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Thread: your favorite classic novels

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    Featured Member mina loy's Avatar
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    Default your favorite classic novels

    i'm an avid reader and since i'm taking summer classes for my master's program, i don't get a lot of time to do leisure reading. i recently moved about 50 miles away from the campus so i do a lot of driving to and from home to school and work. one thing that has made the driving more enjoyable is listening to all the classic literature i've been meaning to read since high school. today i finished what is one of my new favorite novels:

    "the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde" by robert louis stevenson. having been a psychology major in college, this one blew me away with how awesome it was.

    i started on "the three musketeers" by alexander dumas.

    others that i've read (on paper) and loved:

    "jude the obscure" by thomas hardy
    "adam bede" by george eliot
    "the hunchback of notre dame" by victor hugo (wildly entertaining).

    of course, i've read other classic novels and found them just okay or boring. for all of the readers/literature lovers out there, what are your favorites? any recommendations?

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    God/dess PookaShell's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Wuthering Heights.

    And OF COURSE Little Women.

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    Featured Member georgiapeach's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    any jane austin (i like northanger abbey esp.)
    agnes grey, anne bronte
    tess of the durbervilles and the mayor of castorbridge , thomas hardy
    the importance of being earnest, oscar wilde (it's a play)
    any mark twain (the mysterious stranger is an interesting posthumous publication of his)
    tale of two cities, charles dickens
    the count of monte cristo, alexander dumas


    if your into more modern classics, hemingway's short stories are wonderful. ken kesey's got some great stuff (i like sometimes a great notion) any of carson mccullers' work. and the bell jar or any of sylvia plath's poetry (i think ariel is my favorite of her collections)

    and if you're into british humor p.g. wodehouse is brilliant. the jeeves series is great. leave it to psmith is also particulalry clever.

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    God/dess PookaShell's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    I love to read. Mostly memoirs. I wish I were talented/interesting enough to write one.

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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    I adore almost all Oscar Wilde.

    And I don't know if this counts as classic, but I love the novel Breakfast at Tiffany's. Actually, any Truman Capote except for In Cold Blood I love.

    And Im really attached to all of the Bronte sisters' novels.

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    Veteran Member Littlelo's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is one of my favorites...thus my screen name. I also adore all of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.

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    Featured Member flickad's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    I'm a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan. The Great Gatsby and Tender Is The Night are my favourites. I also loved Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

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    Veteran Member blayze's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    not classical lit, but some very good books are The Gormanghast Novels by Mervyn Peake and The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton

    i also very much enjoyed the Arabian Nights when i was a teenager.

    and i used to LOVE Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories!!! they were so exciting!

    of course, anything by Poe and Shakespeare is a good read too.

    oooo... oliver twist! treasure island! Robinson crusoe! the purloined letter!

    eep! i wanna read now! i love reading, and the three musketeers is very good.

    i just borrowed The Bell Jar from my friend.

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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    The Bell Jar is amazing. Likewise Lolita.

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    God/dess Lena's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Pride and Prejudice
    Moby Dick
    Anna Karanina
    Atlas Shrugged (it's kind of classic, by now?)



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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    In no particular order, my "modern" picks are:

    J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye"
    James Ellroy's "White Jazz"
    William Golding's "Lord Of The Flies"
    Gabriel Marquez Garcia's "Love In The Time Of Cholera"
    Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange"

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    God/dess RoseWhite's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Off the top of my head, Charlotte Bronte: "Jane Eyre". So much fun to re-read! And as 20th century work goes, I'm always blown away whenever I re-read Orwell's "1984". It tends to be referred to sort of one-dimensionally (yeah yeah, 'Big Brother is watching you," okay), but returning to it, I'm always impressed with the details and the depth of it. Yes, it's allegorical, but the psychological states of the characters are what I find so harrowing. Give it a chance again! Not just for 9th graders any more!

