Topic: Worthy "Classic" Novels (Read 12284 times)

SirJuggles · « **on:** 21 Sep 2010, 21:21 »

I assume we all had those books. The ones you had to read in high school English because they were "classics" and it was important that you be familiar with them. The Great Gatsbys and Catchers In the Rye and Lords of the Flies. Most of the class just found the Cliff Notes and left it at that. After a few years, we graduated school and left the "classics" behind.

But I've always been an avid reader, and even in high school I enjoyed a few of these works. I was the only one in my class who loved The Great Gatsby, but we all got pretty involved with a more modern novel called The Power Of One. Lately I've been thinking that I'd like to go back and give some of these works another try, or actually read a few that my class never got around to. A Clockwork Orange seem like it could be really good, and my girlfriend sings the praises of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

So what literary classics would you recommend? Which ones get a bad rap? Which ones are a crime to inflict on schoolchildren (I'm sorry but I can't stand most of Steinbeck's work)?

scarred · « **Reply #1 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 21:58 »

East of Eden is one of the best books ever written

SirJuggles · « **Reply #2 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 22:25 »

See from Steinbeck we read Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, and The Pearl. Of Mice and Men was passable, but our teacher forced us to over-analyze Pearl and Grapes to the point where I never want to hear another loving description of the wind blowing across the barren landscape for as long as I live.

scarred · « **Reply #3 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 22:27 »

Read East of Eden, especially without the confines of a class-related reading environment. I read it in a week on a road trip and it's still one of my favorite books of all time.

SirJuggles · « **Reply #4 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 22:31 »

Will add it to the list.

Tom · « **Reply #5 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 22:37 »

Frankenstein, seriously. The best Industrial Revolution allegory ever written.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #6 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 22:50 »

I absolutely love A Clockwork Orange. I used it for a book report once a year for each year I was in highschool, but I actually read it every time because I enjoyed it that much. Plus you pretty much have no idea what they're talking about the first time you read it so repeat readings are sort of necessary.

I also really liked Old Man and the Sea.

SirJuggles · « **Reply #7 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 23:00 »

My girlfriend also really recommends a sci-fi'ish novel called Childhood's End that she read at a more creative-studies based charter school, but I had personally never heard of it.

Buttfranklin · « **Reply #8 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 23:41 »

Quote from: Tom on 21 Sep 2010, 22:37

Frankenstein, seriously. The best Industrial Revolution allegory ever written.

Also, Brave New World.

SirJuggles · « **Reply #9 on:** 21 Sep 2010, 23:47 »

Funny story, my dad gave me Brave New World to read when I was about 10. My mom was not happy when she found out.

Aurjay · « **Reply #10 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 04:15 »

I dropped out of high school before we ever had any required reading beyond Where the Red Fern Grows. Always bugged me that I missed out on all the discussions of classics and the disseminating of them to the minutest detail. Then again maybe that ruined some of the books for people that would rather just be caught up in the moment of reading and not have it broken down. Either way I took it upon myself to "catch up" as much as possible and some of my favorites are Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Jungle, Fahrenheit 451, A Farewell to Arms and of course On the Road is my all time favorite.

Spluff · « **Reply #11 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 05:04 »

Catch 22 is unflinchingly brilliant.

BlahBlah · « **Reply #12 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 05:38 »

TheFuriousWombat · « **Reply #13 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 06:15 »

Frankenstein is a snooze, sorry to say. Moby Dick is easily one of the best things ever written in English. Along with Paradise Lost, that is. As for those fur'ners, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is absurdly masterful.

Dazed · « **Reply #14 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 06:20 »

I had to read The Stranger, Cat's Cradle, Brave New World, and Frankenstein among others my senior year.

That was a good year for english, I'd recommend all of those, but especially the Stranger and Cat's Cradle. Like, cannot recommend them strongly enough.

Muppet King · « **Reply #15 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 06:47 »

Quote from: Spluff on 22 Sep 2010, 05:04

Catch 22 is unflinchingly brilliant.

Agreed.

