What do you consider to be 'classic' books/literature?

[cloquet]

Someone mentioned 1984 already but most of Orwell's I would class as "Classics."
Lord of the rings.
Trainspotting.
Clockwork Orange
Hitchhikers guide....

Ive recently read alot of Brett Eaton Ellis books. Some might say they are cult or modern "Classics." I'm probably confusing matters

they'd just be called 'modern classics' i think!

I think 'trainspotting' would also fall into that category

i meant all of the above

tbh, anything post-1900 is a 'modern' classic i think??\

ah. yeah, probably. it's a tricky one. the majority of the stuff in this thread would fall into the 'modern classic' category tbf.

[cloquet]

ulysses
finnegan's wake

put you off reading for life

if we're going down that road...


proust

[dubfordessert]

The Brothers Karamazov
The Gambler
Nausea
Metamorphosis

now THIS

THIS

is a post i can get behind.

joeki's Russian Greats ofc

i almost have nothing to say here.

1 of my slightly less popular favourites... The Damned (La-Bas) - Joris-Karl Huysmans

Emile Zola's decadent, slightly less successful mate

[dubfordessert]

i have very unimaginative taste in books really

[Johnlenham]

The Hobbit and Fear and Loathing are pretty good. Not sure classic level but still.

[hutyluty]

The Hobbit and Fear and Loathing are pretty good. Not sure classic level but still.

im always amazed the same guy wrote the hobbit and lord of the rings. They seem completely different.

[defoxster]

Last thing I need in my life is more Bret Easton Ellis books, trust

Haha ok then... On a diff note I found Moby Dick extremely difficult to read. Does this mean I'm gonna struggle with a lot of the other books here? I know that the reason I got lost was because of the old English but are the others mentioned on this thread of a similar calibre?

[Steve_French]

sorry

does Of Mice and Men count?

[joeki]

^^ I seriously make notes when reading a book with a lot of characters. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

[ehbes]

In Cold Blood

[Shum]

A satirical view of capitalism/global expansion, brilliant.

Or a manual to shape children into modes of consumerism: Consume and become beautiful.

[Shum]

Can't argue with most of the calls in this thread. I'll add The Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights).

[noam]

^^ I seriously make notes when reading a book with a lot of characters. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

ive been told to do that with Crime and Punishment

[ch3]

Okay, so from, as we established, modern classics:

Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Master And Margarita' - brilliant book about good and evil (Satan visits Moscow)
Gabriel García Márquez's 'One Hundred Years Of Solitude' - maybe not to everyone's taste, as it's written in magical realist style - story of several generations of a Colombian family
Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita' - you might have seen the film, book is much better, full of wordplay and fun to read
William Golding's 'Lord Of The Flies' - again, as usual, I find book better than film. This one seriously moved me

I just realised the list I'm making are the books I actually want to reread. I should stop now or it will get too long

Few good ones were already mentioned, so won't repeat!

[SCope13]

+1 on Dorian Grey.

Anything by Kafka
The Stranger by Camus.

[tyger]

william blake

[_v_]

Shantaram. A personal classic.

[frank grimes jr.]

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Dumas, Count of Monte Cristo

[knell]

so many good ones posted thus far, but to add two that aren't already here:

The Giver
Maniac Magee

(4th grade reading level, but i still crack them both open from time to time, and they still make me well up. no shame.)

[dreamizm]

Peep some Hardy, some Conrad and some Kafka in that order then come back to this thread