Help Getting Into Classic Literature

[Deleted]

I'm a high school dropout (though I did get my GED) so I never read most classic literature that everyone else read in high school and college. Now that I have a lot of free time on my hands, I want to read the classics.

So far I've read Catcher In The Rye and 1984. Can you guys please help me put together a read list?

[A Platypus Rave is Correct]

I hated reading it when forced to in high school but on my own I greatly enjoyed Dracula.

The Lord of the Rings books... I found to be a bit of a chore to get through... and the movies kinda cut out a lot of the filler... some people still love the books so your mileage may vary.

The Hobbit on the other hand is a great book and quick like 100 pages.

A little more recent The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 5 part trilogy is excellent as well... I literally read 4 of the 5 books in 4 days... it does lose some steam in the last book but even then it's still enjoyable.

I'd skip Moby Dick unless you REALLY want a History of Whaling...

[Jiren]

- The Hobbit (Better than the movies & Shorter)
- Lord Of The Rings (While Tolkien's LONG descriptions of environments can get tedious it's still an amazing read)
- The Shining

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque

A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

Candide, Voltaire

The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

Frankenstein

Dracula

Throw in some Shakespeare - I'd say Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream are the most accessible

[LexExpress]

Rebecca
Lolita
To Kill a Mockingbird
Brave New World
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Little Women

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

I do want to throw out there that the older a book is, the more you should do to research to put it into context. Any decent edition of a classic work will have some sort of forward that should do an okayish job at doing this.

Candide, for example, makes far less sense if you don't put it into context as a satire of Leibnizian optimism

You will also lose a bit if you aren't able to understand references made either to either works, or to aspects of the culture at the time

By the time you get to really old English works like Beowulf, you need not only to supplement with some sort of academic companion piece, but you're starting from a translated version.

[Red Impact]

I love reading the classics.

The easiest/fastest reads to me are:
Brave New World
To Kill a Mockingbird
Fahrenheit 451
The Sun Also Rises
The Great Gatsby
The Crucible
Little Women
Dracula
Frankenstein
The Glass Menagerie
Most things by Jules Vern

Less quick reads that I still love are:
A Confederacy of Dunces
Of Mice and Men
Animal Farm
A Streetcar Named Desire
Pride and Prejudice
A Picture of Dorian Gray
A Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Cannery Row
The Jungle


And the ones that wind up being a chore for me to read:
Les Miserables (which is bad because I love the story, but the book is just so overly long)
Don Quixote
The Grapes of Wrath (may be due to the fact that I had to read it 3 times in school)
98% of Charles Dickens bibliography
Crime and Punishment
Moby Dick


So yeah, I'd typically pair one from the first column with one from the second column, then skip the third column (or tackle them when you're feeling particularly brave). That way you have something that's a fairly quick read so even if you're not a fan of it, you can still get through it. Then tackle a bit of a larger book. Whereas I've tried to read things from the third column, and unless I was required to finish it for school, I always wind up giving up.

[Fade]

Catcher in The Rye is my shiiiiiiit..

I don't agree with everything I was forced to read, but I'll suggest a few

Brave New World
Player Piano
Frankenstein
Any and all of Hemmingways short stories
Lord of the Flies
The Rocking Horse Winner (another short story) - D.H Lawrence
Native Son (if you're a massochist)
The Outsiders (if you're into some serious male companionship)
And they're not HS literature but Crighton and Palahniuks books are madly entertaining (and most, informative)

[BorneAgain]

Eh, do a marathon of Wishbone episodes; you'll get the gist of most of the big stuff.

[Bo Rida]

Brave New World has had a lot of mentions for a reason, it's the perfect book to compare and contrast with 1984.

[Red Impact]

Mar 23, 2017 14:34:28 GMT -5 Bo Rida said:

Brave New World has had a lot of mentions for a reason, it's the perfect book to compare and contrast with 1984.

Make it a trio with Animal Farm as well.

[eDemento2099]

If you read (and enjoyed) Orwell's 1984, I recommend you read the prequel: Animal Farm.

If you want to read a classic that serves as an allegory for philosophy, check of Candide by Voltaire.

Bram Stoker's Dracula has parts that are great, but I don't think the quality is consistent. In that regard, I much prefer Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles is a fantastic novel, but it's also very depressing.

[Deleted]

Mar 23, 2017 11:37:13 GMT -5 Fade said:

Catcher in The Rye is my shiiiiiiit..

I don't agree with everything I was forced to read, but I'll suggest a few

Brave New World
Player Piano
Frankenstein
Any and all of Hemmingways short stories
Lord of the Flies
The Rocking Horse Winner (another short story) - D.H Lawrence
Native Son (if you're a massochist)
The Outsiders (if you're into some serious male companionship)
And they're not HS literature but Crighton and Palahniuks books are madly entertaining (and most, informative)

I've actually read some Chuck Palahniuk. I read Fight Club and Choke when I needed some airplane reading material back in the day.

And thank you for getting me started everyone!

[cackles]

I was never really into reading until I took a class on Japanese literature. If you want some recs in that category, I can definitely suggest some stuff.

English wise, I recommend Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" and Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist".

[Ryback on a Pole!]

If you're into Sci-Fi anything by H.G Wells is good.

War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Time Machine and The Sleeper Awakes are all great.

He was really ahead of his time.

[Limity (BLM)]

A lot of awesome suggestions, you'll probably be reading for years.

Are you just wanting to read any classics, or do you have particular genres you like? As you've already read 1984, I would recommend reading Animal Farm as well. You can finish it in a day.

In addition, the Dune books by Frank Herbert.

[Drillbit Taylor]

Mar 23, 2017 14:34:28 GMT -5 Bo Rida said:

Brave New World has had a lot of mentions for a reason, it's the perfect book to compare and contrast with 1984.

Same vein read Communist Manifesto and Wealth of Nations to get the more philosophical counterpoints

[Big Poppa Pumpkin]

check this one out first, a very influential classic literature, pioneered the concept of the bildungsroman

[Deleted]

I started Dracula today. Pretty good so far. I wasn't expecting it to be written in that format, I was expecting a regular novel.

[Manute Bol]

I'm a high school English teacher and 1984 and The Catcher in the Rye are staples of most high school English classes I've seen. Good picks to start with.

To Kill and Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and Of Mice of Men would have to join them in rounding out a top five list of books most kids read in high school (and Shakespeare too, of course). I'm personally not a fan of Gatsby at all, but you can't deny it's popularity. The other four are some of my favorite texts to teach and my students almost always fall in love with them.