My favorite classic book is "Little Women". I don't like "The Old Man and the Sea", which is quite boring. I also dislike "The Joy Luck Club". I found it hard to follow. "Call of The Wild" was okay, except someone had to tell me the whole story is an allegory. How are we supposed to figure it out otherwise?!

I also like Little Women. I'm having trouble finishing The Lord of the Rings, but that's because I'm finding it really slow and not so much that I dislike it, per se.

I didn't like The Lord of the Flies, The Razor's Edge, or Animal Farm when we read them in school, but I liked To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm not sure if The Chrysalids is considered Classic Literature, but I thoroughly enjoyed that one, too.

I also enjoy reading Shakespeare, particularly Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing.

Oh! And I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea but I found it pretty tedious. I'm sure it was much more exciting for people back when it was written, though.

[ 04-27-2002, 02:22 AM: Message edited by: LadyCaitriona ]

By classics am I to understand you mean, "stuff that people forced you to read in school and you were like the horse lead to water, you didn't feel thirsty?"

If so, then I think that I enjoyed "Lord of the Flies" because we had a cool teacher, with long hair and fish-tailed eye makeup, and in that miserable year of my life, with 12 year olds all huddled in that overcrowded classroom, she read it out loud to us. Ms. Amos, I can still recall her name, and we had a kid in the class who looked a bit like Piggy. Well not really but someone said that to him, he answered back. He was the kid who brought in a black widow to science class. So Ms. Amos read the whole thing out loud and we'd listen to her enthralled.
I'll never forget her, also because, she unfortunately took her life shortly after that.
I think she was trying so hard to help some of us, and it was an ungrateful task, but she got through to some of us.

I have found recently that most people are experiencing this strange Tolkien reflux syndrome. Even though I read it like most of us in the first wave, and I love fantasy and SF, I can't get past the first ten pages!
It just doesn't grab me anymore.
I have heard this repeatedly.
Is it because there aren't any good women roles?

The Grapes of Wrath was interesting.
I also enjoyed Lewis Carroll's poetry.
In the long run, we didn't read much in school! I tested out of most everything and so, we were able to design our own courses. Just found a picture of myself on the literary magazine staff in the yearbook. So I must have been there!
Most of the classics I read on my own.
All the British novels, French novels, American things.

I think some of these things, you have to do on your own.

I have enjoyed most of the classics that I have read but the one author I just cannot seem to manage is Dickens, the stories are great, I have really enjoyed them on film or TV but try as I might I cannot read the books!!

I quite like Dickens, especially A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities.

Anything written by the Brontes is fine with me too, although Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are my favourites.

I was forced to read Thomas Hardy in school - The Mayor of Casterbridge for O Level, and Return of the Native for A Level - and I hated it then. Since I've got older I've gone back to Hardy and found I actually quite enjoy most of his books.

Other favourites are Walter Scotts' Ivanhoe , George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Classic detective fiction is good too, especially Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and Wilkie Collins' Moonstone.

Does anyone think I read too much?!?!?!?

Reading too much?? Isn't that akin to breathing too much air?

LOVE "Wuthering Heights", "Silas Marner" and "Mayor", "Tess" and "Jude" by Thomas Hardy.

HATED Samuel Richardson's "Pamela", I'll never touch another of his books as long as I live.

I would say Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe's writings are truly wonderful....you can concurrently read him and Thomas Mann...I am sure it will be very rewarding and inspiring.

Lord of the Rings - excellent
Bram Stoker's Dracula is also an amazing read.

Honestly, I hate Jane Eyre.

However, I am a huge fan of Great Gatsby. That and Catch-22 are two of my favorite books.

I love most of Dickens, with Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House being particular favourites.

Persuasion by Jane Austen is a good light read, as is Thackeray's Vanity Fair. The humour in both is fun.

My favourite classic though, has to be Middlemarch by George Eliot...absolutely brilliant book.

I have never been able to get on with Trollope despite repeated attempts. I got bored with Tom Jones and so never finished it. And I find Hardy too depressing...other than that I am a sucker for most classics really...

