Top ten TBR classics?

DiskuteraGeeks who love the Classics

Bara medlemmar i LibraryThing kan skriva.

Top ten TBR classics?

1madpoet
nov 29, 2012, 9:19 pm

In the 'What are your top ten favorites' thread, someone suggested a discussion of top ten TBR classic novels. So I've started this thread.

My "list of shame" (for the first five, I've read the first few chapters, but stopped for various reasons):

1. Ulysses by James Joyce.
2. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
3. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
4. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
5. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
6. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
7. Outlaws of the Marsh by Shi Nai An
8. Three Kingdoms Luo Guanzhong
9. The Dream of the Red Mansion by Cao Xueqin
10. Journey to the West by Wu Chengen

The last four are the 'four classic novels' of Chinese literature. I feel I should read them, as I am living in China. But I doubt if I ever will (they are each multi-volume sets).

2.Monkey.
Redigerat: nov 30, 2012, 4:16 am

I actually have the Chinese ones (at least three of them, not sure if all four) on my wishlist. I am especially keen to read Journey to the West. The only thing stopping me is that it's not cheap. And your first four I can easily "second." Though I was already contemplating picking up a copy of The Red and the Black for this year's reading, and Ulysses is waiting for an opportune moment on my shelves, lol.

But let's see, making my own list, I'd probably choose...
(in no particular order)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I have The Complete on my shelves, just haven't gotten there yet)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (also on the shelf)
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (on the shelf & planned for 2013)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (on the shelf & planned for 2013)
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (I had bought a copy, but it disappeared :()
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Journey to the West by Wu Chengen
and um, anything by Dickens, and Jane Austen (who I have a collection of the big 7 novels, just not read yet). lol.

3Booksloth
nov 30, 2012, 7:00 am

Are these just classics we haven't read, classics we feel we should have read or classics we actually would like to eventually get round to reading?

The ones I haven't read and have no intention of ever picking up would include:
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Finnegans Wake
Tristram Shandy
and anything else by Henry James (I know this will horrify all Americans but I've read Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw and I just don't get the man)

The ones still sitting on my TBR shelf include:
The Female Quixote
Castle of Otranto
Daniel Deronda

And the ones I fully intend to get and read one day include:
The Red and The Black
Cyrano de Bergerac

I think that comes to more or less 10 over all.

4Betelgeuse
Redigerat: nov 30, 2012, 7:36 am

My top 10 TBR classic novels (no poetry or plays included in this list):
1 Les Miserables
2 Middlemarch
3 Brothers Karamazov
4 Vanity Fair
5 Tom Jones
6 Waverley
7 Rob Roy
8 Pickwick Papers
9 Nicholas Nickleby
10 Little Dorrit

5madpoet
Redigerat: nov 30, 2012, 8:16 am

>3 Booksloth: I was thinking more of 'classics we feel we should read and are ashamed we haven't yet', but however you want to interpret it.

I have a long holiday coming up, in January-February, in which I plan to force myself to read Ulysses and maybe Don Quixote. The others I'll tackle some other time.

6Booksloth
nov 30, 2012, 9:32 am

#5 Thanks for the clarification. I don't really feel guilty about anything I haven't read so I'll leave my list as it stands :)

7thorold
nov 30, 2012, 11:10 am

>5 madpoet:
I think it may have been my passing comment that prompted this - thanks for picking it up, madpoet! My idea was certainly "classics we feel we should (have) read". Obviously, as long as we're reading for pleasure, there's no reason to feel guilty about not having read something. The books on my list are all ones that I'm sure would give me more pleasure than pain, but for one reason or another I've never got around to them.

Much of my "list of shame" is in French or German, because I can read those languages perfectly well, so it would be silly to start reading translations, but it's still always tempting to pick up an English book that will be an "easy read" instead.