    I'll add a few more later. But the mother of them all for me in the 'classics you were shocked by enjoying so much' category is Joyce's "Ulysses". It's just such a crazy adventure. Can be a fun summer read if you're a nerd who likes lots of cross-referencing and puzzling out with her reading materials.
    "Before I conceived you, I wanted you. Before you were born, I loved you. Before you were here an hour, I would die for you. This is the miracle of life." -- Maureen Hawkins

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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    John Steinbecks " of Mice and Men"

    I love that damn book!
    You Cant Quit until you try, You cant live until you die, You Cant learn to tell the truth until you learn to lie.You Cant Breath Until you choke,You gotta Laugh When your the Joke, Theres Nothing like a funeral to make you feel alive! Will you swear on your life, that no one will cry at my Funeral!
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  14. #14
    Yekhefah
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Lolita is, in my opinion, the greatest novel ever written in the English language. I was blown away the first time I read it, and it still makes me cry. It's just so beautiful!

    I also love Hemingway, especially The Sun Also Rises. And I agree about The Bell Jar. That's more modern lit than classic though. For classic lit, of course you can't go wrong with Shakespeare (except the histories, which I find dull).

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    Veteran Member $$$magnet's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Jane Eyre is my absolute favorite!
    Uncle Toms Cabin
    The Indian in the Closet.....
    i used to dream militant dreams / of taking over america / to show these white folks how it should be done
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    that if i dreamed natural dreams / of being a natural woman
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    Member goldenmean's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
    The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
    On The Road by Jack Kerouac
    1984 by George Orwell

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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Free books online

    for example:

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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    JD Salinger's nine stories (not so classical, but the author is!)
    and less classical but very entertaining:
    Running with Scissors by Augusten Borroughs
    Tuesdays with Morrie by mitch albom
    Kite Runner by khaled hosseini

    and anything by Chuck Palahniuk.. he's the one who wrote Fight Club.

    as for classical, i love DH Lawrence... as well as jane austen.

    Love it!

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    Featured Member teeth_of_the_hydra's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Death In Venice. If anyone during my lifetime will construct a tragedy to rival this book, I will worship at their feet. Seriously, I pretty much live in constant pursuit of a novel that will make me feel the way that Death In Venice did.

    Anna Karenina. All other women, alive or dead, fictitious or otherwise, pale in comparison to Anna. I LOVE HER. IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT SHE'S IMAGINARY. IT'S LOVE.

    Franz Kafka's short works. I wasn't a huge fan of "The Metamorphosis" but "In The Penal Colony" and "A Country Doctor" were spooky and startling and amazing and great.

    Oooh this is a good thread.... I love talking about books... I'll think of more...

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    Featured Member southstbabe's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Great Expectations

  21. #21
    madmaxine
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Anything by Jack London (The Original California Boy)
    "Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier

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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    I love Sherlock Holmes stories too. They're so addictive!

    You must check out Voltaire's "Candide." It's also called "Optimism." Tons of violence & betrayal. You'll laugh in empathy at the characters.

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    Featured Member Prester_John's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    I have to say I must thank my High school english teachers for forcing us to read certain books for the summer. I dont think I would have picked up some of them at the time otherwise.

    Some of my all time favorite classics, which I still pick up from time to time -

    "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

    "The Sound and the Fury" - by Faulkner. A very tough read, but worth it in the end.

    And "Being There" by Jerzy Kosinski. A very brilliant and scathing satire on Modern media culture.

    And, of course, "The Girls of S-E-X Sorority" I always wondered how that got into my summer reading.

  24. #24
    Yekhefah
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Oh dude, thanks for the reminder! Totally Candide. I LOVE that book!

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    Veteran Member Melvis's Avatar
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    Default Re: your favorite classic novels

    Wuthering Heights - Man, that Heathcliff was a passionate mofo, wasn't he?

    Catcher in the Rye - Anyone who went through a semi-emo phase loved this book. *heh*

    To kill a Mockingbird - If nothing else, I loved it because I wrote the most awesome essay about the true meaning of the title and how it related to the story. Good memories. *heh*


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