Ask HN: classic literature recommendations?
Any suggestions on "classic" literature? I'm not too strict on the definition; I'm reading Kafka now and would probably consider it classic.
From that list I would personally recommend a number of titles, but I would also run away screaming from a few. Can you give more information about what interests you? For example, with Kafka, are you reading the shorter stuff, or "The Trial"? Do you like it or not? What are you looking for?
By the way, if you find something on there you like, then go give an upvote to ekm2: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4955541
From that list, I would recommend the following to anybody: (Achebe - Things Fall Apart), (Austin - Pride and Prejudice), (Laxness - Independent People), (Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera), (Gogol - Dead Souls [translation by MacAndrew is the most fun one I've read]), (Twain - Huck Finn).
From that list, I would recommend the following only if I knew the person's tastes better: (Cervantes - Don Quixote), (Dostoevsky - The Idiot), (Kafka - The Trial), (Orwell - 1984), (Rushdie - Midnight's Children)
There are many other books I love that aren't on that list, but whether they would float your boat is anybody's guess. Personally I would read a shopping list written by Per Olov Enquist, but he seems to be an acquired taste, because nobody else I know digs him as much as I do (and only his "Royal Physician's Visit" seems likely to achieve "classic" status).
If you only know "The Three Musketeers" (Dumas) from movies, then you don't know them at all; the book is, for me, central to the idea of reading. If you liked "The Three Musketeers" then you might also like "Kidnapped" (Stevenson) and "Watership Down" (Adams)-- although probably few would consider that a classic.
"Catch-22" (Heller), "Mother Night" and "Slaughterhouse Five" (Vonnegut), and "The Little Prince" (Exupery) are all "classic" books I've read many times over. I was not a huge fan of "Les Miserables" (Hugo) before I read it out loud with my wife about a year ago, and it really grew on me then. To Orwell's "1984" I would add "Animal Farm". "My Antonia" (Cather) has something great in it, though many probably would consider it slow. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Lee) deserves a call-out on any list of classics, especially if you're American. If you like Mark Twain, and want to read something really different by him, then have a look at "Joan of Arc."
I remember "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and "The Million Pound Bank Note" in particular, though it's been a few years since I read them.
- Anything by Jack London
- Anything by Ernest Hemingway
- *One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich* by Solzhenitsyn
- *The Fixer* by Barnard Malamud
- *Northwest Passage* by Kenneth Roberts
- *To Kill a Mockingbird* by Harper Lee
- Anything by Nikolai Gogol
- Short stories by Guy de Maupassant
- Most of John Steinbeck's works
- *Lord of the Flies* by William Golding
- *The Great Gatsby* F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you have the time and the interest I recommend learning Greek and Latin and reading the books in their original languages.
For lighter reading, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661
Candide by Voltaire is a classic satirical novel that still works fairly well imo, though it can be a bit un-subtle by the standards of modern literary satire.