Buddenbrooks (have been reading it for about six months and still not quite half way)
Der Zauberberg (when I've finished Buddenbrooks...)
Tom Jones (no excuse)
Les Misérables (long and in French, but I'd like to read it one day)
La Chartreuse de Parme (idem - I ought to re-read Le Rouge et le Noir as well, my French was still very bad the first time I struggled through it)
Der Butt - I enjoy Grass, but for some reason I've never got beyond the first chapter of this one.
Most of Balzac - I really enjoyed the two or three I've read, but there's such a lot left...
Most of Anthony Trollope - he's someone I only came too rather late in life, and I've enjoyed the seven or eight of his books I've read so far

8ReadHanded
nov 30, 2012, 1:21 pm

9ukh
Redigerat: dec 3, 2012, 10:54 am

I confess, I'm a sinner:

Ulysses
The Brothers Karamazov
À la recherche du temps perdu
Faust
Der Prozeß
Aeneid
Anna Karenina
Don Quijote de la Mancha

...but I'm afraid my list is endless. For every classic I read I discover a dozen more that I simply wasn't aware of. However, it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one with Ulysses on my TBR list.

PolymathicMonkey: I'm actually making my way through Journey to the West right now, albeit a Swedish translation. I find it's like I remember Tolkien, but without the hobbits. Lengthy, but light reading. I love it.

10thorold
dec 3, 2012, 11:04 am

>9 ukh: For every classic I read I discover a dozen more

Exactly! We can't win... But it's fun trying.
BTW: I finally read Faust II last year, about 30 years after buying myself the yellow Reklam edition. Somehow unread classics seem worse when they come in thin little paperbacks.

11.Monkey.
dec 3, 2012, 12:30 pm

>9 by ukh, Glad to hear that :) I got intrigued after seeing the TV movie "The Lost Empire" (aka The Monkey King) with Thomas Gibson. It was cheesy, but fun, I thought. It made me really curious to get the full real story. Unfortunately it's taking me a while! lol. But I have every intention of doing so when I have more cash to spare. :)

12applebook1
Redigerat: dec 3, 2012, 2:08 pm

Here are my TBR's
Ulysses by James Joyce
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Little Dorrit *
The Old Curiosity Shop *

*by Charles Dickens

too many books I want to read, not enough time :(

13GoodKnight
Redigerat: dec 7, 2012, 9:48 pm

1. Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur in a rendition by Keith Baines (introduction by Robert Graves)
2. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
3. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke (the last few chapters to finish it off)
4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
5. A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
6. Madame Bovary by Flaubert
7. Voss by Patrick White
8. The Barsetshire Novels and the Paliser Novels of Anthony Trollope
9. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
10. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

14Steven_VI
dec 4, 2012, 3:28 pm

In no particular order:

Madame Bovary
Faust
Middlemarch - soon!
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Dangerous liaisons
Frankenstein
Notre-Dame de Paris
Crime and Punishment
The Stranger
All Quiet on the Western Front

I'm excluding Dickens and Joyce; I don't like either of them, so I'm very unlikely to finish the 1001 list before I die...

15JoLynnsbooks
dec 4, 2012, 3:59 pm

Here are my TBR's:

Sense and Sensibility
Bleak House
Anna Karenina
The Moonstone
Crime and Punishment
Monkey
The Power and the Glory

>1 madpoet: Great topic. The last few years I've been trying to catch up on books I 'should have read already', and have read these:

The Great Gatsby
Moby Dick
Madame Bovary
Brighton Rock
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Frankenstein

and been pleasantly surprised by all of them.

16Cecrow
Redigerat: dec 6, 2012, 9:34 am

Love this topic. I can in equal parts chortle over titles I've got under my belt or else nod my head in sympathy. No, I take it back - it's mostly the latter.

"Shame" is probably too strong a word, but I have at least ten classic titles that cause me "TBR grief" or something like it:

Five that I'm intimidated by and keep deferring intentionally:
Ulysses, seems to take the prize for most often listed here.
Middlemarch, because if weddings is the highlight of the action, then ...
The Portrait of a Lady, it's Henry James, enough said, right?
In Search of Lost Time, do I really need to explain it?
Jude the Obscure, because I can't stand Hardy's shorter works, and self-inflicted torture isn't generally my thing, but then there's this "give him one more chance" problem.

