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Classic Literature

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Duncan

New Member
I recently set myself the goal of acquainting myself with this genre. However, due to my lack of experience in the area, I’m not sure on what to read next. I was thinking of Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’. Suggestions and opinions would be great. Cheers.
 
I'm not sure classical literature - essentially, everything written before a certain date - can be described as a "genre", so what kind of books do you usually read? Romance, action, fantasy, humour...?
 
beer good said:
I'm not sure classical literature - essentially, everything written before a certain date - can be described as a "genre", so what kind of books do you usually read? Romance, action, fantasy, humour...?
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Alright, well, to narrow it down, any classic where romance isn't the main theme. Also, by classic, I’m not referring to ancient literature; I mean it in the critically acclaimed sense. Sorry, should have stated all this.
 
Mark Twain is definitely a good read. If you're looking for a good adventure, I recommend:

-Anything by Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, etc...)
-Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
-The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
-Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Have fun, they just don't write books like this anymore!
 
Beer good has a very good point.

I would also want to know how stong your reading skills are before recommending anything too heavy.

Regardless, I think Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a good start.
 
Robert said:
Beer good has a very good point.

I would also want to know how stong your reading skills are before recommending anything too heavy.

Regardless, I think Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a good start.
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Hmm not really sure how to gauge my reading abilities, but I’d say I’m fairly competent. If you just list what you've really enjoyed, ill do a little research and test the waters. If it did prove a little daunting, id love something to aspire to.

And thanks for all the replies so far guys!
 
You didn’t specify your age but I assume you are a young reader.

I liked these books when I was in primary school:
H. Rider Haggard - King Solomon’s Mines
Jules Verne - The Survivors of the Chancellor

If you are at high school you can check these:
Herman Hesse – Siddhartha
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
Jaroslav Hašek - The Good Soldier Švejk
 
It's a tricky question, obviously, but here's my current and somewhat obvious list of

Ten pre-1900 novels everyone should have read before a certain age, which may differ from person to person, but which offer both excitement, philosophy and other things becoming to the young mind

Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
The Queen's Diadem, CJL Almqvist
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Candide, Voltaire
The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne
Doctor Glas, Hjalmar Söderberg
The Time Machine, HG Wells

I read several of these as a teenager and loved them; then I came back to them years later and discovered things I hadn't seen before, which made me love them even more.
 
I second Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and would add:
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee(read the book, THEN see the movie)
 
I did pretty much the same thing as you did my freshman year of highschool. My English teacher gave me a list of about 170 books that appeared on the AP Lit test. I found an updated (much longer) version of that list on the interweb...

AP Literature: Titles from Free Response Questions since 1973

Anyway, I've been working on the original list for a while and these are my favorites...

A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
A Lesson Before Dying - Gaines
Catch-22 - Heller
Gulliver's Travels - Swift
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Kesey
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut
The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
Their Eye's Were Watching God - Thurston
Waiting for Godot - Beckett
 
Faust, Part I, the Philip Wayne translation. Part II, not so much.
I really like Shakespeare's histories.
Sherlock Holmes is too much fun to get called literature very often.
 
Didi_Gogo said:
I did pretty much the same thing as you did my freshman year of highschool. My English teacher gave me a list of about 170 books that appeared on the AP Lit test. I found an updated (much longer) version of that list on the interweb...

AP Literature: Titles from Free Response Questions since 1973

Anyway, I've been working on the original list for a while and these are my favorites...

A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
A Lesson Before Dying - Gaines
Catch-22 - Heller
Gulliver's Travels - Swift
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Kesey
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut
The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
Their Eye's Were Watching God - Thurston
Waiting for Godot - Beckett
Click to expand...

And now...

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

That book was flipping amazing!!!!!!!!
 
Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Dubliners - James Joyce
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
 
Read 1984! I can't believe no one's recommended this yet...also, read Animal Farm. George Orwell is amazing. Lord of the Flies is good too. All three of these are very entertaining but they make you think as well.
 
I've heard it said and it is something I myself try to hold true to when I'm tagging my books, Classic, that all books published prior to 1950 are consider Classic Literature. I do believe there are exceptions to this 'rule'.

Suggestions:

-North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
-Bleakhouse by Charles Dickens
-Any of O. Henry's short stories are great
-Behind A Mask By Louisa May Alcott
-Twelfth Night By Shakespeare
 
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