I recently got into classics and I've read Crime and Punishment (probably a bad start, but i loved it) and The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'd accept any recommendations, not necessarily similar to those two. I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray very recently and found it intriguing yet hard to get sometimes, especially Henry's character.
by HistoricalRun2092
15 Comments
I’m reading The Count of Monte Cristo along with r/AReadingOfMonteCristo and it’s been surprising how easy it is to read and how modern it seems for a book that was written in the 1800s
Germinal – not too long but still an endeavor. Prose is fluid. Very deep. Very wise.
I’d recommend The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas if you want something easier to read, with a quicker pace and a longer book.
However, if you prefer shorter books for now, I recommend Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (and I think that it ties very nicely with Crime and Punishment, since it is the novel that began the “young man who becomes a nihilist after going to college” trope in russian literature, which Dostoyevsky uses for Raskolnikov), The Metamorphosis by Kafka and The Stranger by Albert Camus.
Steinbeck is very accessible imo. *Grapes of Wrath* and *East of Eden* are usually considered his best works, but *Of Mice and Men* is a good start if you want something shorter.
I recently decided to start reading more classics instead of only recent publications, and To Kill a Mockingbird and Flowers for Algernon were both great.
(Couldn’t get into Brave New World and didn’t finish it, and I just started Lord of the Flies, so the jury is still out on that one!)
The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck is my favorite and easy to follow.
Death of Ivan Illych, Slaughterhouse Five, Franny and Zooey, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Frankenstein,
The Three Musketeers
The Pit and The Pendulum
Moby Dick
Around the World in 80 Days
The Killer Angels
Pride and Prejudice
Treasure Island
Oliver Twist
Siddhartha. Its a short read, probably Hesse’s most accessible piece.
Of Mice and Men
Perfume: Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind is one of my all-time favorites and one that I don’t get to recommend nearly often enough!
I quite liked The Turn of The Screw. I mean, Pride and Prejudice is a classic and easy read.
I really loved Madame Bovary, such detail! It is a longer read, not very light.
Of Mice and Men, or any Steinbeck, really..
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.