So called 'classic' novels top 100 from The Guardian

[The Raven]

Ulysses not getting much love on here. Like others, I made many attempts to get into it, but couldn't. The key to unlock it was RTE's full cast unabridged audiobook. It brought the whole thing to life. It's now, without doubt, one of my favourite books. A genuine work of genius.

Free download here:

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Thanks for that. I’ll give it a go.

 

[Monty Pigeon]

Yes Solzhenitsyn an omission - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had a huge impact on me, totally out of favour these days.

3 Virginia Woolf's in that list. 3 too many. Hugely influential I appreciate but not particularly an author I enjoyed reading. Surprised the Grapes of Wrath wasn't in there, but having studied that for A Level it put me right off Steinback.

Not much in the way of laughs in that list either.

Humour is exceptionally difficult and yet is always regarded as being of less value than tragedy.

That said, Pale Fire and The Man Without Qualities are full of comedy.

 

[NYMackem]

I read about 1/4 of Catch 22 and I didn’t understand what the hell was going on.

Surprised at the omission of the few classics that I have read ie grapes of wrath, mockingbird, animal farm

Give it another go. It's class.

Only 11 for me but if I included ones I'd started but not finished (yes Ulysses is in that category) it's more like 20.

I'd like to think of myself as reasonably educated but there are some on here I've never even heard of . I don't know if that's because I'm not that well read, or if the list is just a bit up itself. It's looks a bit Anglo-centric too (the French would be asking where Camus or Zola are, for instance) but I suppose that's to be expected.

Camus is there. The Outsider.

 

[matt228]

I've read 6

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Dracula
The Outsider (I read it in French, L'étranger)
Wuthering Heights
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Great Gatsby
Pride and Prejudice

 

[The Great Soprendo]

Camus is there. The Outsider.

It's going to come over all pretentious but I didn't spot it with the English name .

 

[---Nemo---]

No Grapes of Wrath or Les Misérables?

Treasure Island should be in there as well.

 

[Son of Stan]

Humour is exceptionally difficult and yet is always regarded as being of less value than tragedy.

That said, Pale Fire and The Man Without Qualities are full of comedy.

My go-to classic comedic books would be Three Men in a Boat and Diary of a Nobody. I tend to re-read both every so often. And the odd Wodehouse. All essentially very English so probably wouldn't make any classic lists these days.

On the subject of re-reading your old books the print is so tiny I find a lot of my books are unreadable these days!

 

[Turner the Cat]

Jean Paul Sartre not there!
I would have Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn in there too.
I also agree with @Son of Stan about Joyce. Overrated imo. Same goes for Woolf in my “book” - though I might give her a reread.

Another vote for Solzhenitsyn. Not only is he a really impactful writer but, I think its important to remember how important and influential his writing was within the political climate of the time. For that reason I think he deserves to make the list.

 

[---Nemo---]

I don't know man, white British males have traditionally found it very hard to break into the world of publishing. Which makes it all the more annoying when some woman takes the place of a male author under a false name like George Eliot. Think of all the unfortunate white English men who couldn't even get a novel published with all the lasses muscling in on their turf in Manface

Didn't Byron vote against Mary Shelley because her story was "Too philosophical"? He didn't even finish his entry. He went for Percy's contribution and iirc that wasn't completed either.

 

[Monty Pigeon]

My go-to classic comedic books would be Three Men in a Boat and Diary of a Nobody. I tend to re-read both every so often. And the odd Wodehouse. All essentially very English so probably wouldn't make any classic lists these days.

On the subject of re-reading your old books the print is so tiny I find a lot of my books are unreadable these days!

I love Wodehouse. His problem is probably that he produced a body of work that's consistently brilliant, but - unlike almost every writer in the Guardian's list - didn't produce one book that stands out from his others. But sentence for sentence, few writers can match him.

Two solutions to the small print problem: eBook or audiobook. (I walk every day, and get through a lot of audiobooks.)

I've also just returned to reading actual books after a pause of a couple of years. I was physically struggling to read. Tried a pair of reading glasses, and was still having problems. Worked out that only one eye needed the glasses, so I took out the lens on that side and have crystal clear reading vision again.

 

[Lankester Merrin]

39. But I did do a degree in English which covers a lot of them. And it should be 38 1/2 as I never finished Ulysses as I detested it.
As for recommendations it depends on your tastes really.
My favourite authors from the list would be Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Bronte.
I would definitely recommend the Ripley novels of Patricia Highsmith, however.

40 odd for me, even though I didn't do an English degree

But lists like this just look like the work of the Guardians top journalist; Phil Space

I would have Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn in there too.

Please god no.

 

[AndrewP]

Never read Ulysses but am lead to believe from mates that have, it's a pile of tripe, unintelligible and rambling

I think you might be thinking of Finnegan's Wake

 

[Lankester Merrin]

Yes Solzhenitsyn an omission - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had a huge impact on me, totally out of favour these days.

Quiet Flows The Don, by Sholokov is a masterpiece, Doestoyevsky is brilliant, Gogol, Bulgakov. But not Solzhenitsyn. A terrible writer who was feted in the West because it was politically expedient

 

[NYMackem]

It's going to come over all pretentious but I didn't spot it with the English name .

To be fair, I would have usually thought of it as The Stranger in English rather than The Outsider.

My go-to classic comedic books would be Three Men in a Boat and Diary of a Nobody. I tend to re-read both every so often. And the odd Wodehouse. All essentially very English so probably wouldn't make any classic lists these days.

