What are your favorite classic novels?

[TZ]

I was thinking of this because in Orrex's thread about novels that can't be made into movies he mentioned that he dislikes The Great Gatsby, one of my all time favorites--along with Huckleberry Finn and Lord of the Flies..

[av8rdave]

1. I have a few favorites

East of Eden (Steinbeck)
On the Road (Kerouac)
Lonesome Dove (McMurtry)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

[motely36]

2. I loved Lord of the Flies

Not a hugh fan of other books in the same genre like catcher in the rye, a separate peace or Death be not proud.

I guess it depends on your definition of classic. I love Poe, though not a novelist.

Can Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth be considered a classic? It's probably the best book I have read in the last 20 years.

[TZ]

4. Poe's short stories are excellent though

The Telltale Heart still to this day will creep me out. Don't even get me started on the Pit and the Pendulum....

[Lyric]

3. Oh gods. Almost all of them, to be honest.

Wuthering Heights, The Three Musketeers, Huck Finn, Anna Karenina, The Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, A Farewell to Arms, The Sound and the Fury, Gone With the Wind, Brave New World, To Kill a Mockingbird, Bram Stoker's Dracula--I could go on, but you get the idea.

Basically, I just *heart* books. :)

[BOSSHOG]

5. Don't know if this is a classic

but Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley" is a great read. Charley is his dog.

[BlueIris]

6. "Tristram Shandy."

Sterne ROCKS.

[charlie and algernon]

7. Flowers for Algernon, East of Eden, Frankenstein, Lord of the Flies

[TZ]

9. Yeah I guess your name makes it obvious

Doesn't it. I love Flowers for Algernon too. Not sure how many times I've read it!:)

[charlie and algernon]

10. i wish i still had it

Have no idea where it got to after high school. I may have to buy a new copy and read it again, Borders is having a big sale today or something.

[Liberal_in_LA]

41. Loved Flowers for Algernon, strange and sad novel though

[Liberal_in_LA]

42. Atlas Shrugged, Watership down, Lord of the Rings, Heart is a lonely hunter

[raccoon]

8. Alas, Babylon. The Time Machine. To Kill a Mockingbird. nt

[siligut]

11. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of mine too. So much wisdom. So much hope.

"YOUR saying so don't make it so."

I also like The Once and Future King, TH White.

Catcher in the Rye, of course, all of that idealism and romantics notions.

Don Quixote and Silas Mariner are two more that come to mind.

[JitterbugPerfume]

12. a hard question!

1984, Flowers For Algernon, anything Steinbeck , anything Sinclair Lewis

[LanternWaste]

13. To Serve Them All My Days, R.F. Delderfield

To Serve Them All My Days, by R.F. Delderfield (comfort food for my brain...)

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair (Never read it until it was assigned to me my first year of college, it became my "social" awakening)

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis (interesting premise with even more interesting takes on who we are and why we do what we do)

Watership Down, by Richard Adams (the first "adult" novel that I'd ever read-- I think I was in 6th grade or so)


The Horatio Hornblower series, by C. S. Forester (as a kid, I devoured those books as a kid, and they internalized in me concepts such as Honor and Loyalty long before I actually encountered the modern, cynical resistance to them).

[irina]

14. Gatsby & the Fountainhead.

this combination of favorite novels apparently makes me the biggest jerk on the planet. sorry guys!

[Dr. Strange]

18. This could be a great thread!

Combine novels!

God Emperor of Dune + A Confederacy of Dunces = God Emperor of Dunces

[TZ]

27. Well go start it then!

:D

[noonwitch]

15. So many....

A Tale Of Two Cities
To Kill A Mockingbird
East Of Eden
Tess Of The D'Ubervilles
Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer

[seemunkee]

16. The Sound and the Fury

Love the book and have read it several times. I like the dialects and the shifting of narrators.

Others:
Cannery Row
Naked Lunch
The Sun Also Rises

[Aristus]

17. I love Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones." Absolutely hilarious.

The florid, fancy 18th Century prose contributes to, rather than detracts from, the humor. It is one of the few comedic novels I've read where I actually laughed out loud.

[PassingFair]

34. You'll like "Moll Flanders", too.

Also, "Shamela".

[cemaphonic]

19. I love Moby Dick (yes, even the many digressions) more than most people seem to.

Huck Finn is pretty great too.
As I Lay Dying (most other Faulkner I like, but don't love)
Midnight's Children is probably old enough to count as a classic by now.

[Lyric]

20. So...is your mother

a horse or a fish?

:hide:

[cemaphonic]

24. Heh

I think my favorite single sentence from AILD is actually:

"so I made it on the bevel."

[Lyric]

25. Of all the characters, I feel for Cash the most.

Darl is kinda creepy, Dewey Dell is pitiable but vicious toward the end, Vardaman is sadly disturbed, Jewel is a dick, and Anse is a bigger one.

Cash is the only one that *isn't* completely screwed-up.

[cemaphonic]

31. Yeah, I would tend to agree

although I feel bad for Vardaman too, because of his youth and relative innocence.

Everything having to do with Cash's leg just makes me cringe.

[semillama]

54. Moby Dick is my favorite, too

and the digressions are my favorite parts as well. Huck Finn is great, and The Great Gatsby is an essential read.

Is Tolkien considered "classic" or is it still too "modern"?

I also really enjoyed Ulysses.

If we want to go old-school, can't beat the Iliad and the Odyssey.

[blueraven95]

21. just about anything by Jane Austen -

particularly Sense and Sensibility.

Also, A Tale of Two Cities, Five Children and It, and A Doll's House.

And even though they are plays and not novels, King Lear, and An Ideal Husband.

