determined to get through the entire work.

Surely you can make an effort, R205. Your smarter future self will thank you.

Dear fellow DLers, I ask what is the point of improving our minds and sharpening our aesthetic judgements and proceeding up the 'ivory tower' of great literature.

When the mainstream American society is perverted by the mindlessness of twitterers, trannies and snowflake freaks who chase every colorful, meaningless, purposeless fad.

I want some clever man (like Colm Toibin or Alan Hollinghurst) to do a 50% condensed version of Middlemarch.

I want the genius without the prosaic and the waffle.

The prosaic is part of life, R209.

I don't really understand your question, R208. Are you saying you feel a need to conform? Why?

R52, Wuthering Heights is great, although there are parts I needed to sort of quickly skip. Jane Eyre is a GREAT 3/4ths of a story until the very end when it comes over super religious, Rochester is practically castrated in order to be worthy of Jane, and it's God God everywhere. It gets difficult to read, whereas the intensity and the sexual tension stuff throughout is vivid and fully felt. Considering the times in which it was written, I believe that Bronte had to do the last 1/3 so the first 2/3 would sell, and so people wouldn't think she was some kind of heathen. Her sister wrote a lesser book in reverse (it was the woman in Rochester's position) and had to play the same games with the last 1/3. By the time the female protogonist had jumped through all of her "God is the most important thing" hoops all of the romance and sexual attraction was drained out of the book and the romantic couple just kind of dragged themselves across the finish line.

But Emily Bronte didn't mess around with any of that shit. That's partially because while her book is a gothic romance, her characters aren't romanticized in the conventional way. No hearts of gold here. Heathcliff is such a fucking asshole. I couldn't wait for him to be dead. And I love that all the stuff other authors would have used as a trope to humanize him - Cathy's daughter, his own son - he just didn't give a shit about either of them. Treated Isabella like shit too. So Wuthering Heights has more integrity as a novel. As I was slogging through it I thought, I don't know, if Hereton (sp?) and Cathy Jr. don't end up together somehow this novel won't pay off that much, but with the rough edges of both and the defensiveness of both it could have gone wrong so easily. When they were safey hooked up - the second generation characters of this story - I thought, phew. I think it's the first novel of that era that I've read where the main protogonists were villians, and not loveable villains either. No Mayor of Casterbridge situation where you just wish the main character could get it together or already and stop sabotaging his life. Just full on jerks.

Thanks for this candid account of Wuthering Heights. Inspiring. Not sure I'll read it though. Have already tried 3 times.

[quote]Her sister wrote a lesser book in reverse (it was the woman in Rochester's position) and had to play the same games with the last 1/3.

R212, I assume you mean The Tenant of Wildfell Hall here?

I agree that parts of the book's structure are problematic, but were it not for the weak link of the principal male character - and it is a very weak link - I would rate it way above Jane Eyre. I think it has a psychological depth and the ability to dissect the brutal essence of Victorian society that go beyond either of her sisters' works and has more in common with George Eliot.

Never attempted the longer Henry James novels; something about his prose is just too alienating, and I am not usually daunted by dense prose, haven't actually made it through all of Proust (in fact read Swann's Way three times and In a Budding Grove twice).

Now, Voyager

Stella Dallas

I had only read Henry James' short novels and stories until a couple of years ago, when I finally got through a long one, "The Princess Casamassima". It's got an interesting political background (radicalism in 19th-century London), which kept me reading even when the plot stalled a bit. Very dense and detailed writing, an unusual novel unlike anything I've read before.

R215 here--sorry meant to say "having" made it through Proust ...

[quote]But I have to say, I suspect Hugo’s wish to present different types of love was subsidiary to wanting to tell a good story.