Two that are always floating near the top of my TBR, then get mysteriously bumped, over and over again:
Sense and Sensibility I know - ridiculous, right? But there it is.
Crime and Punishment I really mean to read this. Really, I do. Really.

Three that I've already read, but read when I was too young to appreciate them and really ought to re-read or might as well say that I never did - but can't be bothered:

The Brothers Karamazov There's this guy who talks to the devil, and he has a brother who's a monk, and somebody died, their father maybe. Something like that. I liked it. That's all I got.

War and Peace Napoleon attacks Russia and loses. Mushy romance. Lots of cannons and horses. Something funny about a bear, early on. Don't say "ouch" when a mob throws a rock at you. Really long book, especially the epilogue. I liked this one too - I think.

The Count of Monte Cristo Some guy fakes his death or something. I get an image of a coffin being thrown off a cliff. I don't remember anything else. I don't even know if I liked this one.

That's my ten already, else I could add a fourth category: classics I've read the abridged version of, but conveniently forget to mention that whenever I brag that I've completed them.

17Booksloth
dec 6, 2012, 11:15 am

#16 Whatever else you do, please don't ignore the wonderful Middlemarch on the grounds of it being all about weddings. It isn't! Yes, a few weddings take place but they are a very minor part of the action and in 900 pages about human nature it would be hard to avoid someone pairing off at some point but whoever told you the book is about weddings was a scurrilous, unscrupulous, iniquitous, maleficent, fiendish, black-hearted liar who should be sentenced to spending the rest of their life reading 50 Shades of Grey.

18GoodKnight
Redigerat: dec 6, 2012, 6:53 pm

>16 Cecrow: I heartily endorse Booksloth's advice. Read Middlemarch before you die.

Jude the Obscure was a heart-wrenching experience for me at the end, but strangely rewarding. Don't be put off by Hardy believing him to be depressing. I reckon he has much more to offer, in the same way that any experience of the negative sublime can provide an intensely rewarding experience.

Crime and Punishment was edge of the seat stuff for the first half of the book. The second half was utterly intriguing as Raskolnikov wrestled with his conscience, and very touching in the end.

War and Peace was very long but very easy! Really enjoyable as a light read compared with some of the others you've mentioned. You can skip the tub-thumping epilogue.

Sense and Sensibility is perhaps not quite as good as Pride and Prejudice, but still full of amazing psychological insights.

19madpoet
dec 6, 2012, 8:49 pm

The Count of Monte Cristo is a great tale of revenge. It's kind of like a grown-ups adventure story. The 10 year old inside of you will love it.

I have a copy of Jude the Obscure sitting on my bookshelf from... oh, I guess four years ago. I haven't read it. I'm not sure I ever will... Hardy can be so depressing.

20Booksloth
dec 7, 2012, 6:35 am

#16/18 I didn't exactly mean you have to read Middlemarch (though your life is poorer until you have!) I just meant you shouldn't avoid it for the reason you gave because it simply isn't true. Avoid it, by all means, if you hate realist fiction; avoid it if you can't bear long books; avoid it if you hate almost-perfect writing etc. Just don't avoid it because someone told you it's all about weddings. That would be like avoiding Jude the Obscure (another great read) because it's all about theme parks: it isn't.

21.Monkey.
dec 7, 2012, 8:12 am

My husband enjoys a decent range of books, but he recently (maybe two years ago?) had to read Middlemarch for one of his English classes (he's majoring in English & Dutch) and just couldn't do it. He even resorted to audio and had a miserable time of it. And I have to say, from what I heard, I have zero desire to try and navigate that tome.

22Booksloth
dec 7, 2012, 8:17 am

#21 That's a sensible reason for not reading it (though I don't think I'd ever judge a book without at least having tried it myself - often the first page is enough).

23.Monkey.
dec 7, 2012, 8:32 am

He was playing it through speakers, so I heard decent chunks. It didn't hold my attention and I had way too much trouble trying to follow it, not to mention it just seemed utterly boring. Which is not to say that no one else should read it, it just isn't one of the classics that appeals to me personally.

