Classic novels

[willipp]

Glad to see Magician on that list, absolute gem of a fantasy trilogy, probably my favorite of all time.

 

[NeilYoungIsBack]

This was a list of favourite books voted by the public not a list of classics. It dates from the early 2000s which explains why the last 3 Potter books are not included.

War and Peace is a great book (so good I read it twice), but I never got to the end of Lord of the Rings, I binned it when the trees started talking.....

 

[Blue Llama]

Just finished reading Robinson Crusoe. I think everyone must have read a kids version at some time but as Play Books had it on their bargain classics I thought I would give it a go at £0.83. Despite it being written in the 17C its relatively easy to read and a cracking good story.

 

[Free Ian Brown]

Nobody, ever, has read War and Peace.
If you meet someone who says they have, they are lying. It's dirge. Not just normal dirge but true unsurpassed dirge with knobs on. Plus , it makes no sense. Loads of Russians with similar names and jobs and titles mushing around doing stuff.
In fact, thinking on . Dirge doesn't do this overbearing monotonous pile of shite any justice.
And it's 14 million pages long .

See also One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Also makes the list, and is also a tedious dirge of similar sounding names and nothing happening.

Started reading Midnight's Children last night. Probably one of my top 5 authors, but have to be in the mood for a Rushdie classic.

 

[Free Ian Brown]

I've read it twice. The first half/two-thirds is simply magnificent. The last bit, with all its moralising and religious shite, is dirgey I'll agree.

Surprised at that list. There no way people like Terry Pratchett & Jacqueline Wilson should be in there about authors like Grahame Greene and Ernest Hemingway. Two novels that should be in there are Solzhenitsyn's 'One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich' and Donna Tartt's 'Secret History' which is probably the best modern novel I've read. Also no Trollope? Barchester Towers, The Warden are both absolute classics.

Secret History is brilliant. Can't bring myself to try her other 2 books though, they sound unbearably sad (mard arse alert).

 

[Cityfan]

Jeffrey Archer I have tried once and it was unbelievably awful.
Bit of an odd mixture but if it was a public vote fair enough, some decent some poor and quite a few I've not read.

 

[EL APACHE TEVEZ]

Always loved anything by Charlie Dickens.

 

[blue wang]

This is the list:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

No To kill a mocking bird didn't make, nor lord of the flies.
I just can't see myself reading Princess diaries. Nor any Tolstoy. Fuck me!

I will read anything as long as it gets me in the first 30 pages. If not then well its just not good literature... I dont care who wrote it.

 

[Bilston Blue]

Guessing Infinite Jest came in at 101.

 

[Ancient Citizen]

More a novella, but 'The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' is brilliantly dark and very well written.
Another in a similar vein is 'The Time Machine,' by HG Wells.
Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick' is a brilliant piece of work.