Recommendations of Classic Books

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dimes
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Re: Recommendations of Classic Books

Post by dimes »

Everyone's been recommending Pride and Prejudice now, so I'm going to go for some underdogs.

I recommend The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. It's a gripping mystery which kept me at the edge of my seat throughout the whole. I started off listening to the audiobook, but I got so impatient to find out what happened that I dug out my physical copy and started reading it at full speed. The Woman in White is written in the form of diary entries from the perspectives of various characters within the story. It starts off with Walter Hartright, drawing master, encountering a woman in white on a lonely road on his way to London. He is later hired to teach the beautiful Laura Fairlie and her half-sister Marion Halcombe, and gets embroiled in finding out who or what the woman in white is.

Another recommendation I would like to venture to give is The Chronicles of Barsetshire by Anthony Trollope. This is a series of about 6 novels, starting with The Warden. The writing may be a bit draggy, especially if you're new to reading classics, but the barb and wit with which Trollope writes this exposition on the clergymen of Barsetshire is unparalleled. I have only read the first 2 novels but I am fully intending to read the rest eventually. I absolutely love his writing here. Trollope has also written the Palliser series (also six novels), starting with Can You Forgive Her?, which I also enjoyed but I found that it was not as light-hearted as The Chronicles of Barsetshire.
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Lizzy25
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Post by Lizzy25 »

My top favorite classic titles include: A Tale of Two Cities, Gone With the Wind and anything by Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice though is my all. time. favorite. book.

Nothing compares to the relationship between Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy.
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Post by KasieMiehlke »

I absolutely love Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The reader follows Janie throughout her life as she searches for what she needs. It is a great story of love and struggle. Whenever I am at a loss for something to read l, I always reach for this book.
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Post by boog »

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is always so magical for me to read. It's absurd to think that only one hundred years ago, women were merely adornments upon a marriage, upon their husband's arm. I love that the book, for its time, questioned societal norms.

An amusing moral of the story could be: "Don't fall in love with your fiance's tempestuous cousin."
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Post by Jessica Samuelsen »

I like some of the Classics like The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. A Brave New World is good too.
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Post by ollesternberg »

A good book always makes a good present: This we hold to be true. The wealth of literary options can be both liberating and daunting. Looking for a quality new read? There’s no shortage of lists of the best books of 2015 circulating. But what about those books that have stuck around, and really stood the test of time?
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lohit
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Post by lohit »

I must agree with The Tuggernaut. Crime and Punishment is a complex classical book and I love it.

-- 02 Apr 2017, 02:22 --

I must agree with The Tuggernaut. Crime and Punishment is a complex classical book and I love it.
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Zoey141
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Post by Zoey141 »

The Brothers Karamazov and Notes from the Underground.
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Manang Muyang
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Post by Manang Muyang »

For lovers of crime and thriller books like me, I recommend the Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You will have great fun comparing the detecting principles of the present (DNA and technology have simplified evidence-gathering.) versus the olden times (Sherlock's method is "founded upon the observation of trifles.") So, "the game is afoot."
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Post by Redcraze »

I've always thought it odd that Sherlock Holmes views the world with rigorous logic yet his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle was a dingbat who believed in spiritualism and fairies.
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Post by Riki »

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of my favorite classical novels. I highly recommend this book if you're a fan of the movie Apocolypse Now because it's based almost completely on the ideas and themes presented in Conrad's novel. This novel is so amazing because of its unreliable narrator, Marlow, and his changing perceptions of the African Congo, African people, and colonization as a whole. The book is amazingly progressive for its time, revealing not only a lot about race politics during its release but also in modern day. People today still learn a great deal from Heart of Darkness in regards to the powers of greed and globalization, and that's just the mark of a true classic. It's persisted through time and resides on my book shelf to this day.
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Katherine Smith
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Post by Katherine Smith »

I would recommend any of the Sherlock Holmes books because even though there have been plenty of movies and television series; the books are fantastic. I am almost done with my complete Sherlock Holmes book and I am glad that I asked for it for Christmas three years ago.
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Post by Manang Muyang »

Katherine Smith wrote:I would recommend any of the Sherlock Holmes books because even though there have been plenty of movies and television series; the books are fantastic. I am almost done with my complete Sherlock Holmes book and I am glad that I asked for it for Christmas three years ago.
Yes, indeed! I have all the books myself. "That's elementary, my dear Katherine!"
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Post by Ginya »

Surely someone here has read "Watership Down" by Richard Adams? It's centered on a warren of rabbits who must set out to find a new home. Adams' creates a real culture for the rabbits including their own mythology and their personalities are so unique as to make them unforgettable. You will be emotionally invested in these rabbits until the very last page. This book can be very dark and apocalyptic sometimes so read it before giving it to your children.
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Post by Lus »

The Tuggernaut wrote:I recently read Fyodyr Dostoyevsky's paragon of classic Russian literature, Crime and Punishment. The protagonist of the novel is a young intellectual student who resides in St. Petersburg, named Raskolnikov. He lives in squalid poverty and murders an immoral pawn-broker for what originally appears to be her possessions. But, as Dostoyevsky delves deeper into the mind of Raskolnikov, the reader finds more intriguing motives for his crime, and Raskolnikov seems to view himself as a great man (he is constantly comparing himself to Napolean) that is exempt from moral law. In this page-turner Raskolnikov attempts to avoid arrest and redeem himself by helping the poor family of a prostitute. This novel was written by Dostoyevsky as an attempt to combat the growing Russian nihilism of the time period, and the author sternly reminds us that nobody is above moral law, whether your punishment comes in the form of imprisonment or grief and remorse.

one of my favorite books. We had it in our school program, but back then you read it as a crime story and you don't understand the whole deep meaning behind. I would recommend to read it in the mature age.

-- 04 Jul 2017, 02:21 --
Miriam Molina wrote:
Katherine Smith wrote:I would recommend any of the Sherlock Holmes books because even though there have been plenty of movies and television series; the books are fantastic. I am almost done with my complete Sherlock Holmes book and I am glad that I asked for it for Christmas three years ago.
Yes, indeed! I have all the books myself. "That's elementary, my dear Katherine!"
Great book and movies are cool too.
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