Classic lit

[02GF74]

yes, it just came to me as I opened up the thread.

 

[Yellow Fang]

May I recommend The Count of Monte Cristo by Alex Dumas. One of the best stories ever.

With regards to me having said Moby Dick was long, when I looked at a copy in Waterstones, it was only an inch thick. The Count of Monte Cristo is two inches thick. I have put them both on my long-term reading list along with Anna Karenina.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Not sure I'd go for the above novels next; go for the semi-factual ones : Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, Down & Out in London & Paris for starters along with various essay collections. And do give 1984 another go - I read it some 30 years ago. after a few pages I thought a bit weak, but after a few pages more was hooked and finished it, emotionally drained but wide awake at about 3am!
The greatest novel of the 20th century by its greatest writer ? (discuss....)

Other Modern classics: Catch 22, or for a very different theme, Mervin Peake's Titus Groan.
Apparently Heller was asked by a journalist if he minded critics saying he'd never written anything else as good as Catch 22 - he replied that he didn't mind, "after all, who has?" As Mohammed Ali use to say, "it ain't braggin', if you can back it up"

I have read The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, Down & Out in Paris and London. I've read Burmese Days and Coming up for Air. I have a 2nd hand copy of 1984 waiting to be re-started. A Clergyman's Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying are the only Orwells I have not read. I also have a copy of Catch 22 waiting to be read, but that is quite a thick book. I started that once before when I was thirteen but did not get very far.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Jude the wotsit - T. Hardy (the wotsit will come to me)

Paradise Lost - Milton, if you fancy a challenge - the only book I have never completed as an adult - unintelligeable nonsense.

Definitely won't read Jude the Obscure. Hardy could be unnaturally cruel to his characters and Jude the Obscure was the cruelest.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Have you read To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye or The Picture of Dorian Grey?

Done Dorian Grey. I never realised to debauch was a verb before reading that book. I was interested to see To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and A Doll's House were on a stand together in Waterstones, on a buy one get a 2nd half price offer. I think they were aimed at school pupils because there were lots of study aid books on the same stand. I was tempted.

 

[Doseone]

Have you read To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye or The Picture of Dorian Grey?

Yes to the first two. Both Excellent.

Something to distort/confuse your view of mundanity and existence.
Albert Camus' The Stranger.

Read it in Frenchwhen I was 18 and it did my head in

Steinbeck - Cannery Row, a lovely story with some of the best characters.

 

[ASC1951]

Paradise Lost - Milton, if you fancy a challenge - the only book I have never completed as an adult - unintelligeable nonsense.

Difficult, yes; unintelligible, no. And to call it nonsense reflects more on you than on Milton.

If you want a long, clever, funny and more accessible poem - Byron's Don Juan.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Something to distort/confuse your view of mundanity and existence.
Albert Camus' The Stranger.

A journey of self-discovery and eventual enlightenment.
Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

A lonely and aimless journey through Norway and life itself.
Knut Hamsun's The Wanderer

Plus all the Rupert Bear annuals and Tintin books!

I believe Albert Camus's The Stranger was the inspiration of The Cure's Killing an Arab. I often thought it was strange Robert Smith would sing such a racist song.

Didn't Hermann Hesse also write Steppenwolf, which was the inspiration for a Boney M song?

Would you recommend Tintin in the Congo?

 

[Sandra6]

Lord of the Flies has killed my daughter's love of reading, I don't think she's picked up a book since being forced to read that for school.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Lord of the Flies has killed my daughter's love of reading, I don't think she's picked up a book since being forced to read that for school.

I read it at school and thought it was horrid.

Catch22 is great if you like dark satire.

 

[Drago]

The Art of war. A most interesting tome.

 

[User169]

Get yourself a copy of Bloom's "western canon" and work your way through that.

 

[Hover Fly]

Lord of the Flies has killed my daughter's love of reading, I don't think she's picked up a book since being forced to read that for school.

Ditto. I haven't read a work of fiction since an agent of the state coerced me, under threat of punishment, into reading -and, worse, writing about- that pile of BS. "Bored of the Flies" we called it.

 

[asterix]

Ooh, I've collected several Graham Greene books from second hand shops, I've not read them yet as they seem a bit grim and gritty for my tastes. How cheerless are they?

Varies. Try 'Travels with My Aunt' and 'Our Man in Havana'. Both light hearted stuff but a trifle amoral. I don't think Graham Greene is unnecessarily grim and gritty, just rather realistic unfortunately!

 

[vernon]

Lord of the Flies has killed my daughter's love of reading, I don't think she's picked up a book since being forced to read that for school.

Don't blame the book.

Blame her teacher for making it dull.

Forty years ago my English teacher brought Lord of the Flies, The Crucible and Macbeth to life for me and my fellow pupils. He is still spoken of fondly by his grateful ex-pupils from Longfield School who sailed through their O Level English Literature exams.