25Zumbanista
dec 9, 2012, 1:43 am

Here's mine in no particular order, and no commitment as to when I'll get to them, because there's too many other non-classics I'm enjoying at the moment:

Madame Bovary
House of Mirth
Dr. Thorne
Anna Karenina
Our Mutual Friend
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Portrait of a Lady
Ivanhoe
Crime & Punishment
Emma

26kac522
Redigerat: dec 14, 2012, 12:52 am

Here are mine, in 2 groups: 5 that I want to read (and maybe will someday) and 5 that I feel I _should_ read, but probably won't:

What I hope to read one day:

Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
Les Miserables
Tom Jones

What I should, but probably will never read:

Inferno
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
The entire Remembrance of Things Past --OK, I struggled through and finished Swann's Way, but I know I'll never get to the rest.
Anything by Henry James (except The Portrait of a Lady--see below).

And the classic tomes that I've completed--may not necessarily be my favorite books, but I feel a sense of accomplishment for the effort to make it through them:

War and Peace
Middlemarch
Anna Karenina
Kristin Lavransdatter--a great trilogy
The Portrait of a Lady -- a huge struggle

27Booksloth
dec 14, 2012, 5:32 am

#26 I felt exactly the same about Portrait of a Lady. Good to know I'm not the only one as, in America at least, James seems to be greatly revered and I've never understood the attraction. I've tried a few pages of a couple of his other novels but I'm happy to join you in avoiding them from now on.

28JoLynnsbooks
Redigerat: dec 14, 2012, 5:34 am

Kristin Lavransdatter is a wonderful read.

29kac522
dec 14, 2012, 11:46 pm

I might add for those who might be hesitant to take the "plunge," War and Peace was much easier to read than I expected, once I got going. Although it's not on my top ten, it was very good and well worth the effort.

30kac522
dec 14, 2012, 11:55 pm

#28 Yes, I loved Kristin Lavransdatter when I read it more than 25 years ago. I'm looking forward to reading it again in 2013--I just purchased the Nunnally translation, which has received great reviews.

32Mercury57
dec 29, 2012, 5:22 am

I have a list of around 50 classics that I want to read so choosing just 10 is tough. But here goes....

Mill on the Floss
The Moonstone
Anna Karenina
L'Assommoir
Things Fall Apart
Mrs Dalloway
Dr Thorne
Canterbury Tales
Mansfield Park
Old Gariot

33Cecrow
mar 19, 2018, 2:29 pm

>16 Cecrow:, an update five+ years later!

Ulysses, done
Middlemarch, done
The Portrait of a Lady, done
Crime and Punishment, done

In Search of Lost Time, on the shelf and waiting in a fine new edition
Jude the Obscure, still near the bottom of my TBR pile, although I've had time to find a better copy
Sense and Sensibility, has nearly risen to the top a few times

Presently struggling to the end of Wuthering Heights, and here's six more to rebuild this list:
David Copperfield
The Red and the Black
North and South
Tristram Shandy
Old Goriot
Tom Jones

34thorold
Redigerat: mar 19, 2018, 7:42 pm

Another one that’s come back to haunt us - I'd forgotten all about this thread!

Of my list in >7 thorold: I’ve read Buddenbrooks, Der Zauberberg and La Chartreuse de Parme in the meantime, and a handful of Trollopes and Balzacs. Still not got to Tom Jones, though!

35.Monkey.
mar 20, 2018, 4:11 am

>33 Cecrow: Hah, thanks for the reminder of this existing!

My updates since >2 .Monkey.:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(The Complete) Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (on the shelf)
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Journey to the West by Wu Chengen (on the shelf)
anything by Dickens, and Jane Austen
Dickens I have read 3 of, and Austen I have completed. I since also acquired Journey and it is intended to be read asap but well, we'll see.

