How 'bout Alexandre Dumas?
Lots of people (I hope) have read his big-name books like The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and maybe The Man in the Iron Mask. But what about his other books? The other Musketeer books, for example: Twenty Years After, The Viscount of Bragelonne and Louise de la Valliere. Or what about The Black Orchid?
I am working on Twenty Years Later.
A lot of people, particularly here at SD, have read many, if not all, of L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” books, but I’ve yet to come across anyone else who’s read The Magical Monarch of Mo, let alone heard of it. And in fact, several of the characters who appear in later Oz books are based on characters that first showed up in Mo (particularly the Tin Man). And The Scarecrow of Oz actually has parts that take place in the Valley of Mo.
I’ve read Bummel, but not Boat. I picked up a copy of Bummel in Poland; it was great entertainment.
Picked up a copy of Don Quixote in New Delhi a few weeks before i went to Spain and finished it while travelling there, which seemed appropriate. I didn’t know much about it before reading it, so I was surprised at how “postmodern” and self-referential it was.
Another one I seldom encounter other readers of is Twain’s Roughing It, a semi-fictional account of his first trip West and his early days in the Nevada silver mining region. A neglected gem, IMO.
I am working my way through Thoreau’s Walden but it doesn’t really fit the OP because I know at least one other person who I am sure has read it.
It’s slow going for me BTW. I was thinking about starting a thread to ask people to help me appreciate it more.
Didn’t EVERYONE read Walden in 11th Grade?
I’ve read some of the ones already mentioned, including Walden (and Civil Disobedience), Dracula, Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde. Also:
The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius
A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe
The Debacle, Emile Zola
A bunch of classic plays, including:
The Trojan Women, Euripedes
Antigone, Sophocles
The longest Shaw play, Man and Superman
The unfunny Oscar Wilde play, Salome
I’ve met one other person who had read Cyrano de Bergerac. My mother is the only person I’ve met who had even heard of, much less read, Lorna Doone. She tried to get me to read it when I was a kid, but failed.
I don’t know if *The Last Days of Pompeii * should count as a “classic” or not. I do know why Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s name was used for a bad writing contest.
I’ve read the box the cookies come in. Does that count?
And Cyrano is fantastic. I’m a huge fan.
I had to read Wide Sargasso Sea and Miss Jean Brodie for class (two different classes, not the same one). Didn’t particularly enjoy either.
Have you read The Driver’s Seat, by Spark? :eek: Pure insanity, that.
Lissla, there are 4 books in the series–and if you’ve missed one of them, you’ll really want to find it! There’s What Katy Did, What Katy Did at School, What Katy Did Next, and What Clover Did. I couldn’t pick a favorite out of those, because they’re all absolutely delightful.
Lessee–I’ve read many of the books mentioned in this thread, but that has a lot to do with my being a rabid reader and quite the literature geek.
I haven’t noticed anyone mentioning Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It’s one of my favorites, as is anything written/translated by Chaucer. I also read and really liked The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, and couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve used quotations from that in papers and, in one embarrassing circumstance, a thank-you note to my best friend.
Re Dante’s Comedy, I can’t remember which books she translated (I know she didn’t do the whole thing), but if you can find Dorothy L. Sayers’ translation, it’s excellent.
I agree. Roughing It is one of my favorites. It’s extremely well-written, it provides an interesting sense of what life was like in the American West back then, and, as an added bonus, it tells you all about the events that made Samuel Clemens become Mark Twain. The embellishments just add to it- it wouldn’t be Twain if it weren’t embellished.
I have!
A reminder from Miss OP (that’s me) - books you read for school don’t count. You have to had read work in question of your own free will. You had to stretch out your hand willingly to pull that copy of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus off the bookshelf. Or was it Tristam Shandy? Or perhaps Theodore Roosevelt’s Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail?
I’ve read a lot of Zola but not this one, yet. I love his stuff, especially The Earth, Germinal, Therese Raquin, and The Dram Shop. Didn’t care much for Nana, but by the time I started it I had already read The Dram Shop and had fallen in love with her mother, who Nana treated very badly.
I’ve read a bunch of these, but I’ll just contribute another one (if it was mentioned before, I didn’t see it; apologies!)
Plutarch’s Roman Lives.
John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath.”
In the subcategory “classic queer literature” I’ve read “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin and Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Lonliness” whose prose is so purple it’s ultraviolet. Ick.
Has anyone else read Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory? (I assume so, but have never met anyone else who has.)
Rootabega Stories, or is it Tales? --Carl Sandburg
A Choice of Enemies --George Higgins. This guy handles characters even better than Elmore Leonard or Larry Mc Murtry. Riveting.
I read the collection of Hemingway short stories called The Snows of Kilamanjaro. I was bored and repelled.
I read Frankenstein, but it took a long time. I identified with the monster, and I got so depressed, I had to set it aside. After I saw Young Frankenstein, I finally could finish it.
I dunno about you, but Prizzi’s Honor and the rest of that series by Richard Condon are classics to me.
Of books already mentioned, I’ve read:
Hans Brinker
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Don Quixote
Martin Chuzzlewit
A Christmas Carol
Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend
Anna Karenina
The Last of the Mohicans
Walden
Salome
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (O.K., that one was for school)
Of Mice and Men
The Grapes of Wrath
Lorna Doone
I’ll add to the list two more from Dickens: The Cricket on the Hearth, and one of my favorites, Bleak House.
And I’ll be shocked if anyone else here has read Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.
I’ve read;
Hans Brinker
Tale of Two Cities (twice, once for school and once because I couldn’t believe it was as bad as I remembered----wrong)
Ivanhoe (in 8th grade for Og’s sake, what were the Nun’s thinking?)
Anna Karenina (loved it)
Three Men in a Boat
All above for fun except for Ivanhoe, which I tried to read again later to see what I missed the first time, couldn’t get past the first chapter. :smack: Read many of the others mentioned here but only because of school requirements.
How about War and Peace, I read it about 10 years ago, and am currently about 1/3 of the way thru it again. My son told me then that I had a bad translation. I didn’t believer him, but damn if he wasn’t right.
We got us a good crowd here!
We got people who read Elizabeth Gaskell, Emile Zola, and obscure Thomas Hardy. We got someone (besides me) who read The Kreutzer Sonata, by golly!
Anyone for Middlemarch by George Eliot?
How about The Pilgrim’s Progress?