Actually, Hugo wrote the book to save Notre Dame, which was horribly neglected and everyone hated at the time wanted torn down. He figured that if he wrote a sweeping, romantic soap opera with all these characters from the 15th century and described the cathedral when it was in its prime, it would be saved from demolition. It just so happens that as he was writing the book, this theme of "different types of love" arose, which can sometimes happen in the course of writing. A writer can start out with this very specific story in mind but for whatever reason, interesting themes will suddenly crop up.

R214, the problem with TOWH is more than the protogonist. It is the prolonged last third where the heroine devotes herself to her dying monster of a husband. I get the idea, and it was a necessary step, but it was also beaten to fucking death. The guy was a villain of horrific proportions, did evil for fun, and I do understand the conventions of Victorian society that necessitated her proving herself on that score. BUT, as writing, it was beaten into the ground, wen ton way too long, and then went on some more, beat the life out of the book.

And yes, the male protogonist is extremely uninteresting.

Interesting reading around that era - Victorian society had a different view of male and female sexuality than current day. It was the female who was viewed as oversexed, and men were encouraged to not spend their seed and weaken themselves. To exercise restraint, because without careful management, women were insatiable sexually. Interesting, because that is not such a long time ago, historically speaking.

Victor Hugo was a Tower of a man.

Is Thomas Pynchon any good?

R220, I've seen it argued - and agree - that the heroine's decision to help the husband in his last illness is not as simple as it seems. There appears an element of punishment, as indeed he perceives. She is acting on noble principles, and perhaps hoping that he will repent, but she isn't so free of the corruption that he represents that she doesn't want to twist the knife a bit.

The only Pynchon I've been able to read all the way through (tried V years ago and had to stop), is " The Cryinng of Lot 49." Oh wait--Vineland was actually a fun read. Gravity's Rainbow--I had male friends who were fans, but I found it completely impossible (just the way I found Ulysses impossible). Crying of and Vineland are both very funny and eccentric.

If you want a writer of the same vintage, try DeLillo. His books up to and through Underworld vary but are all extremely readable. He is a great writer IMO, although the later novels after Underworld did not appeal to me. White Noise and Libra are excellent, The Names is very good, Underworld is very long (so I didn't read it all), but is highly regarded.

Cat in the Hat

R223 I read White Noise in the mid 1990s and thought it was pretty good, nothing amazing. I also liked Paul Auster in the same way. DeLillo and Auster are both writers of lucid, engaging prose that feels very contemporary.

Yes, Paul Auster! The Music of Chance is brilliant.

R209 That is true but I'm now in the last third of my life. And I have wasted too much of it in muddling around in my own prosaicness. I don't want to waste more of the remainder in other's prosaicness.

R208 I don't want to conform to the trashy mainstream but we are the superior aesthetic queens and we need to acknowledge that 'the barbarians are at the gate'.

R212 All the movie versions have skipped half of Bronte's prolix story.

R215 The only Henry James on which I'm prepared to spend my diminishing life is that in Colm Toibin's entertainingly clever distillation called 'The Master'.

R219 Fair enough.

That is a nice suit he's wearing. I wonder if he was an interesting man to meet, R221.

R220 I agree with you, so many pre-20th century novels 'went on way too long, and then went on some more'. Most of those people were obliged to lead slow contained lives like cows in the paddock without the frenetic distractions we have.

War and Peace. More Shakespeare.

On my to-do list: In Search of Lost Time (of course) and The Brothers Karamasov. The one writer I've had my fill of is Henry James: I read Wings of the Dove and thought, that's enough.

People who are put off by the thought of reading Moby-Dick might want to try Benito Cereno instead. It's a novella based a true-life slave ship uprising. Technically, it's much less crazy than many of Melville's novels, and it shows off his ability to create an ominous atmosphere in which it is difficult to tell good from evil.

[quote] I want some clever man (like Colm Toibin or Alan Hollinghurst) to do a 50% condensed version of Middlemarch.

A few years ago publishers in the UK tried this with their "In Half the Time" series, which were condensed versions of classics.

They didn't sell well at all, so they were discontinued.

