Reading the Classics discussion

I belong to a a very demanding book group. Four ex-Heads of English and two Arts Lecturers who are rabid bibliophiles. And it's my turn to pick something.
It's great when someone comes up with something Classic but 'new' to us all - as in 'The Good Soldier'. None of us had read it and it produced a good evening's discussion.
So the question is ... what are the Classics out there you finally got round to reading and thought were fantastic?
Or what Classics do you think have been forgotten but are a must read?
(I did 'Revolutionary Road' about ten years ago - always wanted to read it and took a punt - again, that went down a storm.)

I didn't read many classic books, but I know few that were really great!
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

some of these book I've already read, and some on my list to read...
I hope that was somewhat useful! :)

Hmmm ..... two that come to mind from this year are:

The Master and Margarita

and

To the Lighthouse


Also:

Space Trilogy

Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son

The Diary of a Country Priest: A Novel

Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel

I Capture the Castle

and

Ben-Hur


I'm sure that there are many more but I'll have to think about it ....

Two short books to consider THE SHORT REIGN OF PIPPIN IV
by John Steinbeck. Very different from his better known books. Also THE PRINCE by Machiavelli. This book could produce lots of interesting discussion.

tristram Shandy

The good soldier Svejk

Cranford

Vile BOdies

Over the last few years I also read The Good Soldier by Ford, but also The Waves by Virginia Woolf and The Professor's House by Willa Cather.

Some great choices.
Master and Margarita is one of my favourites and started a heated discussion when we read it a couple of months ago (as did Vile Bodies).
I like the idea of something short. I'm a huge Steinbeck fan so that's appealing.
Isn't Svejk unfinished?
Please keep the ideas coming. Many thanks.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. Was once generally considered the second most important book in Europe, after the Bible, but is little read these days. It should be much better known.

Everyman.
I read this at college many years ago. Thanks for the suggestion. You're right about its quality and on my part a re-read is long overdue. (Am I the only person who finds re-reading Classics unsettling - over time my response to books changes dramatically. ).

I sometimes reread books, though not often, and I too am surprised at what I "missed" the first time around. It is unsettling to think back to a time when I wasn't mature or smart enough to notice the depth of a particular passage, but that's what growth is all about. If nothing else, rereading books tells me I'm still growing.

Lewis wrote: "(Am I the only person who finds re-reading Classics unsettling - over time my response to books changes dramatically. ). "

I have always held that any book worth reading is worth rereading. That's extreme, of course, but I have found rereading the classics to be incredibly rewarding. I have reread books such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Republic, Bleak House, Middlemarch, Paradise Lost, and on and on multiple times, in some cases four or five times, and every time I find new insights in them.

In my experience, a true classic is almost impossible to appreciate fully the first time through. True classics, I believe, necessarily demand to be reread.

I have friends, college professors, who read Middlemarch to each other every summer, and have done so for at least forty years. A classics professor whose lecture courses for The Teaching Company, Elizabeth Vandiver, I greatly enjoy has read the Iliad and Odyssey many, many (and many more!) times, and still finds new nuggets of wisdom in them with each rereading.

A book can only speak to us based on where we are in our lives at the time we read it. As we change, if a book is truly great, the book and its impact on us necessarily changes, too, and as we are a different person, the book speaks to us differently. For me, a pretty fair definition of the difference between a book and a classic is that a classic is a book that becomes more powerful and wiser the more often we read it.

I couldn't agree more with Susan and Everyman. I'm an avid re-reader.
I had the strangest experience lately with Bel Ami. My new response was a complete reversal of my remembered response.
There's also much to be said for re-reading as we get older. Dickens and Eliot seem to get better and better (as does Austen).

Diana mentioned Machiavelli . . and I meant to add before that Machiavelli also wrote three comedies that are quite good, and very different from The Prince.

I've read The Prince but not the comedies. Definitely one to tick on the 'want to read' list.

Lewis wrote: "I belong to a a very demanding book group. Four ex-Heads of English and two Arts Lecturers who are rabid bibliophiles. And it's my turn to pick something.
It's great when someone comes up with s..."

Be sure to let us know which book you eventually choose.

Susan wrote: "also The Waves by Virginia Woolf..."

One of my favorites!