On the subject of re-reading your old books the print is so tiny I find a lot of my books are unreadable these days!

I love Diary of a Nobody, but the other comic novel I think is a massive miss from the list is A Confederacy of Dunces. But maybe the list is just too modern and too high brow for me. I love mid century American literature more than the Victorian classics and modern British stuff that the Guardian writers seem to cling to.

 

[Exapno Mapcase]

Yes Solzhenitsyn an omission - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had a huge impact on me, totally out of favour these days.

3 Virginia Woolf's in that list. 3 too many. Hugely influential I appreciate but not particularly an author I enjoyed reading. Surprised the Grapes of Wrath wasn't in there, but having studied that for A Level it put me right off Steinback.

Not much in the way of laughs in that list either.

I saw the film of A Day In The Life if Ivan Denisovich on tv, didn't know it was a book, and mentioned it to my English teacher who promptly found it in the school library for me. Affecting film, the book made even more of an impact. Also read August 1914, The Gulag Archipelago and Cancer Ward. The latter brilliant but utterly harrowing.

Another member of the can't be arsed with Woolf club here. I keep telling myself I should try her again. Two women I talk to a lot about books both said, "don't bother', sharing my antipathy.

Not read Steinbeck since I went through everything in a burst at 20. I didn't study him so that probably helped, it can rip the heart out of a book having to hear a monotone reader trudge through a chapter.

On The Road is a book I think I've calmed down about now and would make my top 100 but used to be top 10. I read The Catcher In The Rye one night when I was 16 and was entirely caught up in it as am almost romantic teenage idyll but read it in my mid twenties and I questioned so much of it.

 

[NYMackem]

I saw the film of A Day In The Life if Ivan Denisovich on tv, didn't know it was a book, and mentioned it to my English teacher who promptly found it in the school library for me. Affecting film, the book made even more of an impact. Also read August 1914, The Gulag Archipelago and Cancer Ward. The latter brilliant but utterly harrowing.

Another member of the can't be arsed with Woolf club here. I keep telling myself I should try her again. Two women I talk to a lot about books both said, "don't bother', sharing my antipathy.

Not read Steinbeck since I went through everything in a burst at 20. I didn't study him so that probably helped, it can rip the heart out of a book having to hear a monotone reader trudge through a chapter.

On The Road is a book I think I've calmed down about now and would make my top 100 but used to be top 10. I read The Catcher In The Rye one night when I was 16 and was entirely caught up in it as am almost romantic teenage idyll but read it in my mid twenties and I questioned so much of it.

100% this. I think Portnoy's Complaint does a similar thing much better.

 

[Son of Stan]

I saw the film of A Day In The Life if Ivan Denisovich on tv, didn't know it was a book, and mentioned it to my English teacher who promptly found it in the school library for me. Affecting film, the book made even more of an impact. Also read August 1914, The Gulag Archipelago and Cancer Ward. The latter brilliant but utterly harrowing.

Another member of the can't be arsed with Woolf club here. I keep telling myself I should try her again. Two women I talk to a lot about books both said, "don't bother', sharing my antipathy.

Not read Steinbeck since I went through everything in a burst at 20. I didn't study him so that probably helped, it can rip the heart out of a book having to hear a monotone reader trudge through a chapter.

On The Road is a book I think I've calmed down about now and would make my top 100 but used to be top 10. I read The Catcher In The Rye one night when I was 16 and was entirely caught up in it as am almost romantic teenage idyll but read it in my mid twenties and I questioned so much of it.

Yes I think Catcher in the Rye is probably a young person's book. I read it when I was about 15 and wanted to be called Phoebe (his sister?) Family totally ignored me. Not sure how it would fare if I read it again, it's been decades.

I love Wodehouse. His problem is probably that he produced a body of work that's consistently brilliant, but - unlike almost every writer in the Guardian's list - didn't produce one book that stands out from his others. But sentence for sentence, few writers can match him.

Two solutions to the small print problem: eBook or audiobook. (I walk every day, and get through a lot of audiobooks.)

I've also just returned to reading actual books after a pause of a couple of years. I was physically struggling to read. Tried a pair of reading glasses, and was still having problems. Worked out that only one eye needed the glasses, so I took out the lens on that side and have crystal clear reading vision again.

Sometimes audiobooks are great. All depends on the voice for me. Simon Callow reading Wodehouse was perfect and Stephen Fry narrating all of the Sherlock Holmes books was wonderful.

 

[Lankester Merrin]

Good to see Chinua Achebe in the list, but baffled nothing by Haldor Laxness

 

[Monty Pigeon]

Quiet Flows The Don, by Sholokov is a masterpiece, Doestoyevsky is brilliant, Gogol, Bulgakov. But not Solzhenitsyn. A terrible writer who was feted in the West because it was politically expedient

Don't forget Bely. This, IMO, is the best Russian novel of all:

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Or Zamyatin (who conceived his dystopian masterpiece when he was living in Newcastle while supervising the construction of Russian icebreakers at Swan Hunter):

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[Exapno Mapcase]

To be fair, I would have usually thought of it as The Stranger in English rather than The Outsider.


I love Diary of a Nobody, but the other comic novel I think is a massive miss from the list is A Confederacy of Dunces. But maybe the list is just too modern and too high brow for me. I love mid century American literature more than the Victorian classics and modern British stuff that the Guardian writers seem to cling to.

In my favourite books pile