Anything from Mark Twain is worth reading.

The Dead by James Joyce is a short story and lags a little in the typical Joyce way, but once you hit the end the story all of a sudden becomes amazing.

Lolita is pretty excellent.

Confederacy of Dunces.

The Collector by John Fowles. It's not the best book, but it's worth a look.

As for crimes against humanity, Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. She may have been partially responsible for some of the greatest writers ever, but she could not write a decent story to save her life. She also once said that Hitler deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for his wanting to enact lebensraum.

Inlander · « **Reply #16 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 06:48 »

A lot of classic novels get a bad rap because people are made to read them in high school, and frankly there's some literature which you can't appreciate until you're a little older and a little more experienced in life. When I first read Thomas Hardy (the Return of the Native) for school when I was around 15 I hated it - partly in a genuine way, and partly because the accepted wisdom in the classroom was that "it sucks". It took me more than ten years to give Hardy another go: I picked up the Woodlanders in a bookshop just to give it the first page test and see if I'd changed my opinion since high school, and I was just floored by the quality of the writing. Even now it's impossible for me to read that first page (here it is) and not be absolutely seduced.

DavidGrohl · « **Reply #17 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 06:50 »

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a great read if you like mystery.

jimbunny · « **Reply #18 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 07:20 »

See, the thing is, most books that are considered "classics" are that way because, for those who can attain a certain state of mind and get a grasp of the idiom (eg Elizabethan, Victorian, Modern, etc. English) these works are - really - good. Lots of things are worth reading that don't make it into the canon, but there aren't many things that do make it that don't deserve to at least be read, if not revered.

That said, Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground is riveting. I can't give you an informed opinion about the various translations of Russian literature, but Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have done an absolutely spectacular job with everything I've encountered of theirs so far.

JD · « **Reply #19 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 08:08 »

Quote from: Buttfranklin on 21 Sep 2010, 23:41

Quote from: Tom on 21 Sep 2010, 22:37
Frankenstein, seriously. The best Industrial Revolution allegory ever written.

Also, Brave New World.

1984 while we're at it.

StaedlerMars · « **Reply #20 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 09:15 »

Get thee a 'classic short stories' book or something.

Read The Stranger or The Plague.

I also really like most things I've read by Hemmingway. Be prepared for shock sad endings though.

Gemmwah · « **Reply #21 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 10:45 »

I read To Kill a Mockingbird at least once a year, but one of my absolute favourite classic novels is Jane Eyre. It often seems to be brushed over and called boring, but I find it so completely and utterly heartwrenching that I read it whenever I need a good cry.

SirJuggles · « **Reply #22 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 12:02 »

See back in middle school we would read from these giant Literature books that were basically huge compendiums of short stories, and some of the stuff in them was absolute gold. We had to read A Sound Of Thunder about 5 times over the years, but there was one called The Cold Equations that I always would flip back to.

I felt that most of the "numbered" novels were pretty good. Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Catch 22. And I was one of the few people who really got into Thomas Hardy's stuff. At one point we had an individual choice on what book we wanted to read next from the list the teacher gave us, and I went with The Mayor Of Casterbridge. His stuff is doubly good because you can pretty safely assumed that everyone's gonna get fucked in the end.

Tom · « **Reply #23 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 14:11 »

Quote from: Jeans on 22 Sep 2010, 10:05

Also: jumping on the Moby Dick bandwagon, and throwing in Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar on fifth for good measure.

Seconded although in High School I had to read Hamlet and Othello. Those two are (Aristotelian) tragedies because supposedly great men fall victim to their own emotional vices, i.e. jealousy and excessive introspection. Highschool behaviour really.

Theriandros · « **Reply #24 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 16:31 »

Shakespeare does not make for classic reading, particularly in high school. It should be seen on stage, as is its proper and superior place.

That said, I'm looking forward to finally digging into Crime and Punishment (I had a paperback copy that fell apart when I was halfway through, and I've only just now gotten a new copy).

