My favourite book ever: Don Quixote. I have never read anything else with the combination of social commentary, absurdity, deep thoughts and crude humour! Altough, an honourable mention must go to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I would like to warn you about the last book I attempted: Life of Johnson. I found the endless footnotes and slow pace so hard to read that I gave up. It’s not fun to read for an hour and then realise nothing has happened.
So what are your favourites, and which could you not stand?
Brothers Karamazov - Best. Book. Ever. I read the Constance Garner(I think) translation and enjoyed the characters, the plot, and the philosophizing throughout. I highly recommend it.
Les Miserables - Hey, I liked the wordiness and descriptions of everything. I even read the chapter on Paris, its greatness, and its sewer system.
My least favorite:
For Whom The Bell Tolls - Meh. I prefered A Farewell to Arms.
Romeo and Juliet - I know it’s a play, but it* is* a bit overrated. I’d take Twelfth Night over this any day.
I’d also add Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which contain a few brilliant lines, a few good poems, and a lot of crapola.
Favorite: The Three Musketeers plus sequels. I think they still hold up as action-packed page turners. I also love Vanity Fair for similar reasons. I cry and cry, it’s very satisfying.
Least favorite: Great Expectations. Oh Pip, if only you had died in infancy.
Favorite: either Moby-Dick or The Rise of Silas Lapham.
Least favorite: probably Sister Carrie, which I could not bear to finish. Some other unbearable classics I would disqualify on grounds that they were never meant to be borne – foremost probably Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.
Favorite: Pride and Prejudice. I don’t know if you’d really call it quality literature, but I’ll go with The Count of Monte Cristo, too. It’s totally implausible and absurd, but completely entertaining, too. Before they had summer explosion movies, they had The Count of Monte Cristo.
Least Favorite: Hmmm…maybe The Decameron? I know it’s all about sex, but it’s like the same sex story 100 times. (Actually, this isn’t quite true. It’s two different sex stories, fifty times each. Sometimes the wife cuckolds her husband, sometimes a monk gets caught having sex with a nun/peasant girl. HA! It’s hilarious.) It got pretty old, pretty fast. I also hated An American Tragedy.
Not a book, but the poetry of Emily Dickinson made me want to commit suicide.
Pride & Prejudice is my favourite - but I also hold Jane Eyre, What Maisie (sp) knew & Vanity Fare in high regard. & not a book but Katherine Mansfield’s short stories are excellent.
There are a bunch that I simply couldn’t get through. Dr Zhivago, Tess of the D’Urbervilles & Wuthering Heights are the first that come to mind.
Least Favorite: Almost anything from Shakespeare. Call me ignorant but I can’t stand “old” English , plus most of his plays are so similar its booooring.
Favorites: The Trial by Franz Kafka and Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis. If Hemingway counts, then I’ll second whoever said For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Trial and FWTBT–along with everything else Hemingway wrote–were two of the bigger reasons I joined the army back in the day. Yeah, I was about as dumb and naive as I could get back then.
Least Favorites: I could never get into Fitzgerald. I tried to read The Great Gatsby, and it was too much of a downer. I read about a page into The Sound and the Fury before realizing it wasn’t for me.
And poetry. Except for Kipling and some Pushkin. I hate and detest all other poetry.
On edit: Except for dirty limrecks. But I guess those don’t count as “classics” except for the one about that guy from Nantucket.
Favorites: Moby Dick, Great Expectations (I hated it in high school, but when I reread it in my Master’s course, I realized it was pretty damn good), McTeague Special attention to the work of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, too. For poetry, I’ll take Dickinson.
I’ve liked Hawthorne, but wouldn’t list him as my favorites.