48 classic novels to read and reread

[Anonymous]

From the late literary critic Harold Bloom, The Bright Book of Life. A good list to work through.

1. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
2. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
3. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
4. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
5. Jane Austen, Emma
6. Jane Austen, Persuasion
7. Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed
8. Stendhal, The Red and the Black
9. Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma
10. Honore de Balzac, Old Goriot
11. Alexander Pushkin, The Captain's Daughter
12. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
13. William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
14. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
15. Charles Dickens, Bleak House
16. Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
17. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
18. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
19. Ivan Turgenev, A Sportman's Notebook
20. Ivan Turgenev, First Love
21. Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks
22. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
23. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
24. Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat
25. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
26. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
27. Henry James, The Princess Casamassima
28. Henry James, The Ambassadors
29. Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
30. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
31. Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes
32. Edith Wharton, The Reef
33. D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
34. D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
35. James Joyce, Ulysses
36. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
37. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
38. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
39. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
40. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom
41. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
42. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
43. Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
44. Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed
45. Thomas Bernhard, The Loser
46. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
47. W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
48. Joshua Cohen, Book of Numbers

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I am on a classics kick and I love such lists though I can't help critiquing them. Four Tolstoys is too much! And only one Bronte sister classic?

[Anonymous]

Check out The NY Times reader vote for books that are great and hold your interest.

It’s not virtuous to plod through a slog of a book. These critic lists are funny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you! I am on a classics kick and I love such lists though I can't help critiquing them. Four Tolstoys is too much! And only one Bronte sister classic?

I think if you're going to make a list of classics of whatever variety, you should limit yourself to one work per author. If someone loves that one book, they can move on to others. But the world is full of books that people will enjoy. Why insist that they slog through multiple works by whoever before declaring themselves done? (I say this as someone who loves Jane Austen. But if you hated Persuasion, or if you hated the first half and are forcing yourself to finish it, I say to you now: No. Stop. Try something else.)

[Anonymous]

Interesting list. Agree 4 Tolstoys is too much. The Reef as the Wharton choice? And ugh 3 Joseph Conrad. No thank you. But many of my favorites on there too.

Although do yourself a favor and do not slog through 1500 pages of Clarissa like I did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting list. Agree 4 Tolstoys is too much. The Reef as the Wharton choice? And ugh 3 Joseph Conrad. No thank you. But many of my favorites on there too.

Although do yourself a favor and do not slog through 1500 pages of Clarissa like I did.

I think there should be a No Slog rule for all recreational reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Check out The NY Times reader vote for books that are great and hold your interest.

It’s not virtuous to plod through a slog of a book. These critic lists are funny.

It's not a slog at all. And I like to read them in their original languages of course.
/s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you! I am on a classics kick and I love such lists though I can't help critiquing them. Four Tolstoys is too much! And only one Bronte sister classic?

I agree PP. Too many Tolstoy's. Also the wrong Faulkner and quite a few US authors (I'm not from the US) missing. But it is a great list!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check out The NY Times reader vote for books that are great and hold your interest.

It’s not virtuous to plod through a slog of a book. These critic lists are funny.

It's not a slog at all. And I like to read them in their original languages of course.
/s

And first editions, when possible!

[Anonymous]

Nice list. I'd swap out a Tolstoy and a Conrad for "Middlemarch" and "Jane Eyre."

[Anonymous]

…how is Middlemarch not on this list?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:…how is Middlemarch not on this list?!

A man compiled it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you! I am on a classics kick and I love such lists though I can't help critiquing them. Four Tolstoys is too much! And only one Bronte sister classic?

I think if you're going to make a list of classics of whatever variety, you should limit yourself to one work per author. If someone loves that one book, they can move on to others. But the world is full of books that people will enjoy. Why insist that they slog through multiple works by whoever before declaring themselves done? (I say this as someone who loves Jane Austen. But if you hated Persuasion, or if you hated the first half and are forcing yourself to finish it, I say to you now: No. Stop. Try something else.)

Yes! One book per author, I agree. And Re: Bronte's I meant Jane Eyre, so still one per author.

I agree with many PPs that it is not worthwhile to force myself to finish books I don't like anymore. (We are not in highschool and there are no comprehensive exams at the pearly gates!) But I have read most of the books on the list and they are the opposite of a slog to me. Great engaging narratives.

[Anonymous]

Yes, this does read like an old, white, dead, literary critic's list. I have read most of them though. Might as well see what I'm missing in the rest.

[Anonymous]

No Somerset Maugham? The Razor's Edge is one I can read and reread...