Avec · « **Reply #25 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 16:54 »

FFFFF
I'm the process of tearing apart Crime and Punishment. As far as personal preference, I loved Flowers for Algernon.

negative creep · « **Reply #26 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 17:09 »

I'd like to second Moby Dick. I also enjoyed Crime and Punishment a lot (actualy everything by Dostoevsky that I've read), and while we're talking about Russian literature: War and Peace, if you can spare the time.

I also would like to add Goethe's Sorrows of young Werther to the list.

Also Hemmingway, Dickens, Wilde, yadda yadda...

Ozymandias · « **Reply #27 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 17:18 »

To Kill a Mockingbird is essential, Catch-22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I both deeply love.

LeeC · « **Reply #28 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 17:21 »

does The Hobbit count? if so by far better than anything else Tolkien ever wrote.

on the subject of Shakespeare, Macbeth, Mid-Summer night's dream, and Romeo and Juliet are all good, Othello was good too, but I couldnt get into Hamlet.

Moby Dick is something I always wanted to read but never had. Same with Three Musketeers and all of the Iliad and the Odyssey only read snippets and or retellings of them but never the actual stories themselves.

To kill a mocking bird was genius

negative creep · « **Reply #29 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 17:32 »

Oh yeah, Three Musketeers is pretty good, too. Worth reading in any case.

I think The Hobbit counts. It's a good book either way.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #30 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 17:39 »

is H.P. Lovecraft considered classic? Because it's certainly old.

If it is, I recommend everything by Lovecraft.

Ozymandias · « **Reply #31 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 18:35 »

Quote from: LeeC on 22 Sep 2010, 17:21

on the subject of Shakespeare, Macbeth, Mid-Summer night's dream, and Romeo and Juliet are all good, Othello was good too, but I couldnt get into Hamlet.

Romeo and Juliet I dislike quite a lot unless you read it as a comedy. Then it's fantastic.

Taming of the Shrew is a personal favorite as far as Shakespeare goes.

JD · « **Reply #32 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 18:49 »

Quote from: Theriandros on 22 Sep 2010, 16:31

Shakespeare does not make for classic reading, particularly in high school. It should be seen on stage, as is its proper and superior place.

I think they're more for the characters than anything else.

SirJuggles · « **Reply #33 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 18:59 »

We actually did Cyrano de Bergerac as a bit of a counterpoint to Shakespeare, and I personally found it much more accessible and enjoyable. And while we're on plays, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was incredibly good.

I really wish schools would do more stuff like Lovecraft and Tolkien. I found out that the AP Reading List actually has some Orson Scott Card on it, but I could never convince our teacher to do a unit on Ender's Game.

Aurjay · « **Reply #34 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 19:00 »

guess im the only one who hated moby dick. Old Man and the Sea was by far better. Moby Dick just went on and on about whaling, ships, every piece on a ship, types of whales, every piece of a whale, types of dolphins etc, etc. until finally oh yeah lets actually try to kill the whale.

Ozymandias · « **Reply #35 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 19:40 »

Quote from: tender on 22 Sep 2010, 18:59

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

You and me are fight.

LeeC · « **Reply #36 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 22:16 »

Quote from: Ozymandias on 22 Sep 2010, 18:35

Quote from: LeeC on 22 Sep 2010, 17:21
on the subject of Shakespeare, Macbeth, Mid-Summer night's dream, and Romeo and Juliet are all good, Othello was good too, but I couldnt get into Hamlet.

Romeo and Juliet I dislike quite a lot unless you read it as a comedy. Then it's fantastic.

Taming of the Shrew is a personal favorite as far as Shakespeare goes.

yeah we read R&J as a comedy. Always wanted to read taming of the shrew.

Vuk · « **Reply #37 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 22:41 »

How about cult classics? Stuff like Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Two of my favourite novels of all time. Generally, however, I'll always hail the Russians as the greats of classic literature. I'm taking a course on Tolstoy right now at school, and one on Nabokov next semester - currently trying to make it through War and Peace. Book is so long, but I feel like it will be worth it.