36rolandperkins
Redigerat: mar 24, 2018, 3:43 pm

The Newcomes by William M. Thackeray

Pierre* by Herman Melville

The Complete Poems of John Keats

Ice Palace by Edna Ferber

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
by Karl Marx

On Pilgrimage by Dorothy Day

The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy

Persiles y Segisundo by Miguel De Cervantes

Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozens

Nomoi / The Laws** by Plato

*My attraction to Pierre is the name Melville; what I have heard about it (starting in the 1950s)
turned me AWAY from it. E.g. Thomas Galvin, later the director of Simmons Library School,
said that, as a "classic" it was a book not even worthy of publication, a mere fabrication of a clique of currently popular critics. I was curious to see if it could be as bad as alleged.

** a very long dialogue; the Loeb Classical Library couldnʻt fit it into a single volume. It is also Platoʻs only dialogue in which Socrates is not the protagonist.

37kac522
Redigerat: apr 4, 2018, 11:29 pm

>26 kac522: I haven't done so well in these 5 years--I've only read 1 of my unread classics:

Moby Dick

But I do hope to get to Dostoevsky, Les Miserables and Tom Jones one of these years.

And since my post in 2012, I can add to my list of classics completed:

The Iliad
Cecilia by Fanny Burney
A Tale of Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend by Dickens (much preferred the latter)
Monkey by Cheng'en Wu
All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque
The Paradise by Zola
Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest: Shakespeare
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
The Six Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope and have started a personal challenge to read all of Trollope in chronological order

and am currently reading:
Camilla by Fanny Burney

During the past 5 years, I've re-read from my "top five" in >26 kac522::

Middlemarch--always worth a re-read
Anna Karenina--had a totally different experience for me this second time around (20 years later!)
Kristin Lavransdatter (book 1 only)--hope to finish re-reading the other 2 books this year

38madpoet
apr 6, 2018, 10:28 am

Well in the last 6 years, since my first post, I've read 4 of the ones on my list, and I am reading The Red and the Black now.

Two that I listened to on audio book, but have absolutely no memory of character, plot or anything are Middlemarch and Anna Karenina. I have a tendency to daydream (or doze off) when listening to audio books, sometimes. I guess I'll have to read them again.

39Cecrow
Redigerat: apr 6, 2018, 1:16 pm

Since we're all coming back with an update; how many are feeling rewarded by the experience of pursuing these must-reads? Relief? Accomplishment?

In my case, first and foremost it's curiosity satisfied. And yes, some accomplishment when these read titles are mentioned and I can be satisfied in saying I conquered that one and can actually join that discussion.

Definitely not dissuaded from continuing to pursue the classics, although once I've satisfactorily knocked off the well-known, shamed-not-to-have-read titles, I wonder how much further I'll go. I think I'm likely to pursue more works by the authors who impressed me most along the way, but I don't know how much I'll be tempted to expand sideways into lesser known classical works by lesser known authors.*

*recognizing that "lesser-known" is very subjective. I know plenty of folks who don't recognize the name James Joyce, so ...

40Betelgeuse
apr 7, 2018, 8:51 am

I've read three of the ten that I posted back in 2012 in >4 Betelgeuse:: Les Miserables,The Brothers Karamazov, and Waverley.

41madpoet
Redigerat: apr 7, 2018, 9:09 am

Actually, I forgot about this list. Three of the four I read were part of another reading project. Only one, Madame Bovary I deliberately read to knock off my TBR list.

A while ago I devoted a year to reading all of Dickens' novels (minus the 4 I had already read). It took over a year in the end. That guy writes door-stoppers! But it was an incredibly rewarding experience. Reading even the lesser known works of such a gifted author is worthwhile, because even at his worst (Barnaby Rudge) Dickens is still entertaining.

42rolandperkins
Redigerat: apr 18, 2018, 2:47 pm

I was surprised to read that Barnaby Rudge was called
"Dickens . . . at his worst".
If thinking of my favorite Dickens's, it would be no lower than third. (Oliver Twist and Hard Times would be above it, and I must admit that I didnʻt finish Bleak House; it is now deep in my TBR pile.) And admit that I wasnʻt sober when I read Barnaby Rudge. It did bog down in spots, as most Victorian novelists do. But the only disappointing Dickens's were Bleak House and the non fiction Sketches by Boz.

