Favorite "Classic" Literature

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:14pm

I am SO behind in classic literature that it is pathetic. Besides the basics that you read in high school - TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, CATCHER IN THE RYE, etc. I really haven't read any. So, question is, what is your favorites of the "classics?"

[adamgreer]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:19pm

Well, I first read The Great Gatsby in high school, but it remains my favorite novel of all-time. I reread it once a year.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:20pm

I feel so gay to admit it, but Little Women.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:34pm

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

[South Fl Marc]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:36pm

Pride and Prejudice, Nicholas Nickleby, Dracula, Around the World in Eighty Days

[scott68]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:37pm

The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway. One of my "at least once every summer" books.

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:40pm

Well, I am a HUGE fan of the book Les Miserables... there's something new every time I read it. It's the only book that sucks me in that much. But it's not for everyone, because it's really long and full of tangents.

One book that I honestly think everyone should read is The Picture of Dorian Gray. I LOVE that story, and Oscar Wilde's writing is of course lovely.

[AC126748]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:46pm

Too many to name, but here's my short list:

--Eugene Onegin
--As I Lay Dying
--The Great Gatsby
--Madame Bovary
--The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
--Light in August
--The Magic Mountain
--Crime and Punishment
--Lolita
--The Waves

[Unknown User]

Posted: 11/21/09 at 10:50pm

Wow- I thought I was the only one who loved the Good Earth.

Other "school books" I love: So Big by Edna Ferber, The Once and Future King, The Fountainhead.

[jasonf]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 12:42am

Repeating some but:

-Les Miserables (favorite book of all time, and Schmerg is right, there's so much there you find new stuff each time)
-1984 (very close second)
-Lolita (surprisingly funny)
-A Tale of Two Cities (say what you want about the slow pace through the beginning, the last fifty pages or so are some of the best story-telling ever)
-Once and Future King
-Jane Eyre

And I don't know if it's a classic, but I read it in school - Johnny Got His Gun was one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 3:26am

I thought I didn't really like Hemingway, and a couple of years picked up Sun Also Rises just cuz it was sitting around. LOVED it--and it makes a good companion piece to Great Gatsby or some other earlier Fitzgerald.

I'm gonna force myself not to go off on an Ayn Rand rant But I'd say her stuff is best read when you're a teen and then completely forgotten about. Utter crap.

Anna Karenina is probably still the best book of all time, you can't go wrong with James or his protoge Wharton...

What year do we go till it stops becoming classic lit? the 20s? the 60s? the 80s?

Out of classic "gay" lit--which would be more modern, Forster's Maurice, Vidal's The City and the Pillar, Isherwood's "A Single Man" and Hollinghurst's "Swimming Pool Library" top my list but that gets into the mid 80s.

[CAX]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 3:48am

Madame Bovary

[Weez]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 5:16am

There is possibly no author I love as much as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I've just commenced a Great Big Sherlock Holmes Reread, and it's AWESOME. I also love The Lost World more than words can ever explain and hope one day to get my paws on the rest of the Professor Challenger series. I'm also very fond of classic science-fiction; H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and John Wyndham are particular favourites. There's a certain attitude that Victorian-era science-fiction has that most people don't seem to notice as much as I do, but Philip Reeve has captured perfectly in his Larklight series (which isn't classic literature yet, but TOTALLY worth a read if you're not snobby about children's fiction).

Actually, while I'm on the subject of children's fiction, I simply MUST push Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Little Princess and The Secret Garden are two of the finest classic children's books I've ever read; she simply tells the stories to the best of her ability, and doesn't have any strange underlying tones of desperation like certain others. *koffedithnesbitahem* Does Enid Blyton count? 'Cos I love her school stories a whole bunch. I was a Malory Towers girl myself, but I just reread all the St Clare's stories, and they're pretty aces too.

[After Eight]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 9:21am

"Pride and Prejudice;" "Madame Bovary;" "Nana" by Emile Zola; "The Venetian Glass Nephew" by Elinor Wylie.

[ashley0139]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 10:12am

I'll say The Great Gatsby again. One of my all time favorites.

Also, A Separate Peace.

[tazber]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 10:20am

Everybody Poops by Taro Gomi.

[ashley0139]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 11:22am

Taz, that IS a classic.

[AndAllThatJazz22]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 11:48am

Huck Fin is probably THE ONLY classic literature I have ever liked, next to "Our Town". They're both really simple, but still show deep meaning and complexity.

[jasonf]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 12:06pm

Huck Finn is simple?? I don't think so...

I don't know what we're defining as "classic", but if it counts, I want to add The Princess Bride to my list.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 12:10pm

Goldman's Princess Bride got its meta concept from Beagle's Last Unicorn, so I'll add that then :P As well as Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (if you only know the movie, read the book--the sequel Myron is maybe even better)

Another "gay lit" one that holds up--Alan Holleran's Dancer from the Dance (much better than other famous gay books from its time like Faggots or The Front Runner which read more out of historical interest now).

[NYadgal]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 12:17pm

Wonderful list!

In addition to those listed, I would add:

HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
(It's one of the first novels of 'manners' in American literature)

...I actually have a pretty long list, but that's at the top!

[Unknown User]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 12:24pm

Well depending on whether you classify her mentor, Henry James's as American lit or not I suppose But yeah House of Mirth is my fave Wharton after Age of Innocence.

[GlindatheGood22]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 12:39pm

Gone With the Wind
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Little Women
Ethan Frome
The Great Gatsby

[AC126748]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 12:54pm

Another really wonderful piece of queer literature that really holds up is Jeanette Winterson's 1985 debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. One of the few pieces of writing I've ever read (fiction or memoir) that captures the experience of coming to terms with homosexuality within a religious community.

[GoSmileLaughCryClap]

Posted: 11/22/09 at 1:14pm

Day of the Locust - West

Rabbit,Run - Updike

Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon

Naked Lunch - Burroughs

But the only thing I've ever read that made me break out in a sweat and cry was the last twenty pages of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Although not considered classic literature yet, I love the work of Vikram Seth. The Golden Gate is a novel written in sonnets, and A Suitable Boy is about India during the middle of the 20th Century.

You should check them out.