Figured it would be helpful to have a single thread to discuss classics. I just downloaded Ethan Frome. I've heard very conflicting things, but it's only a few hours long. I've been listening to Don Quixote, but someone else borrowed it from the library when my file expired (such is the danger of utilizing the local library for audiobooks). Needed something to bridge the gap. Anyone read Ethan Frome? It's Goodreads scores are pretty average, but I thought it'd be worth the investment anyways.
I have not read Ethan Frome, but have done a couple classics in the past few years (not a list of all classics I've read, just the recent ones) A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (2012) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (2012) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (2013) East of Eden - John Steinbeck (2013) Moby Dick - Herman Melville (2014) The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (2014) Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (2014) The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand (2014) Ulysses - James Joyce (2015) Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand (2015) Middlemarch - George Eliot (2015) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (2015) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (2016) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2016) 1984 - George Orwell (2016) Animal Farm - George Orwell (2016)
Out of those, I've read: A Tale of Two Cities The Fountainhead (though this was a while ago; I don't remember much) Atlas Shrugged War and Peace Brave New World 1984 Animal Farm Classics are kind of subjective, but I'd add these as others I've read (off the top of my head): The Invisible Man - H.G Wells War of the Worlds - H.G Wells To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas Grendel - John Gardner Watership Down - Richard Adams Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain In Cold Blood - Truman Capote Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe Lord of the Flies - William Golding Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conran The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee Frankenstein - Mary Shelled The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Yeah I've read a good many of those too. I read a lot during school that I would like to re-read now because I think I would enjoy them far more as an adult. Great Expectations comes to mind. But yeah I'm glad you started this thread, I've been on a big classics kick lately to supplement all the fantasy I read. Looking at reading Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment in the near future.
Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye are two of my favorite books of all time. Just incredible reads. Especially if you're reading them in a class and take the time to think about and analyze what you are reading.
Great Expectations is a top 3 classic for me, loved it in HS and when i read it a second time as well. Best Dickens by far for me.
Ethan Frome was written well. Dark ending, which I liked. But I thought it was too short. Would have liked to develop the story more. Listening to As I Lay Dying right now. First time I've dealt with Faulkner. Really like it so far.
Has anyone read A Confederacy of Dunces before? I've started listening to it on audiobook. Won the Pulitzer back in the early '80s.
It’s pretty slow. The main character being unsympathetic doesn’t help. But it’s picking up lately so here’s hoping. I’m about halfway through
Frankenstein is my favorite novel ever. I read it yearly. I’ve tried to read Atlas Shrugged and it just drags soooo fucking much sometimes. Really enjoy Count of Monte Cristo and Quixote.
To each his own, obviously. I found her to be a below average novelist with unnecessarily wordy prose and boring, static characters. I will admit that my opinion of her philosophy (which sounds like it matches yours) may color my opinions of her writing skills.
I don't really know why I enjoyed them. The characters are hilarious. Her capitalists are all 6'5 beautiful geniuses and her communists are all 5'0 deformed squeaky voiced losers.
I’m also not a fan of Rand, but I haven’t read her since high school. That probably is as big a factor as any.
Finished Crime and Punishment. I'm glad I read it, but I could never get completely into it. It finished fairly strong but I found it pretty slow and I detested the main character. I'd be curious to read another book by Dostoevsky and see how it compares.
Which translation did you read? People have strong opinions on FD translations on the book-related subreddits.
Constance Garnett, revised by Juliya Salkovskaya and Nicholas Rice. Barnes and Noble Classics series, 2007.
Try a Pevear/Volokhonsky translation next time. Garnett is the classic but I've seen a lot of people say that her translations don't flow well and aren't especially true to the original Russian.
Only on TMB can someone read Crime and Punishment and someone else get cunty because they read the Salkovskaya translation like a peasant instead of the Pevear/Volohonsky
I finished Walden. It's a very quotable book. Here are some of my favs Spoiler "Men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost....Making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day..." "It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots." "The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle." "While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them." "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion." "Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive." "Men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries." "My greatest skill has been to want but little." "To maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely." "The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait til that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off." "If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them...Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it." "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." "To a philosopher, all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea." (wonder how that one would play in the polotics thread ) "In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer...Sky water." "As I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard." "The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer."
R/books posters get really defensive about their favorite FD translations. Can be insane to watch. It usually ends with one poster calling another poster an idiot.
Haven't read any James Joyce. Have "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" on my shelf. That a good one to start with?
I've only read Ulysses and while I appreciated it, I needed a reading guide. I haven't read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man yet. I started listening the Ulysses and realized quickly that wasn't going to work. Switched to the actual book and was able to follow a lot better. Its pretty much all stream of consciousness.
I'm not a huge Faulkner fan, but As I Lay Dying was a pretty good read. Haven't read it in quite a few years but I remember enjoying it.
Has anyone read The Quiet American by Graham Greene? I picked it up yesterday for a couple bucks and plan on starting next week.
good book. Kinda sad haven't read Graham Greene in a few years but I'm a huge fan. I have most of his novels
Currently reading Count of Monte Cristo which I'm reading for the first time. I am enjoying it but also realizing that I don't love books that stretch into the 1000 page+ length. Nothing against the story but I'm also getting the itch to start a new book even though I haven't finished this one which I try not to read 2 different at the same time.