43Sandydog1
apr 18, 2018, 10:34 pm

My update...zilch. Well, not actually zilch. After 5+ years I'd finished Thucydides and am on Book 5 of The Republic

44madpoet
apr 19, 2018, 2:09 am

>42 rolandperkins: Well yes, Bleak House wasn't my favourite either. Barnaby Rudge is more harshly judged by critics than it perhaps deserves. It's really not that terrible-- but certainly not a novel I would have read if I hadn't committed to reading all of Dickens' novels.

45Cecrow
apr 19, 2018, 7:26 am

>42 rolandperkins:, >44 madpoet:, I think Barnaby is open to criticism re structure and plotting. Early Dickens wasn't big on those prior to Dombey, and I think it especially shows there; maybe because he was trying so hard to mirror the actual historical sequence of events and shoehorning his story into it. Barnaby himself serves little purpose in the story except to stir a twinge of reader apathy for innocents caught up in events, and it's a case where the secondary plot outshines the primary. I haven't tried Bleak House yet, but I've always heard positive things about it before.

46Sandydog1
Redigerat: apr 20, 2018, 10:16 pm

47madpoet
apr 21, 2018, 5:04 am

>46 Sandydog1: Those are some ambitious classics! One Hundred Years of Solitude isn't such a difficult read, though, once you get into it.

48WeeTurtle
aug 23, 2018, 4:32 am

>19 madpoet: One of my English Profs warned us about Hardy. We read Far from the Madding Crowd, and were told it was his most uplifting book. Jude the Obscure he said on could only read once in a decade without comitting suicide.

Hi, I'm new here. :)

My list, in no particular order.

Pride and Prejudice I've seen the A&E six hour mini series many times now (Colin Firth is BEST Darcy.) I suppose I ought to read the book.
Middlemarch Only because a friend of my dad's says it's the greatest work in English Literature. My dad argues against this in favour of War and Peace (even though it's a translation ;). Now I feel I need to find out.
Faust Because Wishbone.
Doctor Faustus When I ordered Faust from the library, the librarian gave me the wrong book. I was 14 at the time and my dad was so proud that I was reading it, that I was determined to finish. I made a big dent but it's not done yet.
Brothers Karamazov Because I enjoyed the last big Russian novel I read. I also own a copy and hate not reading stuff I've bought.
The Communist Manifesto Because I'm curious what Marx was actually thinking.
Mein Kampf Same reason as above. LibraryThing does not have a touchstone for this, it would seem.
Metamorphosis Purely to understand the term "Kafkaesque." I've already figured out "Lovecraftian."
Le Morte de Arthur Because...I guess to get an idea of the actual extent of Arthurian stories that exist beyond the tidbits about Lancelot and the story of the Green Knight.. I'd like to find a translation in a more "localized" English as well.

Not sure what else really. Of the classics I have read, Frankenstein was awesome and is one of my favourite books. War and Peace was good and very easy to read, and if you compare it to contemporary fantasy series, not really all that long. All Quite on the Western Front is another favourite and it's dang hard to find anything else by that author. He wrote quite a few books. I have only one other and that was by accident.

49Cecrow
Redigerat: aug 27, 2018, 9:09 am

>48 WeeTurtle:, Middlemarch has plenty of penetrating insight into the human condition (as the cliché goes), but it felt like too much lecturing to me at times. It is one of the "big ones" though that stands comparison to W&P. I sometimes hear Melville's Moby Dick mentioned with that standing too, and Proust.

50rolandperkins
aug 27, 2018, 3:31 pm

Curiosity: What does "W & P" stand for? Another Eliot? (I couldnʻt think of one, offhand.)

51Lyndatrue
aug 27, 2018, 3:51 pm

>50 rolandperkins: War and Peace, I believe. I'd be surprised if it's something else.

52rolandperkins
Redigerat: aug 27, 2018, 5:03 pm

"....War and Peace .... (50-51)

Thanks. I should have known that. (Gone with the Wind>GwtW -- or however itʻs anacronymized -- was the only one I could think of, and I donʻt think it is good enough to have its own
initials.

