Well, I had a hard time sticking "Hunchback Of Notre Dame", but maybe if it'd been modernized, I'd liked it better.I love Dracula and Frankenstein and anything Poe wrote. But the only Dickens book I liked (my apologies to his fans) was A Christmas Carol. I didn't care for The House of the Seven Gables or The Scarlet Letter, either. I do love Moby Dick.Also Little Men and Little Women, and Heidi, Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard Of Oz are still favorites. Peter Pan scared me silly because the thought of my parents coming in and finding me and all my brothers and sisters vanished without a trace horrified me! Boy, would they'd been in pitiful shape. I still love Secret Garden, which was my mother's favorite book.The LOTR is the best fantasy I ever read--I'm rereading it now.I did notice one thing, the books I can't abide are the ones I had to read in school--too many tests and over-hashing them over probably warped my mind against them. Is Agatha Christie classic? I love her mysteries. Also, I enjoyed all Mark Twain's books except for Tom Sawyer.

"Little Women" tops my list, anytime, anywhere!

Hello. Many may not know me out here, I was just passing by, popped in, and could not resist the Book Corner. Anyway,

I loved -
'Gone With the Wind'
'Vanity Fair'
Nearly all of Jane Austen's, especially 'Sense and Sensibility'
All Sherlock Holmes
'The Woman in White' - Wilkie Collins
'Dracula' - Bram Stoker

I hated -
'The Way of all Flesh' - Samuel Butler (I couldn't stand it after 200 pages, because I kept hoping that something would happen, and he would stop rambling on and on. But he didn't. That was the first time I put down a book halfway through)
'The Hunchback Of Notre-Dame' - Victor Hugo (I read his 'Les Miserables', liked it and thought this would be good. Totally confused and exasperated by the time I reached pg. 50, I put it down.)

Thomas Hardy - I've just read 'The Mayor of Casterbridge', and its a good enough read if you can pass over the short periods of boredom in the beginning.
Dickens - I've read 'Great Expectations' and 'Oliver Twist' - I was close to tears in some parts. In Great Expectations, the first time I started it, I had to lay it down after pg. 80 - I was so depressed. I finally got the courage to start it again after a month, and loved it.

Boy, my lists could get very long indeed.

Anything Twain, Bronte, Shakepeare, Austen I'm pretty much guaranteed to love. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is brilliant. "Fahrenheit 451" should be a staple in anyone's library. Bunches more, but I'd have to get up and go look through books, and I'm too lazy. "Little Woman" was my favorite when I was in grade school.

For the life of me I cannot get through Milton's "Paradise Lost" or "Paradise Regained". I've tried over and over again. I can't handle Tolstoy. "Watership Down" was fairly amusing for the first hundred pages, then I got tired of the bunnies. Tolkien put me to sleep.

In reply to wrenaz, about Wuthering Heights, I took a course in college called "What makes a classic?". In the most basic sense, a classic is a work of quality literature with timeless appeal. One of the texts to this class was a tiresome treatise on why Wuthering Heights was "the" classic of all classics. I never had a chance to read Wuthering Heights then, with all of my other required reading, but perhaps I should read it now....

I loved "To Kill A Mocking Bird", too, obviously everyone does. It's really a great book. Classics I still LOVE are "The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess", and "The Lord of the Rings", too, though I found it a little slow at first. But after fifty pages or so I always get stuck. I also loved "Les Misérables" (it's really long, but somehow I didn't bother), more than "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame", which was a great novel, too, but it took me over two weeks to finish it. A book of that size normally doesn't take me more than 2 or 3 days to read. Other classics I love were/are "Dracula", "Pride and Prejudice" (also a little long but worth every line), "The Phantom of the Opera" and everything by Erich Kästner. I don't know if you know this German author, but I seem to remember that he was successful outside Germany, too. "Brave New World" also impressed me a lot.
As to the poets and playwrights, I like Goethe and Schiller, but my favorite poet is Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. He wrote "Vercingetorix" and "Die Füße im Feuer", if you happen to know these. Not to mention Edgar Allan Poe. Well, and Shakespeare, of course, especially "Hamlet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Othello" (because of Jago - I love villains!).
What I didn't like was "Of Mice and Men", "Ragtime" and Hemingway. Don't know why. And I still have to read "Lord of the Flies" - I hear so much about this book, but I never read it.

