what is everyone’s favourite *classic* book, and why?
(obvs i’m a tolkien girlie, but legendarium aside …)
i’m gonna go with: jane eyre, anne of green gables & sense and sensibility. i also adored franny and zooey & the count of monte cristo 🤍
yours? 👀👀
(obvs i’m a tolkien girlie, but legendarium aside …)
i’m gonna go with: jane eyre, anne of green gables & sense and sensibility. i also adored franny and zooey & the count of monte cristo 🤍
yours? 👀👀
Comments
Anne of Green Gables
The Sherlock Holmes stories
Picture of Dorian Grey
Just read One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, and they’re both fantastic…
I’ve always come back to A Wrinkle In Time as an absolute favorite that sparked my love of science-fiction.
Seize the Time radicalized me though.
Also: CATCH-22, HHGTTG, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
- Chronicles of Narnia
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- The Great Gatsby
- Jane Eyre
- Rebecca
Try this -
Has it all:)
The Fountainhead - love the design engineering vibe
Atlas Shrugged - because it amused me how a certain group treats it like a bible but like the bible they skip over the whole usery/loans part. And a woman running a railroad!
Pride & Prejudice
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Raisin in the Sun
Selected E.A. Poe stories
A Christmas Carol
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Narrative of the Life (Frederick Douglass)
Frankenstein, because Mary Shelley effectively invented science fiction with that story, but it is also horror, and it is also humanist.
I think Melville was a true genius.
Another option for anyone interested in stories or resistance & resilience could be Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place
Or A Christmas Carol. Wonderful and uplifting. Even if you've seen every adaptation going, it's still well worth a read.
I love Dracula and Frankenstein as well.
I want to say Puck of Pook's Hill, too, but haven't read it since high school.
Anna Karenina. Everyone gets a point of view, even Levin's dog. So many love stories, and also so much heartache.
The Brothers Karamazov. Seriously messed up family, a mystery to be solved, everyone is deeply passionate in a different way, richest characterizations ever.
I always find new things in it with each new reading.
I think The War of the Worlds just about clinches it. Remember the Thunderchild!
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Hubert Selby, Jr.
Sentimental reasons, mostly. I read it in 4th grade, from the school library. It hadn't been checked out since the 60s, and was still on the old card catalog.
As a result, the school librarian also added me to her radar, which opened so many literary doors for me.
I did also enjoy the book itself, although I didn't fully understand it until we had to read it for a class in high school.
(Wishbone also helped. 😂🐾)
Also going to go with Earthsea and Left Hand of Darkness.
Honestly, if I ever have to read the sentence "Nynaeve tugged her braid" again just shoot me.
I haven’t read Scarlet Pimpernel actually!
At the very top for me, however, I would put some of the dystopian classics: 1984, The Road, Brave New World.
I’ve not yet read Flowers for Algernon 🙈
“Put ‘er in the basket, Chief!”
Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
But also, in no order of preference:
Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain)
The Name of the Rose
100 Years of Solitude
The Neverending Story
Dubliners
Last Exit to Brooklyn for language & experimentation.
The Shining for pure readability.
I read Anna Karenina last year and that book sucked me in.
This whole feed was vindication for me. I always thought I was odd for having such diverse interests in literature but I'm not alone.
Ursula Le Guin (Lavina—let's call it a modern classic), C.J. Cherryh (Down Below Station), JRR Tolkien (Hobbit), Terry Pratchett (So many), Douglas Adams (Hitchhikers),
Raymond Feist & Janny Wurts (Daughter of the Empire). Also shout out to Andre Norton my fave sci fi go to when I was young.
-Jane Eyre - Secret meetings in a quiet candlelit hallway... *sigh*😏
-Hobbit/ LOTR - Partly the imagery of the landscapes: from the forests to desolated plains.
For me, it's such a profoundly sad story of loneliness, exploitation and the complete loss of morals and ethics.
He asked himself "Can I do this?", instead of "Should I do this?".
That lesson is timeless.
The Outsiders
Catcher in the Rye
Of Mice and Men
1984
Days, but King Solomon’s Mines and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are a very close second.
If Scaramouche or Captain Blood count as classics, they’d share the third place spot.
- Treasure Island
- The Three Musketeers
- Le Morte d’Arthur
- any Robin Hood telling that isn’t Howard Pyle’s
- Great Expectations
Crime and Punishment
Cannery Row
Having said that, I read the first two books. Even tried to watch the TV series of it...