h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I feel I must provide the opportunity here for people to defend any book they feel may have been bad mouthed in that other conversation.

I liked Pride and Predudice (but only after I have seen the first part of the TV version with Colin Firth in) its just takes a kick start to get into it.

FABT

i have almost no idea what "classic" books i have read, because i only read classics if someon i know reccommends them. although in school they invariably force us to read classics before we really want to(and they are usually nothing that any of us would read for pleasure), thereby (probably) condemning a whole lot of people to a life of watching soap operas and sitcoms on tv, and never thinking a single thought. and their choices always seem to be exceptionally poor. for example, Lord of the Flies . good book, but it's very dark and pretty depressing if you think about it. not really the kind of thing you think they'd be encouraging, esp after all those school shootings.("all those"- now there's a phrase you don't want to hear in conjunction w/ "school shootings".) and it probably offended someone's religion. sorry for the tangent here, but i didn't intend for it to go off that far. to answer you question, The Count of Monte Cristo was very good, though you don't hear much about it.

I found Shakespeare much better than I ever thought it would be. Macbeth was action-packed and tension-building right to the end, King Lear was not quite as boring as FABT made out from her experience with it, Romeo and Juliet wasn't bad either... what else have I read? Oh yes, Julius Caeser was a bit of a disappointment, but A Midsummer Night's Dream is great. And of course seeing it performed really brings it to life... Much Ado About Nothing and The Comedy of Errors both make fantastic performances.

I highly recommend a trip to the Globe, by the way. I went a few years ago, and actually if your feet can stand it a standing place is best, because you can go right up to the stage and have the actors nearly fall on top of you, or spill water on you, get rained on and jump out of the way when a big man with a sword charges through the audience. It's fun!

Ahem, I appear to have gone off-topic a little...

Webster's The Duchess of Malfi is also good, nice and gory with a good hint of insanity as well ('specially when Ferdinand gets Lycanthropy) but the Duchess' death is a little bit anticlimatic.

As the initiator of "that other thread" here is my tuppence worth:

Jane Eyre - Brontë - it is too readable, though, like those pots of three cadburies chocolate mousses

The Three Musketeers - Dumas - swash buckling romance, helped by visualising Oliver Reed and Michael Yorke throughout of course

The Way We Live Now - Trollope - written 120 years ago and still relevent - about killings made and fortunes lost in the dot.com collapse - sorry railway boom of the 19th C. Really good.

The Woman in White, The Dead Secret, The Moonstone, - That Wilkie Collins could sure create a page turner

Catch 22 - Heller - though it does not grip as tightly now as when I first read it 20 years ago

1984 - Orwell - read it and realise that this is where we live (and post) now. Be afraid, be very afraid.

War and Peace - Tolstoy - more swash buckling with higher cred - must re-read it.

North and South - Gaskell - the human face of economic and political pain and change in 19th C Britain

Pride and Predjudice - Austin - loved it even before Colin Firth

Sense and Sensibility - Austin - well I am on a 'this and that' roll now

The Way of All Flesh - Butler - Horribly compelling story of 19th C hypocricy

The Old Wives Tale - Bennett - Virtue is not its own reward, the story of two sisters in 19thC France and England

The Forsyte Saga - Galsworthy - the ultimate airport read

I could go on....

a bookworm called Ben

Never managed Shakespeare though.

A philistine called Ben

Wuthering Heights blew my head off. I was stuck in a bedsit for a week, some time ago. This book was the only reading matter in the room. I thought, I'll give it a go. I'm still haunted by the imagery 20 odd years later.

anything by Aristophanes

herman hesse - the glass bead game
- Steppenwolf

Shakespeare - much ado about nothing

Ibsen - hedda gabler

and more I can't think of right now

First read Wuthering Heights at the age of 7. Loved it. Read it again at 13, still loved it. Had to pick it to pieces for my Leaving Cert (Irish version of A-levels) and still love it. Reckon I think it's a good book!

Jane Eyre - one of the few books that, if I'm reading it and someone talks to me, I actually won't hear them.

Pride and Prejudice - pre-Colin Firth, but thought the adaptation was great (and I usually hate adaptations)

(this one isn't a classic - but it will be!) Equal Music by Vikram Seth, took my breath away and had me sobbing at the end

--violagirl

Now I LOVE A Suitable Boy...