I am not new to Goodreads (though I've not been as active as I'd like to be, but I am new to this discussion and I simply want to say how much I appreciate reading each of your "favorites" and the wisdom shared about the powerful benefits of rereadings. Italo Calvino remarked: "A classic is a book that never finishes saying what it has to say." Couple that with the wisdom of Robertson Davies who suggested we need to read Vanity Fair in college, again at 30, 50, and at 70 (I may have the intervals wrong, but the point remains), because we need to "measure our life against the irony of that work" (may have the exact wording wrong) in order to appreciate both the changes in our lives over time and the riches the work continues to yield to us. Fascinating, wonderful conversation and I trust I am welcome to join in.

Jay
You are more than welcome. I re-read Vanity Fair last year and it was a fantastic experience. At University I'd argued that Anna Karenina was a far superior work with my Head of Department. I still think it was an odd pair to choose to contrast but can see now what an accomplished work Vanity Fair is - and the re-read pushed it nearer to the top of my favourite reads.
I had the opposite experience with Middlemarch - a novel I'd always revered. I came back to it this year and felt disappointed.

Susan
I will read Waves. It sounds like a treat in store.

I should add that my book group met last night and eviscerated Nabokov's 'Speak, memory'. Three of us liked it but only one felt it really held up as a 'classic'. In what became a rather rowdy evening we kept coming back to Lolita Now there's a book that could have been written purely with book clubs in mind.

Jay wrote: "Italo Calvino remarked: "A classic is a book that never finishes saying what it has to say.""

Wonderful quote. Thanks for it.

Lewis wrote: "Jay
You are more than welcome. I re-read Vanity Fair last year and it was a fantastic experience."

By coincidence, the Victorians group is reading/discussing Vanity Fair right now. Discussion started April 1st, goes until May 15.

Lewis, I am just a conduit, but I am fascinated with the muses of others who speak to the classics' power and influence.
As for Middlemarch, I relished it, though I had read Vanity Fair first, which I think sort of prepared me for the breadth and depth of Eliot's wide-ranging knowledge of myriad topics of her period. Prior to both of them I devoured Dickens' David Copperfield and marveled at his array of characters.
Isn't it interesting how the cumulative effect of various classics opens others to us in remarkable ways?

Lewis wrote: "I belong to a a very demanding book group. Four ex-Heads of English and two Arts Lecturers who are rabid bibliophiles. And it's my turn to pick something.
It's great when someone comes up with s..."
Acknowledged classics: anything by Edith Wharton
Unacknowledged: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

If this is the place where forgotten classics can be cited, let me mention Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland.
Also The Stranger (L'etranger) by Camus which seems little spoken of today.

Although not very old, I'd like to add The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor, a collection of short stories set in Ireland.

Tom wrote: "The Stranger (L'etranger) by Camus which seems little spoken of today."

I absolutely loved this book but agree it never seems to be mentioned. Such a shame because for me it is a truly thought provoking book.

Romain Rolland, who wrote Jean Christophe, received the Nobel Prize in 1915. The intended consequence of Jean Christophe was, among much else, to prevent the 1st World War. Rolland was a great humanist and idealist, and, during much of his life, he was known and celebrated throughout the world. Now he is forgotten. His books are once more available however, thanks to Gutenberg and the eBook revolution. And book aficionados like those on Goodreads could select and read one of his books as a salute to a great and good man.

Caroline
I've never read 'High wind in Jamaica'. I've put it in my to read list.
Thanks for the recommendation.

Tom
I read Camus in my late teens and perhaps a re-read is long overdue.
As a man who combined literary greatness with goalkeeping he's one of my heroes.
I've never heard of Rolland so will be tracking down Jean-Christophe.

Susan
I've always enjoyed William Trevor but haven't read 'The Hill Bachelors'.
I'm not a natural reader of short fiction now but still enjoy it when I make the effort.
I was obsessed with Katherine Mansfield's short fiction for a while and I think that's put me off the form!

I'd like to add The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers to the list; read it this year and it absolutely blew me away.

I think Castle Rackrent, Belinda, and Ennui all by Maria Edgeworth are neglected classics.

Castle Rackrent is very funny and satirical detailing four or five generation of a decaying aristocratic family in Ireland, as told by the faithful butler Thady McQuirk. It is Edgeworth's debut novel for adults (she wrote for children beforehand).

Belinda is a social satire set in England about a young woman's debut in society. The book is dominated by the fantastic character of Lady Delacour, who makes breast cancer and opium addiction topical central subjects of a popular romance.

