Which classics have you read?

I'd recommend William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair and anything by Charles Dickens.

Salammbo - Flaubert

I tried to (re) read Hard Times recently, but it was heavy going.

I too, really liked Picture of Dorian Grey.

x

One shouldn't underestimate the Spendi's effect, Sarah!

I love pretty much anything Jane Austen writes...my favorite is Pride and Prejudice

others I recommend:
Mill of the Floss - George Elliott
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
Ivanhoe-Sir Walter Scott
My Antonia - Willa Cather

Cheeky!

x

Ask anyone you know. You HAVE too read "Grapes Of Wrath".

HAVE TOO.

Most new books are very dissapointing.

read it amigo.

great book.

I have read East of Eden twice too.
THAT.. I just loooove.

House of Mirth

Amigo, depends on the books. As an English major I read scads and scads and while lots of those are fond favorites, many of my absolute favorites have been published in the last 15 years or so.

I can't bear Thomas Hardy...

I don't even like that part of the country, has a melancholy 'feel' to it, and always reminds me of that scene in (I think) Far from the Madding Crowd, where the sheep have the disease that bloats them, very disturbing... it always comes to mind when in Wessex (my sister lives in Bath).

Has anyone been to The Bronte Parsonage, or to the North Yorkshire Moors? Fantastic place, with Bronte 'graffiti' on the wall, and lunch in The Black Bull, so evocative.

x

I've had bad luck and no recommendations.

Political non-fiction has been good though.

Never read East of eden.

you should.

It is full of prostitutes, suicide, murder, theft, .........

Nothing. like I expected it to be.
It is a great story

As Shewolf says, you should.

And all Steinbeck works (I've them all).

My preferred - Pastures of Heaven.

I loved East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath. Read them years ago, though.

There are many literary works of lasting value and much depends on your taste and interests. There are lots of good alternatives, but here is a short list of my suggestions.

English
Charles Dickens -- "David Copperfield" or "Great Expectations"
W.M. Thackery - - "Vanity Fair"
French
Stendhal -- "The Red and the Black" or "Charterhouse of Parma"
Balzac -- "Pere Gorio" (or any of his short stories)
Maupassant -- Short Stories
Albert Camus -- "The Stranger" or "The Plague"
German
Thomas Mann -- "Buddenbrooks" or "magic Mountain" or "Mario and the Magician"
Goethe -- "Faust" (a drama, and a bit like an opera by Wagner - magical elements, but lots of tedium in between)
Russian
Leo Tolstoy -- "War and Peace"
Fyodor Dostoyevski -- "Crime and Punishment" or "The Brothers Karamazov"
Ivan Turgenev -- "Fathers and Sons"
Mikhail Lermontov -- "A Hero of our Time" (Camus stole the plot for "The Stranger" from this work.)
Spain
Cervantes -- "Don Quixote de la Mancha"
Pio Baroja -- "The Restlessness of Shanti Andia"
Brazil
J.M. Machado de Assis -- "Posthumas Reminiscences of Bras Cubas"
United States
Herman Melville -- "Billy Budd"
Samuel Clemens -- "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
Steven Crane -- "The Red badge of Courage"
John Steinbeck -- "The Grapes of Wrath" or "Cannery Row"

Others may provide equally good - but different - lists. This is a list of works of undeniable lasting import, that I happen to like very much.

The only one in your list I didn't read yet, George.

Have to buy it soon...

George's list is composed of those books I would call "classics", too.
(Though I would add some more German writers :wink: )

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw

Francis,
I would have guessed that Machado de Assis would be the least known of the writers on my list. I recall your reference to his work on another thread some time ago. "Posthumas Reminiscences ..." is, in my view, a little-known jewel. You are the only person I have encountered outside of Brasil who knew of it.

Pio Baroja is just one of the few modern Spanish writers that I know well. He is insightful, gifted with a a sense of irony, and, at the same time lighthearted. Not much in fashion anymore, but I like his works and this is his best.

I thought about adding a list of authors & works that are widely overrated (or perhaps no longer relevant) and worth avoiding. Some entries --
Tolstoy -- "Anna Karenina"
Flaubert -- "Madame Bovary"
J.P. Sartre -- everything
Earnest Hemmingway -- everything but "Old man and the Sea"

there are more....