4.20 avg rating — 5,432,601 ratings

"Buddy read with my best friend from high school, to mark the beginning of the year 1984 itself. Few books have stuck with me as intensely and consistently over the course of the years."

4.29 avg rating — 4,781,457 ratings

"Read this (and in quick succession, also the remainder of Austen's work) after a teacher had given me "Mansfield Park" as a gift. -- One of my all-time favorite novels; I've returned to it many times."

4.16 avg rating — 2,315,915 ratings

"See "Pride and Prejudice" (minus teacher's gift -- here, the inspiration actually WAS a movie adaptation: the one starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine; though it also helped seeing it ready for pick up on my mom's book shelves ...) Proceeded to "Wuthering Heights" a short time later."

3.80 avg rating — 872,114 ratings

"Like "Oliver Twist", one of the Dickens classics I'm a bit ambivalent about. There are snippets of characterization I absolutely love (the bit at the very beginning about Mrs. Joe's pettiness and false piety is priceless), but I don't particularly care for either Estella or Miss Havisham and for the life of me can't relate to Pip's fascination with them (or with Estella especially)."

3.67 avg rating — 85,731 ratings

"Another movie-inspired read -- blame it on David Lean; even though I HAD read (and loved) "Howards End" before watching the David Lean movie. I'm glad I didn't stop with the movie, though. Proof that experiencing claustrophobia in real life at times also inspires the greatest of literature, even if the experience is transposed to a different continent, a different form of discrimination -- and a much more physical and direct sense of claustrophobia. (But then, is it really?)"

4.29 avg rating — 1,074,196 ratings

"First read during my "Russian phase" in my early university years, which also included "Anna Karenina", Pushkin's and Tolstoy's short stories, Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and "Resurrection", and Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov." Started with the short stories (likewise because they were there for the picking up on my mom's book shelves -- see coments on "Jane Eyre") and with "Anna Karenina" (that one, inspired by yet another movie adaptation, this time the one starring Greta Garbo, which continues to be my favorite adaptation of this book), but found "Resurrection" a bit of a moralizing slog -- well, at the time I thought so at least -- and much enjoyed Dostoevsky's bleaker tone by way of a change of pace after that (though admittedly he is capable of melodrama as well; but by the time I'd gotten around to him, I'd started to take that as a given in pretty much all of Russian literature ...) Besides, I've never been capable of saying "no" to a murder story, especially one coming along with the label of being considered one of the greatest books ever written!"

4.17 avg rating — 364,988 ratings

"It's a classic and I'd never dare award it anything less than 5 stars, but when I first read it early into my university years (see above), I swear this book -- for its army of characters alone -- and Tolstoy's "Resurrection" almost would have made me abandon Russian literature altogether, no matter how much I'd enjoyed "Anna Karenina" and Tolstoy's and Pushkin's short stories. All the more credit to Dostoevsky to rope me back in with "Crime and Punishment" (again, see above) -- decisively enough to even make me tackle his very own door stopper, "The Brothers Karamazov", next. "

4.26 avg rating — 6,860,068 ratings

"Another movie-inspired read (never say Hollywood is bad for the proliferation of literature!), and seeing anyone other than Gregory Peck cast as Atticus in a re-adaptation [: TA shudders :] would come close to sacrilege. Still, by and large I prefer the book; if only because some of the very colorful/remarkable secondary characters (such as Calpurnia and Mrs. Dubose) are fleshed out more fully. And Atticus's addresses to the jury -- adorned with the appropriate footnotes, bells and whistles -- would look great in a Supreme Court certiorari petition as well ..."

3.80 avg rating — 3,882,362 ratings

"Read a bit too late to still be able to relate to Holden's teenage angst one would have thought, but the memory was painful enough for the book to ring true with me nevertheless ... even if told from a male narrator's POV."

4.54 avg rating — 729,297 ratings

"Read for the first time at age 12 or thereabouts in a beautiful German translation box set (albeit paperback) with a bright green cover. Thought "they ought to make a movie out of this one" immediately, but had to wait until middle age to see it come true!"