Kevin's Watch

I'd consider myself reasonably literate, though my exposure to the classics has mostly been through the usual route: high school English classes. Not exactly the best medium for introducing stuff, though I've always been a serious reader. (Fair warning: I thought "Old Man and The Sea" was pretty boring back then, even though I'd probably read more than most of my classmates)

At any rate, I'm on a quest to expand my literary horizons. I just picked up a collection of Kafka's short stories from the library yesterday and have enjoyed what I've read so far (in particular, "The Metamorphosis" was good, if depressing), so I'm open to other suggestions once I work my way through the books I just got from the library.

What would you suggest for someone relatively new to the classics? Of course, I've heard of many of the classics (Great Expectations, War and Peace, etc.) but never read them, so I have no idea whose work is relatively accessible for a newcomer. I'm not afraid to try something "challenging", but on the other hand, I don't want to be unable to understand it at all. I've heard Joyce's "Ulysses" is supposed to be particularly difficult, for example.

Your opinions are most welcome.

Here's a list of classics that I've read and got a lot out of, and that I think are pretty accessible for someone new to classics.

In no particular order -

Dickens - Great Expectations
Bronte - Wuthering Heights
Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Tolstoy - Anna Karenina (havent read War and Peace - a book that big and old is daunting!)
Lawrence - Women in love (the scholars say Sons and Lovers is better, I disagree)
Nabokov - Lolita
Orwell - 1984
Twain - Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Golding - Lord of the Flies

I guess it just depends on what you're interested in thematically ....

I've always thought Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to be the greatest novel ever written.

Cervantes Don Quixote

Dumas The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo

Twain Life on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn

Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Miserables

Aristophenes Lysistrata

Shakespeare The Tempest and As You Like It

Thucydides The History of the Pelopennesian War

Herodatus The Histories

Homer Iliad and Odyssey

Vergil The Aeneid

Steinbeck East of Eden

Sophocles The Theban Plays

Aeschylus The Oresteia

Austin Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion

Dante Inferno (don't bother with Purgatory or Paradise - they're boring )

Boccaccio The Decameron

Tales from 1001 Arabian Nights

Dickens A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities

Flaubert Madame Bovary

Wow, heavy on the Greek Lit, hey Duchess?

Metamorphisis is my favourite (and the best) Kafka (IMO)

Great Expectations may bit a bit heavy for a newcomer to Dickens, best to start off with Oliver Twist, or Pickwick Papers maybe?

Orwell, (if it's 1984 or Animal Farm-don't enjoy most of the rest myself) Twain and Bronte are all great choices, and Arabian nights are always fun. (Burton translation? Bit "clunky" maybe.)

Will think about it. I've become such a lazy reader these days. Terrible really.

--A

Austen - Pride & Prejudice
Wells - First Men in the Moon, Time Machine & War of the Worlds
J.F.Cooper - Last of the Mohicans

Moby Dick

Wilde - Picture of Dorian Grey & Importance of Being Earnest

The Count of Monte Cristo

Bronte - Wuthering Heights

Darwin - Origin of the Species

Thanks all! This is exactly what I was looking for.

/makes list for the next library trip

Avatar - Pickwick Papers is a great introduction to Dickens. I didnt suggest it though because its a pretty big book, and I found Great Expecations pretty easy to get into.

Encryptic - Pickwick is typical of early Dickens - entertaining, funny, dazzling, whereas Great Expectations is typical of late Dickens - deeper, moralistic, darker and much more serious.

You really cant go wrong with either book.

I intend to start Great Expectations soon.

I will definitely second Thucydides' Peloponnesian War! I have never enjoyed anything to do with history, politics and strategy quite so much. For a "user-friendly" start on this admittedly monsterous book, get The Landmark Thucydides, a revision of the Richard Crawley translation edited by Rober B. Strassler. It has maps that make all the action a good deal more comprehensible, despite that some people have some issues with the translation (minor things, mostly, I believe). For a very painful look at Thucydides, get Thomas Hobbes' transation of Peloponnesian War. Ancient Greek translated into late Middle English: just... painful.