53rocketjk
sep 13, 2018, 7:06 pm

For me it's War and Peace and everything by Jane Austin except Emma, which I read years ago and loved. How many is that? Can I get away with adding the Hornblower books here?

54madpoet
sep 13, 2018, 11:44 pm

>48 WeeTurtle: War and Peace, if you haven't read it, is worth it. Even though it is a famously long novel, if you are at all interested in history, or Russia, it's a great read.

I agree about Hardy. Pretty darn depressing sometimes, although I really like Tess. That's why I avoided The Brothers Karamazov for so long-- because I found Crime and Punishment to be so depressing. But I liked the Brothers Karamazov much better.

55WeeTurtle
sep 17, 2018, 1:14 am

>54 madpoet: War and Peace I did read, which is why I'm considering Middlemarch. I'm not a history person, but I like Tolstoy's characters and little philosophical musings as the book goes on. Prince Andrei is still my favourite literary character.

56Majel-Susan
aug 5, 2021, 8:09 pm

My top 10 TBR books that I haven't got to yet, most of them due to their length and/or how emotionally draining they appear:

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Middlemarch by George Elliot
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

... But looking at everyone's lists above, I'm wondering if I shouldn't add War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, and Madame Bovary as well.

I had never heard of The Red and the Black until I attempted it with a group read last year, so it still surprises me every time I notice it mentioned now. It wasn't my cuppa tea, and I left off after some eighteen chapters.

Mrs. Dalloway is another I didn't enjoy and quit after getting more than a third way through, but I can still see myself going back to try it again, perhaps some years down the road.

57librorumamans
aug 5, 2021, 8:24 pm

>56 Majel-Susan:

You might find Michael Cunningham's The Hours a way into Mrs Dalloway. Woolf's novel provides its frame of reference, but it's a fine novel in its own right.

58Tess_W
aug 19, 2021, 1:19 am

TBR Classics to read (or re-read)

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Middlemarch by George Eliot

59Cecrow
aug 19, 2021, 10:41 pm

>33 Cecrow:, updating again!

In Search of Lost Time, started
David Copperfield, done
North and South, done (fantastic!)
Tristram Shandy, done
Tom Jones, done

So my current ten are:

The rest of In Search of Lost Time (very slowly)
Jude the Obscure (no rush)
Sense and Sensibility (soon)
The Red and the Black (no rush)
Old Goriot (maybe in 2022)
Little Dorrit (very soon)
A Tale of Two Cities (soon)
I, Claudius (sooner)
The Tale of Genji (later)
The Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber (much later)

60Betelgeuse
aug 20, 2021, 6:11 am

My top 10 TBR classic novels UPDATED SINCE 2012 POSTING:
1 Les Miserables - DONE
2 Middlemarch - DONE
3 Brothers Karamazov - DONE
4 Vanity Fair
5 Tom Jones - DONE
6 Waverley - DONE
7 Rob Roy
8 Pickwick Papers - DONE
9 Nicholas Nickleby
10 Little Dorrit

61kac522
Redigerat: aug 20, 2021, 9:47 pm

Well, since my posts in 2012 >26 kac522: and 2018 >37 kac522:, I've read lots of classics, but none on my original list except Moby Dick.

So am revising the list--took some off and added some new ones.
The Top Ten:
--The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
--Les Miserables, Hugo
--Tom Jones, Fielding
--Don Quixote, Cervantes
--Wives and Daughters, Gaskell*
--The Way We Live Now, Trollope*
--Waverley, Scott*
--Gulliver's Travels, Swift*
--Romola, George Eliot*
--Felix Holt, George Eliot*

My 10 runners-up:
--Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky
--The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas
--Ivanhoe, Scott*
--Rob Roy, Scott*
--New Grub Street, Gissing*
--Pendennis, Thackeray*
--The History of Henry Esmond, Thackeray*
--Therese Raquin, Zola*
--The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe*
--Evelina, Fanny Burney*

*new to the list

I own a copy of all of these, except New Grub Street. Must remedy that, so it can stare at me from the shelves with the rest of 'em.