Buttfranklin · « **Reply #38 on:** 22 Sep 2010, 23:10 »

Quote from: Scandanavian War Machine on 22 Sep 2010, 17:39

is H.P. Lovecraft considered classic? Because it's certainly old.

If it is, I recommend everything by Lovecraft.

Well, not so much "classic literature," as it is "classic horror." Close enough, though.

Also, Gravity's Rainbow. Haha, just kidding.

satsugaikaze · « **Reply #39 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 01:59 »

Quote from: LeeC on 22 Sep 2010, 22:16

yeah we read R&J as a comedy.

Baz Luhrmann did not help.

Also, I remember being hooked on The Lost World and White Fang when I was a kid.

Inlander · « **Reply #40 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 02:06 »

Quote from: Vuk on 22 Sep 2010, 22:41

currently trying to make it through War and Peace. Book is so long, but I feel like it will be worth it.

Next you should give Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman a go, if you can face up to another Russian epic. It's sort of a 20th-century World War II version of War and Peace.

scarred · « **Reply #41 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 02:07 »

I got War and Peace for my bday and I've got a few books in line before it but I'm a little excited to start it. I know it's a slog, but fuck. That's what winter's for.

Border Reiver · « **Reply #42 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 07:29 »

All Quiet on the Western Front - the book is phenominal
The Hobbit - Still my favourite book of all time
Henry V, MacBeth - amoungst the plays of Bill that can be read and are still compelling, better seen performed, but they still make interesting reads, and even better when you realize what a revisionist Shakespeare was

I hated Shakespeare in school, and I blame it all on the curriculum's need to have students analyse the symbolic significance of every third flippin' word and most teacher's complete refusal to either show a film of the play or the play itself, so that the students could see them for what they were - the mass public entertainment of the day. It wasn't until I saw Ken Brannagh's Henry V while waiting for Highlander to start at a double feature in university that I realized that Shakespeare might be interesting. If teenagers had to study sex like they do Shakespeare the human race would die out.

Wasteroo · « **Reply #43 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 08:08 »

Quote from: Jeans on 23 Sep 2010, 05:35

Quote from: Ozymandias on 22 Sep 2010, 19:40
You and me are fight.
Ozy how can you not love Joyce

maybe he just likes Ulysses better

negative creep · « **Reply #44 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 08:56 »

Quote from: Border Reiver on 23 Sep 2010, 07:29

All Quiet on the Western Front - the book is phenominal

Shit, how could I forget that?

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #45 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 12:06 »

Quote from: Buttfranklin on 22 Sep 2010, 23:10

Quote from: Scandanavian War Machine on 22 Sep 2010, 17:39
is H.P. Lovecraft considered classic? Because it's certainly old.

If it is, I recommend everything by Lovecraft.
Well, not so much "classic literature," as it is "classic horror." Close enough, though.

Also, Gravity's Rainbow. Haha, just kidding.

oh god, I'm trying to read Gravity's Rainbow right now and it is extremely slow going. It's so hard to follow, sometimes I have to read whole pages again just to remember what character is being dealt with.

I almost never give up on a book, but I'm seroiusly considering it with this one.

SirJuggles · « **Reply #46 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 12:27 »

I felt that way about Ulysses, though I feel bad because I know it's supposed to be an amazing read

Wasteroo · « **Reply #47 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 12:34 »

it is oh my god it is

you may need to use sparknotes or something similar to know what the hell is going on sometimes though

Blyss · « **Reply #48 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 13:11 »

The Most Dangerous Game was and still is a favorite. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It wasn't required reading, but as a child I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - just because I wanted to. I have fond memories of both.

Ozymandias · « **Reply #49 on:** 23 Sep 2010, 13:14 »

The point of a book is to be read and enjoyed. Joyce is not enjoyable to read. He is only enjoyable to learn about completely irrelevant shit outside of reading the book then come back to the book and rub your dick on it.

Which, not coincidentally, is something I'm sure he did on the regular.

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Author Topic: Worthy "Classic" Novels (Read 12284 times)