I loved "Wuthering Heights", and I did like "Jane Eyre" I wasn't too fond of "The Great Gatsby" or "Catcher In The Rye" I also liked "To Kill A Mockingbird"

I loved Tolken, Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, Treasure Island, Moby Dick, Once and Future King, Ivanhoe, Count of Monte Cristo, Tale of Two cities, 3 Musketeers, Dracula, Frankenstien, any and all of Sherlock Holmes stories.

Could have done without, Gone with the wind. The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, (Dickens is very hit and miss with me), the most creative reaction to War and Peace was from my (soon to be)
sister in law, she put it back in the bookshelf upside down in hopes that the words would fall out.

I recently went through a phase of reading children's books which I'd not read as a child, and I'm really glad I did. I think my appreciation was heightened by my age. Among those I read was 101 Dalmations and The Twilight Barking, The Secret Garden and A Little Prindess and Charlotte's Web. I bought my boyfriend the Tolkien books as a Valentine's pressie and they are in my basket under the bed waiting to be read!!! To say I have a backlog is a bit of an understatement.

EXCELLENT choices Flapjack, my mother raves about "Our Mutual Friend". I was totally captivated by "Bleak House" and when she saw me reading it she told me that my grandfather had been reading it in the hospital when she was born.

I was astonished at how much I enjoyed reading Jane Austen, just shows you should always keep an open mind. I thought it was all frippery about manners etc; the satire is BITING and the characters very endearing, Elizabeth Bennet is such a love! "Vanity Fair" I just couldn't put down, it moved so fast and was so funny. It was one of those books I just didn't want to finish ;-).

Hardy IS depressing, he has to one of the most MISERABLE writers who ever lived. But he writes SO well and with such poignancy and attention to detail that I don't mind the fact that his stuff invariably makes me cry. Just don't read it unless you're feeling strong ;-).

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles is to put it very politely a pile of stinky stuff.

I had to study it for my English A Level (senior exam) and hated it so much I never finished it. On the day of the exam I asked my friend what happened in the end - she told me - I wrote a load of drivel for the exam paper - and I passed (sadly my friend who had done all the hard work, did pass but at a lower grade than me - I felt a bit of a heel!!).

I like Thomas Hardy for some reason. Probably the fact that I loved Reed crying out "Bathsheba" in the film.
George Eliot was one of the most brilliant authors of her time. And Middlemarch is one of the best novels.

Well, I just loved everything by George Orwell: Animal farm and especially 1984. Also Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf“, everything written by Remark, ancient literature. But I could do without Ernest Hemingway's works. Honore de Balzak was a little bit to realistic for me.
If it was up to me, I would add Umberto Eco to the list of classics.

My favorite book ever was 1984 by George Orwell. I also love Call of the Wild , White Fang , Swiss Family Robinson , Robinson Crusoe , and The Secret Garden.

I have yet to read Animal Farm, Brave New World, and others.

I hated Lord of the Flies, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Metamophosis, and, believe it or not, Romeo and Juliet.

~Wolf~
Finally ppl I can talk books with!

I love any and all Shakespeare, but it needs to be read aloud.

I hate, hate, hate "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.

I absolutely loved both "Of Mice and Men" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" I hated "Beowulf" I think I was tortured with it. We did a massive analysis of it in school and it still makes me shudder.

I have to agree with georgeprice, the French Lieutenant's Woman was the worst book that I was forced to read in school. I hated it too! I don't know why the teachers loved it so much...

I DO love:
--The Canturbury Tales
--Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset
--Anything by William Faulkner
--Anything by W. Somerset Maugham
--Anything by Toni Morrison

In reply to:

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Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset

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Ooooh, yes! that's the first time I have seen that mentioned in here , and I had forgotten how much I loved them as a teenager, the whole series, I mean. Thanks for reminding me , I shall see if I can find them to read again.
What I had not realised was that Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 20's ...

For the most part, I'm not that fond of reading "classics". In other words, stuff that's supposed to be great and isn't there supposed to be something wrong with you if you don't? You won't ever find me in black, intermittently smoking cloves, sipping a latte and having an "intellectual" talk about about the classics. Having said that, hehe, I loathed Wuthering Heights with all my being the first time I read it. Of course, I was 13 at the time and under the misconception that it was a love story with this tall drink of dark, brooding gorgeous hunk. Then I read it years later and was blown away by how great it really is. Who'd a thought? Christmas came early that year. It's the ultimate anti-love story.