buyjupiter03

I read anything and everything I could get my hands on, and the classics in some sense were the easiest. (more likely to slide by the parents too.) I'll take the technical definition of "classic" lit. and say pre-1900s. So, some recommendations:

Jules Verne, specifically 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Dumas, pere Three Musketeers
Hawthorne House of Seven Gables (I'd read this first and Scarlet Letter bored me stiff, this one IMO is far better)

I will say this in regards to Dumas and Verne. Most of the translations I've read were Victorian so the stiff dialogue, bad writing that you don't like came through a bit more in these editions. I've heard they're re-translating Verne because of some *ahem* inaccuracies. So sometimes it's a bit of a workout reading them, depending on which translation you get.

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HarmsGirl

I love the classics. I have stuff from all centuries -- including medieval and ancient greek and roman times. I'm really into Virginia Woolf though. Her writing is just...so amazing!

Sayuri

I went through six years of schooling on this stuff, and srsly, fuck Dickens (except for Sydney Carton) and Hemingway. And I wrote my thesis on Joseph Conrad, but fuck Heart of Darkness too. Read Lord Jim, and the contemporary classics, meaning the post-1900 classics; Victorian novels are horribly boring and DO have crappy plots, unless they are on the cusp of the Victorian-Modernist movement (i.e. Thomas Hardy).

So overall, I would suggest SOME Joseph Conrad, primarily Lord Jim, which is one of the best novels ever written; much Thomas Hardy, who had great dramatic plots; a bit of Henry James (the shorter novels) and E.M. Forster; and Latin American and African fiction from this century, which was influenced by the British modernists but not so "intellectual" that the language interferes with the narrative--i.e., Borges, Fuentes, Allende, Marquez, Achebe, Thiong'o, etc.

YESSSS! Two of the best books ever written, IMO.

The difference between an old OR modern "classic" and a throwaway novel, for me, is that the former sticks with me a lot longer than the latter. It's been eleven years since I read Fahrenheit 451 and I still remember the television walls with the interactive soap opera, the mechanical dog with the injection, the burning of books, and the chase by the river.

Garden of Kadesh

I very rarely read anything BUT classics lately.

Catch22 is my all time favorite. I love absurdist humour.

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papertears

I was a horrible student in high school. Except for Alice In Wonderland and 1984, I read the Cliff Notes for all the book reports. Oh except I dared the history coach I could read the unabridged version of Les Miserables by Hugo in 4 weeks and write a 30 page book report.

So I guess my classics-karma came around last summer and I started just grabbing them off the library shelves out of unabashed guilt. I started with Dickens and then of course Jane Austen and The Catcher In The Rye which I reread again recently. Oh and there were some of the very old Sci-Fi novels in there too.

Then somehow I ended up reading a bunch of the philosophers' books. Crime and Punishment, something by Camus, half of War and Peace (I should really try again), some Spinoza (sorry, my memory is lousy with titles) and I was about to read Neitzche (spelling?) when I just felt like throttling myself.

I went back Dickens--for the first time I'm attempt A Tale of Two Cities. I've been worried it will be too sad for me at this point in my life. But I have some Hemmingway, Thoreau, and C.S. Lewis.

And as someone up in the thread pointed out, theres always Douglas Adams and my trusty towel!

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lilacstarflower

Keshkesh7 - I can understand Jane Eyre being a bit of a struggle. I left that book for about three months once Jane left Rochester, but I went back to it eventually. There is a definite lull in that novel.

On your Jane Austen comment - that she wouldn't be published today - I have to disagree with. Yes, her novels probably wouldn't appeal to many due to the fact that she chose to write about the gentry rather than the commoner, but I think people would be drawn into the dark side of her work (e.g. pedophilia and betrayal) and the psychology of her female characters.

I don't find them at all stiff - I enjoy the classics more than most contemporary writers who lack the depth of detail and symbolism that make the classics...classic. A lot of them (that I have read) maybe have one sub-plot running along side the plot, but the classics are full of stories within stories.

Can you tell I enjoy them, lol!

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