To Kill a Mockingbird. Oh my, what a wonderful book.

I've never read "Prayer for Owen Meany", but have heard people rave about it.

"Sophie's Choice" by William Styron

Huge fan of reading the classics. Barnes and Noble sometimes has a special where you can buy the paperbacks 3 for $10 or so.

Some of my recommendations, many of which have already been nominated:

Grapes of Wrath (my favorite book of all time)
East of Eden
House of Mirth
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
A Separate Peace
My Antonia
Wuthering Heights
In Cold Blood
Flannery O'Connor and Raymond Carver for short stories

I love this thread. I'm going to print it out so I can just keep a running list of the things I want to read. When I read modern books, I stick primarily to non-fiction.

Is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole considered a classic? Ha! Probably not. But it's one of my all time favorites.

Kristin Lavransdatter (absolute best of all time--won Nobel Prize for Literature)

Brave New World

1984

Fahrenheit 451

We

The Scarlet Letter (especially when read aloud)

The Good Earth

Flannery OConnor's short stories, especially "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Macbeth

The Red Horse

Brothers Karamazov (need to invest in it)

Pride and Prejudice

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Stranger (Albert Camus)
Tuck Everlasting

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Classics: Great Expectations, Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair, Madame Bovary

Contemporary Literary Novels:

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Bel Canto by Ann PatchettThe Human Stain by Philip Roth

Not trying to be snarky. But is Bel Canto really considered literature?

PP called "contemporary novel." It also won the Orange Prize and Pen/Faulkner. Personally, I found it a good read but not a classic by any stretch.

Brave New World
We
Crime and Punishment
Dead Souls
Picture of Dorian Gray

Anonymous wrote:Classics: Great Expectations, Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair, Madame Bovary

Contemporary Literary Novels:

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Bel Canto by Ann PatchettThe Human Stain by Philip Roth

Not trying to be snarky. But is Bel Canto really considered literature?

All Quiet on the Western Front

The Hours

Katherine by Anya Seton

Not sure if it qualifies as a "classic," but it was the book that made great historical fiction a reality and I genuinely grieved when I finished it and realized I couldn't ever meet those characters for the first time again.

I loved
"Uncle Tom"
"Roots"
"Les Miserables"

I like to browse in the high school section of the MCPL, they have all of the classics and modern classics too.

Rebecca

East Of Eden

Ethan Frome

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

The Pearl

Jane Eyre

Of Mice And Men

Great thread! I'm a huge fan of Hemingway, loved The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

oops. it's spelled Buddenbrooks.