62kac522
Redigerat: aug 20, 2021, 9:47 pm

>56 Majel-Susan: The Book Thief is an amazing book, and very accessible; so is Anne Frank's diary. Middlemarch and Anna Karenina take perseverance, but they both pay off in spades if you can make it through. Perhaps because of Anna Karenina, I found War and Peace easier than I thought--it's just very, very long.

And I'm with you on Mrs Dalloway, and, sorry to say, in my case, The Hours didn't help one bit. However, I have a volume of essays by Woolf (The Common Reader) which I dip into, and I've enjoyed the selections I've read.

>59 Cecrow: Isn't North and South THE BEST??!! And the movie is just as good.
Sense and Sensibility is not one of my favorite Austens, but no Austen is below 5*s for me.
I re-read Little Dorrit this year (on audio) and it continues to be one of my best-loved Dickens, tied up there with Bleak House. I was not impressed when I read A Tale of Two Cities, but I am determined to re-read it this year with a more open mind. I'm currently reading The Artful Dickens by John Mullan, who discusses the literary devices of Dickens, and I'm hoping this will help me appreciate TOTC better.

>60 Betelgeuse: Well done!! Middlemarch is one of my top novels of all time; I am currently attempting to read (and re-read) as much of Eliot as I can this year, along with a great biography by Jenny Uglow.
And you have Nicholas Nickleby and Little Dorrit to look forward to; if you enjoy Dickens, these will be a treat. I have one Dickens left to read: The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I plan to read in October. It's not even on my list in >61 kac522: because I am determined to read it this year.

63Betelgeuse
aug 20, 2021, 10:06 pm

>62 kac522: Thank you! I've read much Dickens, but those two are still on my list, as is Our Mutual Friend, which a friend of mine has persuaded me to try this year.

64Majel-Susan
Redigerat: aug 21, 2021, 3:29 am

>62 kac522: Of the top 10 TBR books I mentioned, I would say that, next to The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Book Thief is the book I am most likely to read in the nearer future, but I think one of the big reasons why it has trouble making it to my "currently reading" list is how depressing the subject matter of the book appears to me. But yes, I do definitely want to read it sometime!

>61 kac522: I read The Count of Monte Cristo a few years ago, and while it was a huge leap for me to attempt such a long book (it was for a group read; I couldn't have started something like that on my own then), I definitely enjoyed it! It was quite a page turner, for me, at least.

65kac522
Redigerat: aug 26, 2021, 9:19 am

>63 Betelgeuse: I re-read Our Mutual Friend on audio this past year (after Little Dorrit). It is a complex book in some ways, with many plot lines, and many things to think about when it is done. And probably one of Dickens' most obsessed characters, Bradley Headstone. In The Artful Dickens, Mullan specifically mentions Dickens's sparing but deliberate use of present tense in OMF--I may have to go back and read it again, just to appreciate how Dickens uses it.

>64 Majel-Susan: What I loved about the The Book Thief was the use of language and colors--it is not written in a straight-forward way, but I adapted to it almost from the beginning.

Thanks for the encouragement on The Count--I have heard that it is a great book so often; it's just making the time commitment when there are so many books to read!

66Betelgeuse
aug 21, 2021, 10:24 am

>64 Majel-Susan:
>65 kac522:

The Count is one of my all-time favorites.

67PaulCranswick
aug 26, 2021, 4:10 am

Stumbled across the group via a link put up by Janet (Majel_Susan) in the 75er group.

Firstly the issue of defining "Classic". I'll go with the completely arbitrary anything originally published before I was born definition!

I have 818 books on my TBR published before the year I was born (1966). Of these possibly the ten I am looking forward to the most:

1 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
2 The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper
3 Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac
4 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
5 New Grub Street by George Gissing
6 The Financier by Theodore Dreiser
7 South Riding by Winifred Holtby
8 The Good Companions by JB Priestley
9 Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
10 Auto da Fe by Elias Canetti

68Tess_W
aug 28, 2021, 2:34 am

>67 PaulCranswick: Bleak House, one of my all time favs!