I'm not well read. Which classics I should read?

[Anonymous]

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington
The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois
Civil Disobedience, by H.D. Thoreau

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP once more. Take James Joyce. I look at Ulysses, and think What the hell? But, I should read it, right?

No!!!!

I am very well read and haven't. I just not into the modern and post-modern crap.

[Anonymous]

I like Trollope, Dickens, Wharton, Gaskell, pretty much listened to all audiobooks they have on audible from these authors bc I have a long commute.

I like to see the world as they saw it then; even if the plot might not interest you, the different worldview is fascinating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington
The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois
Civil Disobedience, by H.D. Thoreau

I love your list!

[Anonymous]

Take the time to actual read A Christmas Carol, no matter how many times you have seen stage/screen adaptations.

[Anonymous]

The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
Anna Karenina
Don Quixote
Crime and Punishment
Any Shakespeare plays - esp. Hamlet and Macbeth

[Anonymous]

Brave New World, Anne of Green Gables, Lord of the Flies, The Time Machine, any collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury, Jane Eyre. Since you like biographies, a good autobiography is "Twelve Years a Slave".

[Anonymous]

Crime and Punishment, Brave New World, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1984, The Color Purple, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, To Kill a Mockingbird

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You know, I'm a literature nerd, a former English Lit major, and I never read much Joyce. Just didn't like it, didn't like the utter opaqueness of everything. So I didn't read him. But I love good story telling, so I read things with good plots. How about George Elliot? Middlemarch is one of my favorites. Or Virginia Woolf - Orlando is a kind of trashy romp, but something like To The Lighthouse is literary but lovely to read. Would echo To Kill a Monkingbird. Some scary weird wonderful stuff would be Clockwork Orange, Nineteen Eighty Four, or Farenheight 451. Another favorite is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Nele Hurston.

Really, if you try it and hate it, move on. There are wonderful classics out there that you'll love.

Not OP, but relieved to hear this. I consider myself well read but never could get into Joyce for the opaqueness. Thanks for confirming it's not just my lack of intellect.

[Anonymous]

Anything by Nicholson Baker.

[Anonymous]

Tale of Two Cities

[Anonymous]

The count of monte cristo. Loved!

[Anonymous]

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (anything by Steinbeck, really.)
Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

If you like biographies, those books are good and they provide strong character development similar to a biography.

[Anonymous]

Can't believe I haven't seen Wuthering Heights on this list. I was an English lit major and this was my favorite.

[Anonymous]

I don't like a lot of the classics I was required to read but I did love To Kill a Mockingbird and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.