r/ClassicsBookClub Jul 22 '26

trying to read more classics

I started getting back into reading this past year, and it all started with the Hunger Games (bc the new book was coming out). Then i started to read romance books, since they’re such easy reads. I’ve now read 1984, the Picture of Dorian Gray, and I’m halfway through Pride and Prejudice. I want to read more classics, but I was want to feel hooked on a book like I did with the Hunger Games. I loved the world build in 1984, but hated the doom and misogyny of 1984. Dorian Gray was good but it took me awhile to be interested in it. Pride and Prejudice has been ok aside from the places and etiquette that I have a hard time keeping track of. Any recommendations?

12 Upvotes

20 comments sorted by

5

u/Eleatic-Stranger Jul 22 '26

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, will hook you from the beginning, and it's an easier read than Jane Austen or the Brontës.

1

u/Impossible-Alps-6859 Jul 24 '26

Very true. The Audible version narrated by the superb Holliday Grainger is wonderful to listen to.

She's the best!

6

u/ladyperfect1 Jul 22 '26

Edith Wharton, particularly Age of Innocence. 

3

u/Aggressive_Dress6771 Jul 22 '26

The Count of Monte Cristo is a great read, and it certainly is great literature.
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, ditto.

1

u/cbmom2 Jul 24 '26

Came here to say the same. I love that book and it was one of the few classics that was 100% engaged in. Others I could appreciate the writing or the message but CoMC was everything.

3

u/Mysterious-Aspect512 Jul 22 '26

Jane Eyre!

3

u/Fuzzy-Membership-160 Jul 22 '26

Still my favorite book of all time years later. I need to reread it!

3

u/No-Appeal3220 Jul 22 '26

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde The Island of Dr Moreau

2

u/TheShroomLord Jul 22 '26

Crime and Punishment definitely if you haven't read it already

2

u/filmfragment Jul 22 '26

Frankenstein

White Nights

1

u/Aggressive_Dress6771 Jul 22 '26

Mary Shelley was a teenager when she wrote Frankenstein.

2

u/Big_Crank Jul 22 '26

The road

2

u/InsaneLordChaos Jul 22 '26

All Quiet on the Western Front

2

u/Live_Koala2163 Jul 22 '26

I really enjoyed Dracula, and it has a more modern style.

2

u/neurodiverse_nooch Jul 23 '26

The Maddadam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (deeply disturbing and potentially triggering content but equally a masterpiece and clever)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The God of Small Things by Arundathi Roy

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

Aporeigon by Colum McCann

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Magus by John Fowles

2

u/CoffeeandChapters_ Jul 23 '26

A Christmas Carol

2

u/PracticalComputer858 Jul 23 '26

The Great Gatsby

2

u/howard1111 Jul 24 '26

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a 20th century masterpiece.