Must-read classic novels

[Dick Whitman]

I am accumulating a stack of classic novels that I have not yet read, even though I was a pretty enthusiastic English major. Here goes:

"Catch-22"
"Moby ****"
"Crime and Punishment"
"Lolita"
"Ulysses"

To such a list, if you haven't read them, I would recommend, to begin with:

"The Great Gatsby"
Anything by Hemingway
"American Pastoral," "I Married a Communist," or "The Human Stain"

I'm always so torn between classics, contemporary novels, and non-fiction. Usually accumulate a stack of half-read books on my nightstand before I cull it down to one or two to focus on.

 

[Ace]

So you haven't read Catch-22? You should. You can skip Ulysses though.

I think everyone should read Huck Finn.

Native Son is really powerful, too.

 

[Dick Whitman]

So you haven't read Catch-22? You should. You can skip Ulysses though.

I read the first 30-40 pages of Catch-22 a few months ago, and need to pick it back up. I was flabbergasted by how many jokes he chocked into each sentence, both dry humor and broad humor. It was like an episode of "30 Rock."

 

[Zeke12]

This is gonna make me a bad intellectual, a bad English major and a bad Irishman, so forgive me, but I'm with Ace -- skip Ulysses and read Dubliners instead.

You'll get much more out of a few selected critical articles than you would the novel. And Dubliners is both brilliant and enjoyable to read.

I wasted so much time with Ulysses, and still only really mostly finished. I never did get through it in one stretch.

For the Hemingway -- The Sun Also Rises.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I read "Portrait ..." in college, so at least I'm not completely Joyce-ignorant. Might give myself an escape hatch from "Ulysses" for the time being.

 

[Ace]

I think everyone should read some Vonnegut, too.

 

[bigpern23]

Moby ****
The Odyssey
1984
Brave New World
Of Mice and Men

 

[YGBFKM]

Can I find any of these books online?

 

[I Should Coco]

Yes, bigpern ... I'm a big Steinbeck guy. "Of Mice and Men" is one of the great American novels

And for me, "Grapes of Wrath" is one of my favorite books ever written. Great storytelling with just a li'l politics mixed in.

 

[bigpern23]

Yes, bigpern ... I'm a big Steinbeck guy. "Of Mice and Men" is one of the great American novels

And for me, "Grapes of Wrath" is one of my favorite books ever written. Great storytelling with just a li'l politics mixed in.

For whatever reason, I never got into Grapes, but Of Mice and Men is one of my all-time favorite books. And it was a surprisingly strong movie, too, with Malkovich and Gary Sinise. I thought I would hate the movie because I enjoyed the book so much, but I thought it translated well to the screen. It might be time to pick up a new copy of the book. I haven't read it in years.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

I think everyone should read some Vonnegut, too.

Disagrees.

 

[cranberry]

I've ready pretty much everything Steinbeck wrote. Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row are among the little ones that are most enjoyable. Same with Fitzgerald. Go beyond Gatsby.

Couple of favorites: Babbit (Sinclair Lewis) and Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos) for the list.

Try to mix in some Norman Mailer, too.

 

[Brian]

Notes From the Underground by Dostoyevsky
Les Miserables by Hugo
Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald
Someone mentioned Native Son. Richard Wright's Black Boy is powerful as something bordering fiction and non-fiction.

And I believe David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow are in that class, although modern works.

 

[Ace]

Does Dickens count?

I reread Great Expectations recently.

He was funnier than I remembered -- in that low-key British way -- and really great at developing characters.

 

[Brian]

Where people are at with Joyce's Ulysses, I'm at with Faulkner. I read him. But I can't say it's with the same enjoyment I get out of so many other authors. I'm just a completist, so I feel a sort of duty to slog through Faulkner.

 

[Zeke12]

Where people are at with Joyce's Ulysses, I'm at with Faulkner. I read him. But I can't say it's with the same enjoyment I get out of so many other authors. I'm just a completist, so I feel a sort of duty to slog through Faulkner.

Same boat. Read it all. Got it. Admired certain aspects.

There was nothing there that spoke to me -- the occasional bright, shining star of a sentence. But otherwise a pretty dark night.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

"Sot-Weed Factor" -- John Barth.
Here's one really off the wall, but I loved it "Tristram Shandy."

 

[Dick Whitman]

Where people are at with Joyce's Ulysses, I'm at with Faulkner. I read him. But I can't say it's with the same enjoyment I get out of so many other authors. I'm just a completist, so I feel a sort of duty to slog through Faulkner.

Same boat. Read it all. Got it. Admired certain aspects.

There was nothing there that spoke to me -- the occasional bright, shining star of a sentence. But otherwise a pretty dark night.

I think that "The Sound and the Fury" is a slog, but I think if you put the time into it, it's a remarkable piece of work. In college, I had to read it accompanied with the Cliff's Notes that helped decipher what the hell was going on. But once I had that tour guide, the novel was a revelation to me. It would be interesting to go back and read it again now. At the time, it was one of my first exposures to what an artist could do with narrative and unconventional storytelling techniques. I was, simply, floored.

 

[Ace]

Where people are at with Joyce's Ulysses, I'm at with Faulkner. I read him. But I can't say it's with the same enjoyment I get out of so many other authors. I'm just a completist, so I feel a sort of duty to slog through Faulkner.

Same boat. Read it all. Got it. Admired certain aspects.

There was nothing there that spoke to me -- the occasional bright, shining star of a sentence. But otherwise a pretty dark night.

I think that "The Sound and the Fury" is a slog, but I think if you put the time into it, it's a remarkable piece of work. In college, I had to read it accompanied with the Cliff's Notes that helped decipher what the hell was going on. But once I had that tour guide, the novel was a revelation to me. It would be interesting to go back and read it again now. At the time, it was one of my first exposures to what an artist could do with narrative and unconventional storytelling techniques. I was, simply, floored.

The Sound and the Fury was great. Faulkner doesn't make it easy, though.

 

[cranberry]

Can't bring myself to read Ulysses or Faulkner, although I slogged through The Sound and the Fury in high school.

Kerouac is classic enough for me. Dharma Bums and Big Sur add some perspective to On the Road.

Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest should be considered.

FYI, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was enjoyable but, in the end, way overrated...