What "classic" book to read?

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All I've read this year has been fantasy novels so I'm thinking of having a change of pace and reading another "classical" book over the holidays. Examples of books I have liked that meet MY working definition of classics have included:
"Rebecca" - Daphne Du Maurier
"David Copperfield" - Charles Dickens
"Les Miserables" - Victor Hugo
"Don Quixote" - Cervantes
"The Count of Monte Cristo" - Alexandre Dumas
"Gulliver's Travels" - Jonathan Swift
"Nicholas Nickleby" - Charles Dickens

Any suggestions for a really good classic to take on holiday with me?

 

The only classics I have read and which I recommend wholeheartedly are A picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and Crime and Punishment by Fjodor Dostojevski.

 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley -- just an incredible book about prejudice.
John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (actually a series of 11 books)
War of the Worlds by Jules Verne
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (I've heard Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson are good)
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a good short story by Stevenson
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (and/or Huckleberry Finn)

If you want a book for the holidays and like Dickens you may as well try A Christmas Carol.

 

Good suggestions. Of the ones you've mentioned, I have read:

Treasure Island (average)
Robinson Crusoe (cool)
War of the Worlds (not the same without the music)
Tom Sawyer (ages ago)
Frankenstein (brilliant)
Wuthering Heights (you're right about the headache)

Moby Dick looks just too imposing for a holiday read.

 

My Suggestions?

Billy Budd (Herman Melville)
Moby Dick (Also Herman Melville - and it may look imposing but it's the most popularly read book in American literature for a reason!)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck - greatest book in the world)
Jane Eyre (One of them Victorian women... can't remember off the top of my head, but it's a GREAT book! Almost as good as:
Wuthering Heights (I'll second Tal on this one - a fantastic piece of literature).

 

Dracula rocks

 

Yes, Dracula does rock. No way am I reading Wuthering Heights again. I hated that book.

Hmm, a lot of pressure coming from the Moby Dick camp....but The Grapes of Wrath sounds like a good candidate as well.

So many books , so little time. This is why I seldom re-read books.

 

I guess The Iliad and The Odyssey wouldn't count?

 

That would definitely count, except that I have already read them. Brilliant.

 

Here's a few that have not been mentioned, and are some of my favorites:

Rabbit, Run - John Updike
The Good Soldier - Ford Maddox Ford.
The Decameron - Boccaccio will make you laugh out loud with some of these very "wicked" stories.
The Dubliners - James Joyce. They don't come any better than this.
Howard's End - E.M. Forster
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
The Lady in White - Wilke Collins

And if you haven't already:

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas. Ah, I see you have. Never mind.
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Also, there is a Penguin translation of a really good Icelandic Saga: Njal's Saga. A good tale of murder and revenge among the Vikings.

[ December 15, 2004, 16:41: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

As for Moby Dick I can tell you that I started the book this summer and have yet to finish it. I have found it rather cool actually, much more of a bizarre not really comedy but almost than expected. I have not finished it though cause there are always some easy read to steal away my attention when I am about to enlighten myself by reading some classic. I have been reading David Copperfield for almost four years now, I read a couple of pages when I am completely out of everything else to read.

 

How about Dante's Inferno and War and Peace, Aeneid?

 

Don Quixote is one of those books that has sections that are absolutely brilliant followed by huge sections that are dull as ditchwater. Also, I found book 1 to be much better than book 2. As much as I hate to say this but I would suggest getting an abridged edition - I have seen one that leaves the good chapters intact and summarizes a lot of the ones that are mind numbingly dull.

Moby Dick is quite good when it isn't in whaling documentary mode.

Dr Jeckle and Mr. Hyde is quite good as well.

The Three Muskateers is a fairly light but reasonably entertaining read.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is fairly decent although it too suffers from going into docuemntary mode at times.

I would skip War and Peace - I was bored silly and stopped reading it before anything resembling a plot was ever established.

 

Steinbeck and Hemmingway are also good choices:

Grapes of Wraith
Of Mice and Men (fantastic)
East of Eden
Tortilla Flats (hilarious -- especially the chapter titles. It's better if you've read Le Morte D'Arthur)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (incomplete, but an excellent translation)

The Old Man and the Sea (what would you expect from Nobel Prize winner)
Islands in the Stream
The Sun Also Rises
For Whom the Bell Tolls

Stay away from the Hemmingway books with a lot of dialogue -- his strength was descriptive writing.

 

My suggestions would the The Coral Island and sequel the Gorrila Hunters, but not sure if you'd appreciate them if you weren't keen on Treasure Island & Robinson Crusoe.

What about some of the Sherlock Holmes books?

 

"Two years of holiday" (not sure if I translated that right) - by Jules Vernes

Moby Dick - by Herman Melville

To Kill a Mocking Bird - by Harper Lee (As far as I know, the author is female)

The Neverending Story - by Michael Ende (for me this is a classic. But tending quite a bit to the fantastic. Still great)

MOMO - by Michael Ende (you might think it is a childrens book, which it is, but you will notice that children can be defined as people from 9-99 years of age)

Twelfth Night - by William Shakespeare (good comedic play)

Sophie's World - by Josteein Garder (a novel explaining philosophy [from Plato to today] in an interesting way)

Metamorphosis - by Franz Kafka (a surreal story of the transformation of a man...into something else)

Fahrenheit 451 - by Ray Bradbury. (A future vision where books are illegal, and firemen are there to set fires)

Grimm's Fairy Tales - You can't go more classic, and these are the non-disneyfied versions (This means that they are not all as sparkly as they appear because of disney. It happens that the evil step-mother has to dance until she dies in red-hot iron shoes, in Snow White. Of course, this is just one version, and there are many other versions of such fairy tales.)

Romeo and Juliet - by William Shakespeare (do I even have to mention that?)

--

These are all I can think of right now.

 

I have decided to read the following:

"The Last of the Mohicans" - James Fenimore Cooper

"The Grapes of Wrath" - John Steinbeck

I couldn't build up enough motivation for Moby Dick this year, sorry. But these two should see me through the holiday period, after which, in 2005 it will be back to the various Salvatore, Hobb, and Erikson fantasy series I'm in the middle of.

 

/me cheers for Grapes of Wrath

 

I highly recommend " The Catcher in the Rye" by J D Salinger.