[CBHagman]

23. I'm with you on plays.

I've really enjoyed reading and re-reading Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, as well as various Shakespearean comedies.

As for novels, I guess the most re-readable are Austen's, particularly Persuasion; Fontane's Irrungen Wirrungen; Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights; and of course Alcott's Little Women.

On edit: If I'm going to fudge and list The Real Thing as a classic play, I must go whole hog and list Elizabeth Jane Howard's Getting It Right as a favorite novel. Both came out in the '80s, which proves the decade wasn't a total loss after all.

[Orsino]

22. Pride And Prejudice

Huckleberry Finn

[Westegg]

26. "Wise Blood" Flannery O'Connor.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

28. The Count of Monte Cristo.

[Greyskye]

29. The Three Musketeers - Dumas

I was amazed at how well this story has held up through the years. Great read!

And if you like that, you should really check out Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances They are fantasy novels done as an homage to the Musketeer books, and the writing is a thing of beauty. Very highly recommended!

[PassingFair]

30. Every book by Dickens except for "Great Expectations" and "Hard Times"...

Everything by Philip K. Dick.

A Clockwork Orange (and many others by Burgess)

Catch 22

Ada and/or Lolita

Adam Bede and Middlemarch

Loved them ALL.

[mokawanis]

32. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

and The Old Man and the Sea.

[DarkTirade]

33. I dislike a lot of the ones we're s'posed to read in school.

I think the only 'classics' that I had to read in school that I liked were To Kill a Mockingbird and just about anything by Mark Twain.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

36. Agreed.

Something about making it assigned reading kind of ruins it for me.

[DarkTirade]

48. That, and a lot of them just plain sucked.

A Seperate Peace? Seriously, I want those hours of my life back.

At least with Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye I could appreciate it somewhat, even if I didn't particularly like it.

[Xipe Totec]

35. Jules Verne - The Adventures of Captain Hatteras n/t

[lunatica]

37. War of the Worlds, Catcher in the Rye, War and Peace

Gone with the Wind, Jane Austin's books, Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, Tale of Two Cities (abridged) and Oliver Twist (abridged)

[Lincolngirl]

39. The Good Earth,

To Kill a Mockingbird,

The Iliad,and The Odyssey,

David Copperfield,

[crim son]

38. Anything by Tolstoy, anything by Dickens except

"A Tale of Two Cities," "Vanity Fair" and "Barry Lyndon" by Thackeray, "Evelina" by Fanny Burney, the novels but not the short stories of Edith Wharton, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy, and others by Hardy. NOTHING by James Joyce. Some of Upton Sinclair. "Crime and Punishment" and "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky. And lots more. I love the classics more than almost anything contemporary.

[WinkyDink]

40. "Of Mice and Men"; "Wuthering Heights"; "Madame Bovary"; "Cry, the Beloved Country".

[ceile]

43. Anything by Agatha Christie or "Wuthering Heights"

Or maybe "Tess, of the D'urbervilles"....hard to say.

[madinmaryland]

44. "The Pet Goat" was an interesting read!

:hi:

[pokerfan]

45. .

Candide, Voltaire
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
To Have and Have Not, Hemingway
Catch-22, Heller
The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Brave New World, Huxley
The Call of the Wild, London

[MarthaMyDear]

46. Childhood's End - Arthur C Clarke...Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

[nytemare]

47. "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Orlando".

[Jade Fox]

49. One that has stuck in my head since high school....

"A Separate Peace"

I re-read it recently. As entertainment it left a lot to be desired. But the central drama of an impulsive act of envy leading to tragedy sticks in my craw for some reason.

Also: Catcher in the Rye, because the author did such a good job capturing the voice of adolescence.

[yellowdogintexas]

50. "To Kill A Mockingbird' of course. Also GWTW, "Jane Eyre" "The Woman in White"

and 'The Moonstone" 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn', I liked 'Little Women' but I adored "Eight Cousins' and 'Rose in Bloom'

I hated 'Catcher in the Rye' and refuse to read "Moby Dick"

I loved 'Cannery Row'

[Release The Hounds]

51. In Cold Blood

[LadyoftheRabbits]

52. I love Jane Eyre

The frank discussion of sexual tension in that novel rather surprised me, given when it was published. :wow: Also, Madame Bovary.

[badgerpup]

53. In case anyone likes BOOKS still...

...as opposed to books on tape or on CD...

Was at Costco and they've got some absolutely BEAUTIFUL editions of some of the classics...
Mark Twain, Poe, Charlotte Bronte and family, Jane Austen, Lewis Carrol, Charles Dickens... :bounce:

Succumbed and bought two for meself...the Jane Austen Complete Novels and The Collected Works of Lewis Carrol.

The Lewis Carrol has ALL the stories, not just the "Alice" ones...
The Jane Austen came in TWO sizes...but I didn't know that until I'd bought the BIG one.
Beautiful book, original illustrations, leather cover, gold pages, ribbon bookmark...
but it was REALLY big. You need a pillow in your lap to hold it while you're reading- and this goes over not at all with cats.
"Laps are for Cats, not books," is their opinion. I'm forced to concur...that volume was heavy as well as awkward.
Went down and returned it with the intention of exchanging the "braggin'" edition for a "readin'" edition...and they were all sold out! :banghead:

All is not lost, however...Barnes and Noble has similar edtions in right now and for similar prices. ($12.49 for a leatherbound, high-quality book?! Oh, YEAH!)

I don't like going to Barnes and Noble though. Books FLY off the shelves and stick to me and I can't get them to come loose until after we've gone through the checkout stand and I've paid ransom.
Almost always end up coming out of there with MUCH more than I'd originally intended...:P