Let me rephrase that: Whatever my taste in men (which varies as the mood takes me) - I found Vikram Seth's first novel, which as you may already know is called A Suitable Boy, rich and absorbing.

Is that better?

agcB

*Humms ' The boy I love sits up in the gallery....' *

Loved it too (got it for Christmas one year and read it so slowly so that it would last me until the middle of January - I read really fast!!) One of the best bits was the dedication written in verse at the start (and the dedication written to Lata (that was her name wasn't it?))

just remembered - loved The Woman in White & Doctor Zhivago too

-- violagirl

* chokes and splutters and wonders if FABT remembers the pain she went through when she was studying Dr Zhivago... *

Dune...not many people like it because it takes awile to get going but it is exalent

Well, I have to reassert that all the russian writers I've read so far have been infinitely better than I thought they were going to be. I usually never read classic books unless I have to, but these I actually read for fun. I have no opinion on Dr Z though as I haven't got to it yet. It's next on my list after Oman Ra.

Also Jane Austen in general, I really like. Wonderfully catty woman she is. And the Bronte sisters were better than I expected, though I haven't got over a lingering dred of Wuthering Heights, so I haven't read it. I quite enjoy Trollope too, though I find that I have to leave a long gap between books otherwise they do start to annoy me.

Sons and Lovers has grown on me top the extent that the scene where the pregnant mother is standing outside in the moonlit garden, after a fight with her husband stays permanently with me. I have never been terribly impressed by his other books though.

Shakespeare. I like Shakespere. But I prefer to watch it rather than read it. Why I never got to Macbeth; never been to see it. Same goes for most plays, as it goes.

Oh and I loved Dangerous Liasons too. Dumas was ok. Voltaire was a bit of a revelation. I think I picked it up with the gloomy intention of doing a bit of reading around when studying A level history, only to be gloriusly entertained. Machaivellii seems to translate well too. I'd love to read the original (italian? Latin - no surely not, Florentine dialect? I think it is a pipe dream though. I am bad at languages). He was supposed to be one of the best writers around at the time.

shogun now that is an amzing book

well for me, I am going to be repeating what others have said but War and Peace and all of Wilkie Collins stuff...

Oh and Surtees Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour which had me in hysterics on the bus into work.

Let me see...

'Siddartha', Herman Hesse. Beautiful. Full stop.

'New Grub Street', George Gissing. The only late Victorian novel I ever enjoyed. And how. Fantastic.

'The Slaves of Solitude', Patrick Hamilton. Took me ages to finish but I enjoyed it thoroughly in the end.

'Northanger Abbey', Jane Austen. Not been mentioned yet, so I thought I should give it its due praise. A deeply sophisticated parody, as any student of Gothic literature will tell you.

'The Odyssey', Homer (in trans.). Wow. Poetry just doesn't get any better than this, IMHO.

'The Morte D'Arthur', Malory. A bleedin' difficult slog through it is, but I liked it anyway.

'Paradise Lost', Milton. I include this mainly for the fact that it's probably the single greatest achievement in English language poetry, but also Milton 'wrote' it, or rather dictated it, when damned near blind. The symmetry, complexity and sheer mind-bogglingly clever wordplay is unbelievable when this is taken into account.

god, i've read nothing! i've tried to plough my way through the classics (ie dickens, austen, bronte... did manage greek and roman classics for uni), honest i have. i just can't do it. my sis can, she tells me how brilliant dumas is - sorry couldn't get half way through it, she said moll flanders was one of the best books she's ever read .. sorry again. i can't even watch them on telly... finished 'lady janet and master john go to the shoppe' though

I like Paradise Lost too!

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels.
The storylines/plots themselves are way too soppy for me but the thoughtful style of writing, the turn of phrase, and the rich detail of the settings and lifestyle of a bygone age are quite enchanting. For me, anyway. I read all of them avidly. The books can be a bit dark and disturbing, though.

I had to read Wuthering Heights at school, and I loathed it. I read it a few years ago, and still disliked it. I felt if eveyone had practiced a bit of self control it would have saved everyone a deal of bother. I like the Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte.

I reread Cranford by Mrs Gaskell (another book I had to read at school) and found it funny and touching, whereas at 15 I didn't understand it at all.

Have loved Jane Austen for years!

I keep trying Charles Dickens. Some are alright, but his heroines tend to be a bit too sweet.