I absolutely loved Jane Eyre. I first read it when I was 9 and and older friend gave me her school copy to read for her and tell her the story so she could write a book report. I can still vividly see where she loses her friend as a child, that part affected me for days, I cried and cried.

Also I loved Call of the Wild, though it hurt me to read it because, yet again, I cried so much for days.

To kill a mockingbird was probably one of the more exciting books I read when I was young, and one I have returned to many times.

To be honest, I like most classics and I'll ready anything someone suggests if I can get hold of it

One book that I was forced to read in high school and detested was "Paradise Lost" by John MIlton. But looking back, I realize that it may have been due to the fact that we had a teacher with the personality of a dead house plant.

I love most books written by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Louisa May Alcott.

I too disliked "The Old Man and The Sea" but I loved Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls". Amazingly readable and beautifully written - the dialogue is fabulous. I had been put off for years by his macho image but this book was a revelation.

I know what you mean - he is so long-winded ! When I was trying to be a writer I decided to update Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Unfortunately several much more accomplished scribblers had the same idea and my (dreadful) version thankfully bit the dust. But in trying to adapt this piece I was forced to read through it repeatedly word by word and I realised, for the first time, just how gifted, how skilled he was. Bit drastic ! But it is a short work (especially for him) and every word counts. Despite seeing several (very good) film versions I was still enthralled by this master story-teller.

I have some of Goethe's poems but what works would you say are your favourites by him ?

"The Great Gatsby" - I enjoyed reading it at the behest of a friend of mine who raved about it but I don't quite understand why so many people regard it so highly. I am sure I am in the wrong here so I would be interested to hear just why you like it so much as I need some encouragement to give it another go !

Yes I loved "The Once and Future King" - but equally engaging is "Mistress Masham's Repose" by T.H. White too, a sort of Lilliput collides with fantasy English stately home. Enchanting ! However, I must defend Tolstoy's "War and Peace". After many years of watching and listening to various dramatisations and putting the book back hoping for the words to do as you say I finally braced myself for the task. Unfortunately I am taking almost as long to read it as he took to write it but, having reached a page number even larger than the final page of "Lord of the Rings" I think I can feel fairly secure in saying that Tolstoy is without doubt the very greatest writer who has ever lived and "War and Peace" is indisputedly the best novel ever written. His breadth of understanding make English classic authors look like children in comparison, his visual powers are stunning - I could bore you even more than he does (ok I am already). When (if) I stagger to the end of this masterpiece I will try and enthuse all uninitiated Trivialites to persevere with this book, if any, because I truly believe that it is one of the greatest experiences in life. Unless he messes up the ending.

"I find contemplating Napoleon's retreat from Moscow often puts my problems into perspective"

Oh I quite liked "The French Liutenant's Woman". It is a bit pretentious and pompous, if not dated, but it has a fine sense of place and makes some interesting observations on the cultural impact of Darwin. I visited Lyme Regis a year or two after the film version was made. The jetty was positively crawling with young women posing in their Laura Ashley togs trying to do a Meryl Streep ! About as successful as my Jeremy Irons...

Tolstoy's short stories were required reading for me in college, and I found them very powerful and memorable. I've never read War and Peace but perhaps I now should.

I'm nuts about To Kill a Mocking Bird but did NOT like The Catcher In the Rye. Holden was about as low as you could get. The Count of Monte Cristo is also fabulous, dispite the fact that it's about 1500 pages long (about 1000 pages more than my usual books). I read it because my father wouldn't quit raving about it and now I'm doing it myself!

I hang my head in shame for downing Charles Dickens! I love Pickwick Papers! I'm afraid Great Expectations almost soured me on him. It's not Dickens's fault--I lay the blame on my 9th grade Lit teacher!

To Kill A Mockingbird was a great book. I read so much, I have a ton of favorites--so I could go on and on all day.

I liked "Little Women", "Jane Eyre", anything by Jane Austen, "Catcher in the Rye", "The Great Gatsby", "Hamlet"
At the same time I really dislike "The Lord of the Flies" and "Macbeth"

In reply to:

---

anything Toni Morrison

---

Yes I'm rather behind on this thread
I just finished reading Beloved for my Racism class and I still don't know what all went on in that book... It was good as a novel, but my prof said it was based on someone's life... but beloved came back from the dead... wha?! i still dun get it
Wolf