This thread inspired me to buy Les Miserables and give it another try.

I'm trying a different translation this time: Christine Donougher for Penguin Classics.

I agree Henry James is a waste of time. His novels have not withstood the test of time.

After not finishing a few of his novels I decided to give Washington Square a shot because, at least, its short. But I was amazed to find it wasn't nearly as good as the theatrical treatment it got from Ruth and Augustus Goetz called The Heiress.

This thread and the Rudolph Valentino thread give me great satisfaction that all is not dead at DL.

Regarding Moby Dick, it took me literally five tries over the course of 15 years to finally muddle through it. The only reason why I was able to finally complete it is that I figured that if I could deal with 100 or so pages of Jules Verne laundry listing all the fish the protagonist saw in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I could finally sit through the two dozen chapters going into exhaustive detail into the history and business of whaling.

Joseph Conrad's Nostromo because I loved Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent.

Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet because I loved the Thief's Journal.

Given the awful week we have had here in the U.S., hate spawned murders again and again, perhaps it would be a good time to spend a moment or two with John Donne. The awful bell is tolling across America is for us all, kids.

'No Man is an Island'

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

R222 The Crying of Lot 49 is a lot of fun, and it's not very long.

I tried to read DeLillo a while ago and found the environments he wrote about to be the pit of despair. Surely a great writer, but I couldn't get through Libra, for how bleak the experience was, and later, White Noise.

I think I would enjoy Colm Tóibín. Any recommendation would be appreciated.

I started Libra twice and wasn't able get into it. May try again. I'm a very moody reader.

I loved this book. Lots of writers to pick from.

For R236.

r240, I really enjoyed Colm Toibin's Brooklyn and his bio of Henry James (though I don't like James' books!). But I've tried to read a couple more of his books and couldn't get very far into them.

One issue I have is that he doesn't seem to want to let the reader know when the story is taking place. Even in Brooklyn, it might have been 50 pages or more before I understood the story took place in the 1950s. And I don't mean that he needs to give us the year....just some specific details that would allow us to figure out the year.

But I do want to give him another chance if anyone has any recommendations.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Tess of the D'Urbervilles . Jude the Obscure . The Mayor of Casterbridge

Madame Bovary

David Copperfield

The Brothers Karamazov . Crime and Punishment

North and South

Middlemarch

Vanity Fair

Anna Karenina . War and Peace

The Master and Margarita

A Separate Peace.

r247: Are those books you want to read I assume? The most readable are probably Anna Karenina (one of the few novels I've read more than once) and David Copperfield. I think I've read all the others except Tess, and The Master and Margarita. (And Crime and Punishment I tried several times but it was too grim for me to continue.) Virtually all those books you've listed are very readable (even Jude the Obscure, though it's also very grim). War and Peace is actually wonderful--just long. I recently listened to the audiobook version of North and South (and watched the BBC film before that). The audio narrator is Juliet Stevenson, the actress, who is an amazingly great narrator with a voice that is a balm to your soul and has an amazing ability with all types of characters, including males. She also does a version of Middlemarch, which I'm thinking I might try as I've had trouble reading it.

R249 Thanks

R204 checking in. I'm now about 60% through Far From the Madding Crowd, and I don't think I can take anymore. The over-written sentences, the plot like a pastoral English telenovela, the characters upon whom I wish death!

Call me a plebeian if you will. There is charm and grace to the writing, but not enough to carry me through to the end of this book.

Cat In The Hat.

My childhood diary was very busy.

And I'm struggling through the first third of The Red and the Black.

I love all of the domestic situations and find the lead character Julien Sorel very appealingly modern, but I feel like I'm missing so much by not knowing anything about French politics and history (pre and post-Napoleon), which is the context of story. Not sure if I'll continue.

The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West.

R249, the Juliet Stevenson Middlemarch is GREAT, as is her Jane Eyre.

r255: Thanks!

MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR is a great book and immensely readable. Some of the others, not so much. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is very long and dense, difficult to get through. THE NUN's STORY is OK but the film is so much better.

I remember all those Book of the Month ads you'd see in SATURDAY EVENING POST or wherever; I always wanted to read Fannie Hurst's IMITATION OF LIFE after seeing the iconic film. But once I finally ran down a copy years later I was VERY disappointed.

I have tried to read Hemingway, who I think is MASSIVELY overrated; the only one I could plow through was THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.

That's too bad R253, I wish you'd continue. I loved that book precisely for the positive reasons you mentioned. I wonder how much gets lost in translation though, because Stendhal's writing is wonderful. When I read it (and even today) I knew very little of the historical context. I only had an idea of 19th-century clothes (presumably early 19th, I don't even remember). Still, I mostly enjoyed the pace, the atmosphere, and most of all the narrator's voice.

From Stendhal: "A novel is a mirror one carries through life along the way."

I'm American and read Red and the Black 10 or 15 years ago. I didn't know about the status of the Jesuits and Napoleon, but as I recall I googled it to know more. I remember thinking it was a good translation and wanted to read more Stendahl. Not sure if I did though. I have to look at the plot of Charterhouse of Parma to see if I read it.

The Rainbow by DH Lawrence. I've had it in my "books to read" pile for a year and haven't gotten around to it

The classic authors were verbose, long winded and overly detailed because back then, people weren't distracted by TV and smartphones. They had the patience and concentration to be absorbed and mentally and emotionally involved in the story, which both provided them with a window on how others lived, as well as removed them from the boredom of their everyday lives.

My mom never finished high school but was a very smart woman who loved to read. After watching the Nastassja Kinski version of [italic]Tess[/italic] on HBO back in the early '80s, she checked out [italic]Tess of the d'Urbervilles[/italic] from the library and read it cover to cover. She loved it so much that it moved her to tears.

R261, you are assuming that all these books were big sellers in their own time, which isn't true. Plenty of people read trashy potboilers, most of which are forgotten now

Middlemarch is awesome!!!!

Weren't many of those Victorian novels originally serialized in monthly periodicals? So their length was part of their appeal? Stories were dragged out in much the same way that Netflix series are today.

r265: Dickens made the serial novel popular with the Pickwick Papers (his first novel I think?) It allowed readers to buy the novel in installments, since the lower class often couldn't afford the price of a whole one (imagine that!) Then a lot of other Victorian novelists also published serially. And this kind of publication affected the style--i.e., cliffhangers, etc. I took a course in the Victorian novel when I was in college many years ago. I remember Bleak House as challenging but really worth staying with (you never forget Jarndyce vs Jarndyce once you've read BH).

R266 Keep in mind that serializing books in the print media was a matter of increasing sales, profit, exposure and livelihood. Newspapers were far cheaper to purchase and reached a far larger readership than expensive hardbacks. Dickens, Twain, Stevenson, Conan Doyle, James, Melville, Beecher Stowe, Dumas, Flaubert are just a few of the authors whose works were serialized.

The Art of the Deal

All the novels by Walter Scott. I never got anywhere near Waverley. Do his novels still hold interest?

I tried Ivanhoe when I was a kid, because it was close to Robin Hood in the library. I imagined it was going to be fun. Wrong! Maybe the clothes were fun, that's about it. I failed to see the allure in medieval horseback duels.

I do enjoy Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti.

The major works of Carl Jung.

Thanks to everyone for adding to this thread. I’m reading two of the books I mentioned in my first post and have lots of good ideas for others.

"Strange Sisters."

R269 I agree with you about Ivanhoe. As a lad I read the Classics Illustrated version and thought it was a great story with memorable characters like Reginald Front-de-Boeuf and Wamba the Fool. I then tried to read the book and got bogged down after the first few pages. However C.I. did introduce me to some classic works that I read with pleasure in full e.g. The Count of Monte Cristo.