Although bland by comparison, protagonist Belinda Portman is independent minded and contemplates seriously an inter-racial marriage (something deemed shocking in pre-emancipation 1801 England).

More outrageous for the reading public was the actual inter-racial marriage between a footman and maid (binary oppositions to Belinda and her love interest) which did not survive more than the first edition, being edited out until late in the 20th century.

Ennui turns on its head the notion of the idle aristocrat. The protagonist of this social satire decides he wants to make a difference and leaves England for Ireland to study his estate and tenants so that he can improve their condition and lot.

A very funny, and heart-warming denouement.

As a retired high school English teacher who directed plays, I find that the classic playwrights are often "neglected" and put on the academic shelf.

Certainly Sophocles Oedipus Rex would be a suggestion, although I am more drawn to his Antigone.

Eurípedes is my favorite of the ancient Greek dramatists, even though he has a darker vision. His studies of Iphigenia are very powerful:Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris

Alexis wrote: "I'd like to add The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers to the list; read it this year and it absolutely blew me away."

Same here - wonderful book!

Perhaps, after Alice Munro's winning of the Nobel Prize, we should add her collection of stories The Runaway to the list of classics. It's a terrific collection.Runaway

Alexis wrote: "I'd like to add The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers to the list; read it this year and it absolutely blew me away."

Me three! Didn't even want to read it and then couldn't put it done.

I've neglected this thread but have to say coming back to it has given me new books to look forward to.
I read 'Stoner' - currently the most fashionable neglected classic. Hugely disappointed.
I've started The Assistant by Malamud. So far so good.
I love Carson McCullers.
(Just read Heart of Darkness - can't think why I'd missed it - brilliant!)

The Golden Ass.By Apuleius.The only Roman novel, found complete.Written circa,A.D. 158.Very funny book.

There seem to be two kinds of readers of Tristram Shandy, those of us who love it & think it amongst the funniest we've ever read, & those who detested reading it (or trying to).

Just read Trollope's The Way We Live Now. Wonderful.
Also My Antonia by Willa Cather. Equally worthwhile.
Not exactly neglected but less than loudly trumpeted classics.

I Promessi Sposi, by Manzoni, (the Betrothed in translation) is, as far as I can tell, neglected, and it was considered enough of a classic in 1909 to be included in the Harvard Classics series. That's the only place I've ever heard of it, never seen it in a bookstore or on any other classics list. But according to Wikipedia, "it has been called the most famous and widely read novel of the Italian language."

Has anybody here ever read it? Or is it truly a neglected classic?

I caught sight of The Betrothed on a shelf when I was in Italy and bought an old copy when I got back home. I've yet to actually read it, but I'm very eager to give it a try.

I finally got around to reading Uncle Tom's Cabin. Think I stayed away from it because of what I had expected. Wow, what a surprise. It was a fantastic book and plenty of great discussion would come from this classic. Truly a beautiful, tragic, inspiring, enlightening novel. No wonder Abraham Lincoln was impacted by it.

I am going to add my two cents ahem books:
Parcival a mediaeval epic
The Volsunga Saga an islandic saga and
And The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling 18th Century Satire
These I found by chance, since they did not show up on the usual classic lists.
Not strictly classics, but very enjoyable:
Adam Bede, my favourite Eliot and
Evelina, which inspired Jane Austen in her writing.

I'd have thought Fielding's Tom Jones was on most "classic" lists. They even made a 60s romp of a comedy movie starring Albert Finney.

I die not see the movie. But it did not show up on any of the lists I read. I found it on librivox by chance and thought it was pretty funny, then I looked it up and found that it is often read in colleges.

If you liked Tom JOnes, you could try Joseph Andrews (also written by Fielding) - this was made into another movie, which I've never seen, but has the tagline: "The story of a young English footman, who served the Lady Booby, but loved the little Fanny". Who could possibly resist :)

Nathalia wrote: "I did not see the movie."

If you get a chance to, do see it. It's a riot.

I'm surprised about Tom Jones not showing up on lists, too. I do confess that I read it in college! It's wonderful. I've seen the movie, and there is also an excellent A&E miniseries of it, from 1997 and starring Max Beesley and Samantha Morton. I have it on DVD, and after looking up the cast, I think I will have to watch it again, as I see that Michelle Fairley (aka Catelyn Stark on Game of Thrones) played Mrs. Fitzpatrick!