I read Animal Farm this week. I never read it in high school, and I've always felt like...I should have?!
Independently of one another, Chris and I decided- myself, informally and Chris rather formally- to use our reading time here in Cambodia to read those books we "should" have read. Chris went so far as to look up the many varied lists of 100 top books and made himself a little list.
A many good summers ago, I took the time to read about twenty classic novels. I pursued on even after it took me a long three weeks to read Anna Karenina. Even longer because I knew how it ended, and it seemed that we'd never get there.
If you had to give a recommendation for a "classic" book for Chris or I to read, what would it be?
I don't know if it yet counts as a classic, but Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is one of the best books I've ever read. BTW - I JUST started reading Animal Farm because I somehow never read it before, either. Crazy ! : )
ReplyDeletethanks for the rec! and how crazy- great minds think alike :)
DeleteDandelion Wine. Bradbury. Did you read it after my gushing? Also, Rebecca. DuMaurier. And The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov. I don't know if they're all classics, but they're old, and I love.
ReplyDeleteAlso, why did all these posts just show up at the same time in my reader? I am so confused.
not yet, but your recs are on my list, and i have birthday amazon money to spend on them :)
Deleteand they all showed up like that because i blogged retroactively. cuz i'm nuts.
Jane Eyre is my favorite
ReplyDeletethat is a good one! i read it a while back!
DeleteThe Great Gatsby. To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm currently working on Wuthering Heights since somehow I missed that one in high school, but I'm not far enough along to give a recommendation either way yet. However, I always hated anything by Jane Austen and I'm thrilled that it doesn't seem like the same style.
ReplyDeleteoh man, you hate jane austen?! i love her! great gatsby is my favorite novel, and who doesn't love TKaM. but wuthering heights man, i've never been able to get through it. i might have to get it another whirl! :)
DeleteI love this question! It's kind of complicated though: are you wanting the best reading experience, or more like a knowledge of books "smart people are supposed to have read"?
ReplyDeleteMy favorite classic books: anything by Dostoevsky (I like him much better than Tolstoy): The Brothers Karamazov is the best; Don Quixote (be careful with the translation though: this is a funny book and jokes are hard to translate!); and the Odyssey. The Story of the Stone (Chinese, Cao Xueqin) and Tale of Genji (Japanese, Murasaki) are really amazing too if you want a little more cultural variety.
For "books you should have read", maybe Lolita, Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Dickens (David Copperfield or Great Expectations are both good), Jane Austen, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, 1984 by Orwell. If you are hard core you could try Moby Dick (which I really like), Ulysses (hated it), and Victor Hugo (too sentimental for my taste).
i really like dostoevsky as well! those are some great recs for a variety from other cultures. i've read all the others you rec'd, except for moby dick, which chris is reading right now and it seems...long. but if you liked it, i'll have to give it a try!
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