I usually don't read classic books, mostly thrillers, dark romance or romance, self help books etc.. but I would like to get into world of classic books as well and i don't know where to start.
Which book would you choose to introduce someone to classics? I appreciate all the suggestions!
by Elizasreadingfiles
13 Comments
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
I have a list that I maintain for posts like this. If you give us more information as to what kind of reader you are, I can be more specific. However, they’re all fairly easy classics, are arranged in a rough order of ascending difficulty. So, I would recommend just picking a few from near the top of the list and working your way down.
*A Study In Scarlet* by Arthur Conan Doyle
*Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde* by Robert Louis Stevenson
*Murder in the Rue Morgue* by Edgar Allan Poe
*The Yellow Wallpaper* by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
*Frankenstein* by Mary Shelley
*Rebecca* by Daphne du Maurier
*Pride and Prejudice* by Jane Austen
*To Kill A Mockingbird* by Harper Lee
*The Great Gatsby* by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*Of Mice and Men* by John Steinbeck
*Dracula* by Bram Stoker
*The Nose* by Nikolai Gogol
*The Picture of Dorian Grey* by Oscar Wilde
*Slaughterhouse-5* by Kurt Vonnegut
*Emma* by Jane Austen
*Little Women* by Louisa May Alcott
*1984* by George Orwell
*The Haunting of Hill House* by Shirley Jackson
*All Quiet on the Western Front* by Erich Maria Remarque
*Metamorphosis* by Franz Kafka
*Candide* by Voltaire
*Wuthering Heights* by Emily Brontë
*Beloved* by Toni Morrison
*Romeo and Juliet* by William Shakespeare (I recommend getting an Arden edition for the vocab notes on each page)
*Sense and Sensibility* by Jane Austen
*Jane Eyre* by Charlotte Brontë
*The Odyssey* by Homer (I recommend the Fitzgerald translation)
*The Stranger* by Albert Camus
*A Farewell to Arms* by Ernest Hemingway
*Much Ado About Nothing* by William Shakespeare (I recommend getting an Arden edition for the vocab notes on each page)
*Notes From The Underground* by Fyodor Dostoevsky
*The Gambler* by Fyodor Dostoevsky
*Mrs. Dalloway* by Virginia Woolf
*The Little Prince* by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
*Don Quixote* by Miguel de Cervante
*Gulliver’s Travels* by Jonathan Swift.
*Candide* by Voltaire.
Mark Twain:
· *The Prince and the Pauper*.
· *A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court*.
· *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer*.
· *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*.
Charles Dickens:
· *Oliver Twist*.
· *A Christmas Carol*.
· *Hard Times*.
· *A Tale of Two Cities*.
· *Great Expectations*.
Lewis Carroll:
· *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland*.
· *Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There* (includes “Jabberwocky” and “The Walrus and the Carpenter”).
*The Screwtape Letters* by C. S. Lewis.
*The Red Badge of Courage* by Stephen Crane*.*
*Billy Budd, Sailor* by Herman Melville.
*Heart of Darkness* by Joseph Conrad.
*The Call of the Wild* by Jack London.
*The Jungle* by Upton Sinclair.
*All Quiet on the Western Front* by Erich Maria Remarque.
*Three Soldiers* by John Dos Passos.
Hermann Hesse:
· *Siddhartha.*
· *Steppenwolf*.
· *Demian*.
F. Scott Fitzgerald:
· *The Great Gatsby*.
· *Echoes of the Jazz Age*.
J. R. R. Tolkien:
· *The Hobbit, or There and Back Again*.
· *The Fellowship of the Ring.*
· *The Two Towers.*
· *The Return of the King.*
· *Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary*.
· *The Tolkien Reader.*
· *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.*
Evelyn Waugh:
· *Vile Bodies*.
· *Officers and Gentlemen*.
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
Letters to a Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke
The Beast Within by Emile Zola if you like thriller journeys
Based upon your “thriller and dark romance” preferences:
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
madame bovary … gustave flaubert …..
Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
The leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi
The Scarlet Pimpernel is basically an early superhero book. So good, quick read, a good gateway to the classics.
Going off of your usual reading tastes:
*Great Expectations* by Charles Dickens
*Uncle Silas* by Sheridan Le Fanu
*Dangerous Liaisons* by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
*The Black Tulip* by Alexandre Dumas
*The Woman in White* by Wilkie Collins
*Doctor Thorne* by Anthony Trollope
I’d start with Dickens. He’s got a very welcoming writing style.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.