Too, if you're into character studies about Classical figures, Plutarch's always a good place to start.

E...You must ask yourself some questions at this juncture. You use the word "classics". Do you know how it is that certain pieces of literatue are considered to be " classic".? Yes,,high degree in execution of Craft gets one noticed,,but history is littered with " artists" who in final analysis,,didn't express squat in their Art.

..Classics are "classics" because the work is a reflection of the human condition of and at that time....The Work has the element of The Universal to it...For the realitively inexpensive cost..I suggest a one semester course in The Humanities at the local Comm College. Its very good to know what was going on in the world at the time of a Arts creation...How is the conflicts of the times reflected in the Art?,,,English 101 and 102 could make you suffer but they lead to 201 and 202, etc,,and thats were the real fun begins. The added bonus is of course, you'll be able to hold your tea cup with pinky held straight up and with distinction...Whatever, if you enjoyed reading in high school,, you should continue with it in Comm College at least. Doing so offers return for the rest of your life.

...I would suggest Cantebury Tales,,The Decameron ( both large tomes made up of many little stories full of humanity),,lots of Shakespearre, Gullivers Travels,,well...on and on..theres more than a life time to read out there..oh,,and Poe!..read lots of Poe.......MEL

I don't know if you'd call them classics, but I'd suggest anything written by Sir Richard Burton, including any biographies of the amazing man, and On The Beach by Nevil Shute, an absolutely chilling and beautifully written novel about the end of humanity.

Dracula : Bram Stoker
Lord of the Flies : Golding
Watership Down : Adams

I'd add Ada by Nabakov
Nicolas & Alexandra
The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
Two Years Before the Mast by Dana
Pultarch's Lives
Homage the Catalonia by Orwell
The Stranger by Camus
The Heart of Darkness by Conrad
and Razor's Edge by Mamaugh

I've been reading the Canterbury Tales and Ovid's Metamorphoses, lately. Decameron is also good, I hear, but haven't gotten into it. And, of course, there's the obvious line of classics, running thus: Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton. Shakespeare is up there, but he might be too challenging for you (as you said, you wanted something accessible). Oh, and bah to Duchess calling Purgatorio and Paradiso boring.

As far as more modern writers, I recommend the poets Eliot, Coleridge, and Yeats. Novel-wise, I'm a huge fan of Hemingway. I haven't read any of Joyce's books, but I have a feeling he's closer to my heart than Hemingway. Reminds me: I need to read some books by the anti-Hemingway, Faulkner.

Some Classic I like:


The Castle by Franz Kafka

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont

The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

The General in his Labyrinth by Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake

The Iron Heel by Jack London

New Arabian Nights - Robert Loius Stevenson

Confession's of the Mask - Yukio Mishima

On the Road - Jack Keroac

Naked Lunch - Burroughs

Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce

Gravity's rianbow - Thomas Pynchon

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

he Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

Canterbury Tales are a lot of fun, but the language can be challenging for those not prepared. There has been quite a few changes in English since they were created.

The Decameron is a hoot. A bunch of people fleeing from the plague tell stories to each other. Some of the stories are bawdy and funny.

Ain wrote: Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

Well at least you can understand that book!! When the Mercedes came around the bend in V I experienced irreversable brain damage!

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is fantastic--the BBC did an excellent mini-series on the book(s) back in the early seventies that served as a prototype for Masterpiece Theater.

You guys should have more fun than these stuffy old books--I recommend Still Life With a Woodpecker by Tom Robbins! It's a classic in my book.

You read any of his (Tom Robbins') others? GF's got two, they're on my "maybe read these when I've got time" list. Think they're worth it?

--A

I read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and was not impressed.

These ones are Skinny Legs and All and Half-Asleep in Frog Pyjama's IIRC

--A