Classics for Beginners discussion

A probably an incomplete list of classics I've read/want to read. At some point when I have more time I'll get round to adding in ratings/links to reviews.

Read pre-2011 (a selection off the top of my head - definitely incomplete at the moment)
(view spoiler)[The Mabinogion Author Unknown, Translated by Sioned Davies
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
A Study in Scarlet / The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle - 3 stars/3.5 Stars Review
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle 4 Stars Review
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles & The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Return of Sherlock Holmes / His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Odyssey by Homer
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
The complete Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Prince Caspian: the Return to Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
1984 by George Orwell
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake 5 stars
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake 5 stars
The Complete Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Dracula by Bram Stoker - 5 stars, Review
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Aeneid by Virgil
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Read 2011
(view spoiler)[Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Complete Ghost Stories by M.R. James
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Pearl Poet translated by Simon Armitage
Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Picture of Dorian Gray, The by Oscar Wilde
The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse 4 Stars
Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse 4 Stars
Very Good, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse 4 Stars
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Read 2012
(view spoiler)[Fables by Aesop
Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 4 Stars - Review to Come
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - 4.5 Stars, Review
War with the Newts by Karel Čapek 5 Stars Review
Miss or Mrs? the Haunted Hotel, the Guilty River by Wilkie Collins 3.5 Stars Review
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 4 Stars Review
Tales of the Greek Heroes. by Roger Lancelyn Green by Roger Lancelyn Green 3.5 Stars Review
The Complete Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm 3 stars - Review to Come
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg 3.5 Stars Review
Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs 3 Stars
The Turn of the Screw & Owen Wingrave by Henry James 3 Stars Review
The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 3 stars
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Complete Poetry by Edgar Allan Poe 3 Stars Review
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott 4 Stars Review
The Hundred and One Dalmatians (Reread) by Dodie Smith 5 Stars Review
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (EXPURGATED/CENSORED EDITION - need to read original)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien 4 Stars Review
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 4 Stars Review
Complete Short Fiction by Oscar Wilde 4 Stars
Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse 4 Stars Review
Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse 3.5 Stars Review
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin 3.5 StarsReview (hide spoiler)]

Read 2013
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (Reread) 5 Stars Review
Beowulf Translated by Seamus Heaney 3 Stars Review
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo 5 Stars Review
The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno by Dante Alighieri4 Stars
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 5 Stars Review
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Currently Reading
The Arabian Nights: Tales of One Thousand and One Nights, Volume 1
Persuasion by Jane Austen (Reread)

Partly-read short story collections
In a Glass Darkly by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (4/5)
The Complete Stories by Edgar Allan Poe (14/68)
The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Nineteen Other Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson (2/20)
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre by John William Polidori and other writers (2/14)

To Read (own)
The Arabian Nights: Tales of One Thousand and One Nights, Volume 2
The Arabian Nights: Tales of One Thousand and One Nights, Volume 3
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Tess Of The D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Le Morte D'Arthur: The Winchester Manuscript by Thomas Malory
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
Joy in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse


Not sure about everyone else's definitions of 'classic' but I don't subscribe to 'if it's old and still being published' or 'if something else he/she wrote is a classic all their work is' (Stoker's non-Dracula novels are, quite frankly, not classics) - this means a few great books like The Complete Brigadier Gerard have been left out, despite being old and/or having a famous author because the work itself isn't widely known of or discussed enough to merit the term 'classic'. Incidentally if you like comedy or historical fiction you should totally read that. It's ace and the quality is more consistant than the Holmes stories (not surprising, they were being done purely for the money by the end).

Also left off are individual poems (with the exception of epic-length poetry). I don't read that much poetry but listing individual poems would still make the list ridiculously long quite quickly. Complete collections will be added to the list if I manage to finish any though.

Why are you dreading The Hobbit? By the way I admire your frankness in stating why you believe a book is or is not a classic. It shall remain one of the curiosities of literature that the definition of a classic differs from person to person.

The Hobbit is just one of those books I have a love/hate relationship with. I love the plot and the story but I've always hated the writing style. It was kind of just about bearable when I was 5 and dad would read it aloud or we would listen to the BBC Audiobook on car journeys but even then I found it pretty annoying. The repetition of 'And Bilbo Baggins wished he was back in his nice hobbit hole... not for the last time' wound me up. Then I tried to read it and the random outbursts of song, which worked just about ok when it was read out loud, got to me as well. I can take the cast breaking out randomly into song and dance routines when I'm watching a musical/disney film, but when it happens in books it winds me up. Did the dwarves reherse that 'that's what Bilbo Baggins hates' routine? Didn't they have better things to do like coming up with some sort of a plan? Or are they just that great at improvising?
I know that's taking it all a bit too seriously and I hope now that I'm older and have read/studied different types of literature a bit more I'll like it. Fact remains though that I found it deeply patronising as a child and couldn't get past about page 50 in each of my once-yearly attempts to read it.
I got The Lord of the Rings as a christmas present when I was twelve though and raced through it in about 5 days. Loved it. I know a lot of my friends had trouble with the heavy writing style but I found it much less patronising and more fun than The Hobbit. And when songs did break out they weren't generally integral to the plot and could be skipped over without missing anything. Only dud note was the Tom Bombadil section which was thankfully purged from the films for being rubbish.

And thanks. I don't have any more idea than anyone else as to what makes a classic - it's more of a 'I know it when I read it' thing. But I do think it's a mistake to assume that everything a particular author wrote must be a classic because one of their books is. This is probably particularly true of 'genre classics' like Dracula/Stoker where the original novel was basically a pulpy horror that was just so damn good it became the defining piece of the genre. His other pulpy novels are just that...pulpy. While Dickens, though all his novels are classics, also wrote some pretty forgettable ghost stories (The Signalman excepted though I personally don't rate it that highly) that are a very interesting read but should in no way be veiwed on equal footing with either his own full length books or the billiant ghost stories of M.R. James that are the actual classics of the genre. Then there's Tolkien - The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, definitely classics - The Silmarillion, reads like a bad history text book with a few more elves and magic glowy stones and should only be read by people who have already read and really enjoyed his other books.
I picked the Doyle example though because I like to be positive and provide recomendations for stuff people might not have heard of. Although I think only The Lost World/Holmes have permiated through public conciousness to become classics in their own right - again as genre classics; action-adventure/detective - I actually prefer The Brigadier Gerard.

Review for A Study in Scarlet up.

Ah I see. I am a huge fan of Tolkien's work and as such I guess I view things differently. I've always seen the very different style of The Hobbit but interpreted it through the lens of understanding that it was intended as a children's work. I did a similar thing to you with The Lord of the Rings racing through it in a few days too. That on the other hand was made more dark to reflect the new themes of war and the story Tolkien planned. Then The Silmarillion for me is a work you have to like Tolkien to enjoy but I don't read it as a history book but rather as his mythological story. It does read a lot like the myths he was enamoured of and I've always had a soft spot for mythologies.

I really like Holmes and like the writing if not the story of The Lost World so I do mean to read The Brigadier Gerard at some point.

Yeah, I'm hoping that now I'm an adult (I still can't take myself seriously when I say that) I'll be able to appreciate the tone of The Hobbit a lot more than I could when I was a child. As I said I do love the actual story, I just need to get past how patronising I always found the writing. Fingers crossed it's just one of these things I got worked up about as a kid but really enjoy once I manage to put aside those prejudices - like watching Disney's Hercules in my late teens after refusing to see it as a child because the mythology was wrong and Pegasus belonged to Bellerophon and Hera was not Hercules' mother and didn't they know anything?

And yeah, I was a bit too harsh on The Silmarillion - I'm a big mythology fan too and it was definitely an interesting read, just very very dry. I should probably read it again sometime now that I'm not 12 and I actually know what to expect from it, but I'd like to get through the unread books on my shelf first. My (badly phrased) intention wasn't really to trash it but to say that both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are classics within their own rights (whether a person likes one, both, or neither) but I don't think Silmarillion will ever be - it's a companion book for people who already love his other works and doesn't stand out on its own. Though to be fair on Tolkien a lot of that is probably because he died before he could finish and revise it properly.

And I'd be very interested to hear what you think of The Brigadier Gerard. It's got a very different tone from his Holmes stuff - much more light and comedic. I think you can tell Doyle was having a lot of fun writing them, especially when compared with some of the very late Holmes stories.

I can't take myself seriously saying that either having turned 18 in January. Hahaha yes I agree with you on the changed mythology in children's literature. It becomes very interesting...

I did not read The Silmarillion until I was already fourteen/fifteen and could appreciate the dry style. I personally think of it as a classic because for me it was his magnum opus. And what makes it a classic is the sheer scale of his writing and work. Although I respectfully accept others views as to why it is not a classic. I tend to fall into the 'take-every-book-as-it-stands' mould when working out if they are classics. For instance I class many of H.G.Wells science fiction works as classic but (although I have not read them yet) would be reluctant to say that some of his others are by classification as his novels.

I think you can read the lighter tones in a lot of authors when you read their different works. Some you can see they enjoyed writing more than others.

I'm well into 23, though, I really should be more used to saying it!

And I can understand your reasoning on the Silmarillion too. Just boils down to personal preference and I don't mind (or want!) everyone to share mine.

Personally I'm most torn over whether to list Titus Groan and Gormenghastas classics or not. I absolutely adore both of them (though have not read the third one because Peake died before he could finish it and, honestly, I think the second book wrapped up the storylines of all the interesting characters anyway). They already have a lot of literary respect, transcend the fantasy genre to an extent, are among the best gothic stuff I've read, and definitely deserve to be classics; I'm just not sure if they're there yet. Will have to wait until I'm next in Oxford and see how my favourite bookshop there shelves them - don't trust my local one to even stock them.

H.G Wells I really need to read though; his sci-fi stuff's been on my 'must read' list for years.

Edit: Hmmmm, publisher categorises them as 'Classic Fiction'...

I guess for some people it sinks in faster?

I am yet to read Titus Groan but everyone recommends it so it is a future must read of mine. Yes I don't want everyone to share my opinion on classics either. It makes for more diverse and interesting literary discussion. For instance I would class some of John Le Carre's books (as I'm going through them) as classics while I am less inclined to accept others.

H.G.Wells writes magnificently and is definitely one of the greatest sci-fi writers of all time. Jules Verne is another yet his work is in my honest opinion more dated and I tend to class his work as more for children.

The Jules Verne I have read is definitely a bit dated, yeah. I quite enjoyed Journey to the Centre of the Earth (though I find it incredible that it took them years to work out why the compass was wrong at the end), and I do mean to read a lot of his other works soon. But I couldn't finish my dad's old copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea it was so dull. I'm hoping a lot of that was due to being a translation from around 1950 and thus probably based on the original shoddy English translation. Going to try and grab myself a more modern translation by a publishing house I trust once I have funds.

Titus Groan is brilliant though. Weird, but brilliant. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to everyone and I can understand why a lot of people don't get on with it, but I just love it.

As far as I remember it Thousand Leagues was pretty interesting in the more modern translation. A little dated but definitely interesting.

Updated: Jeeves and Wooster books added after a bit of mental debate over their state as classics. Jane Eyre now read and reviewed. The Sign of the Four review and a couple of others now up and linked as well. My new pile of classics bought since my last update added.

Shall be staring/restarting Great Expactations soooon

Updated list again. Not that I've done much classics reading over the holidays, mainly been children's books.

Currently reading Anna Karenina for the group read though so getting back into it :)

Been neglecting this list for too long so gave it an update. Still a bit behind on my reviews but list itself should be up to date now and I doubt I'll get any more classics finished before the end of the year.

My 'To read (own)' list seems to be growing faster than my 'read' list!

And updated list again! Read a couple more books, bought a couple more books, and got a couple more reviews up.

Did you add the spoiler tags to condense the lists? That is an excellent idea! I feel like mine is getting a little unwieldy.