The Republic of Heaven

Sorry for the thread-spawning rampage but this is the thread I meant to start before I got distracted by how much I dislike Shakespeare.

What are your favorite classics? I know a lot of people have been put off of classics because school forced them on you...I never felt that way myself. I only started reading contemporary fiction for fun about five years ago.

Here are the ones I never get sick of:
~Jane Austen (surprise), especially Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. She's so sharp and funny.
~Charles Dickens, especially Great Expectations. Nobody writes characters the way he did.
~Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights. It's so wild and young. <3

Thomas Hardy. Oh misery me!

I love so many...

Pretty much all children's books written before about 1950, for starters. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, L.M. Montgomery, Anna Sewell, Edith Nesbit.. it goes on and on.

Vanity Fair... I think Becky Sharp is a masterpeice of a character.

Jane Austen, of course.

Jane Eyre, equally of course.

Many more whose titles elude me at the moment...

A Separate Peace, if that's old/distinguished enough to be called a classic. I know it's standard school reading material and I disliked it the first time around, but I got the urge to pick it back up a few months later and now it's listed among my favorites.

A Tale of Two Cities: I object to some of Dickens' characterization and the overall message that people like Miss Manette are so perfect and wonderful that it is right and just for everyone to lay down in their path so that their lives continue to be as perfect as possible. Despite that, the book is wonderful and I've unofficially added Sidney Carton to my list of fictional characters that I want to marry.

Shakespeare's up there on my list, though reading "Othello" in my AP English class was less than fun. My favorite medium for taking in Shakespeare is when a local theater company performs an adaptation of a play, with modern constumings and characterizations, in a big park near here. I remember two performances specifically: "Much Ado about Nothing" with a mafia background, and "As You Like It (man)" which was based on hippies.
(I just looked up the group, and their play this summer isn't Shakespeare. I'm disappointed now.)

Does LotR count?

Does LotR count?

No. Especially not with this dragon-humping, elf-loving crowd (myself included). A Seperate Peace is as good as a book can get. I would totally marry Finny. I was going to put it on my list too but I put my mental cut-off at the turn of the century.

Riali, I'm reading Vanity Fair right now! And I love all children's classics too--especially The Secret Garden, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn later on.

I'm a massive Alice in Wonderland fan, despite having not read it for a few years. And Peter Pan is great too.

My favourite classic, as I've already said, is Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca.

I also like Shakespeare - particularly the tragedies...although A Midsummer Night's Dream has always struck my fancy.

Erm, can i say War & Peace? If i'd finished it i'm sure it would have still liked it. As it is a got half way, then sidetracked...

Animal Farm by George Orwell (I'm still trying to find a copy of 1984 to read)

Jack London, especially The Sea-Wolf (although his love for that woman got rather annoying after a while)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (wonderful book)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (such as romantic premiss!)

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (the satire is superb)

Classics!

I love Jane Eyre and anything by Jane Austen, especially Persuasion and good old Pride and Prejudice. I also love Dracula, Light in August and As I Lay Dying (I must get out and read more Faulkner), Huck Finn which is certainly not overrated, To Kill a Mockingbird, and if Dorothly L. Sayers mysteries count as classics I'm adding those to my list too. Finally, Peter Pan is my all time favorite children's classic followed by Kidnapped and The Secret Garden.

My least favorite classic is Tarzan. By far the dumbest book to ever garner that title. Well, basically its the dumbest book ever. The Disney movie was far superior.

I've also been meaning to grab a copy of Wuthering Heights. I've never read it and feel that I should.

War and Peace, Anna Karenina, lots of Shakespeare, Morte Darthur, Canterbury Tales, Fleadh duin na-nGedh, Cath Maighe Rath, Buile Shuibne, The Odyssey, The Master and Margarita, Labyrinths by George Luis Borges, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, anything by George Orwell, and random Old English, Welsh and Irish poetry.

There's probably more, but my mind's a bit mushy at the moment.

Catcher in the Rye, I just think its the best thing ever, I absolutley adore it, more than I can even begin to explain. Suffice to say if I ever shot anyone famous I think Id have a copy of it with me as well.

Les Misérables is a great story, but no one takes it seriously now because of the musical, which I admittedly love as well.

To Kill a Mockingbird is something special, one of the few books in school I was really really glad they made us read.

Animal Farm is basically a political education, or was for me anyway.

Oh and I love Lovecraft and Wells, theres nothing like old Sci Fi/fantasy, and they were the best.

Catcher in the Rye, I just think its the best thing ever, I absolutley adore it, more than I can even begin to explain. Suffice to say if I ever shot anyone famous I think Id have a copy of it with me as well.

Les Misérables is a great story, but no one takes it seriously now because of the musical, which I admittedly love as well.

To Kill a Mockingbird is something special, one of the few books in school I was really really glad they made us read.

Animal Farm is basically a political education, or was for me anyway.

Oh and I love Lovecraft and Wells, theres nothing like old Sci Fi/fantasy, and they were the best.

Okay, a few things to say:

(1): I loved Animal Farm too.
(2): To Kill a Mockingbird is on my list, and I really need to read it.
(3): I loved the opera Les Miserables.

And finally (4): WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT WITH THE CATCHER IN THE RYE THING!!!!????? Sorry, it's just that I have this stupid little memory I've been holding onto for years about watching a movie with a guy who the police are looking for. They finally tract him down based on the information that he was obsessed with Catcher in the Rye and always had a ton of copies of it with him. I probably saw this movie when I was about six and the memory has become so faded that I'm not sure whether I made it up or borrowed it from a dream (I've been known to do both). Please tell me if I'm crazy or not, and if I'm not please tell me what the name of the movie is. This has been tormenting me for years and none of my family seem to know what I'm talking about.

Love Les Miserables! 3rd best musical ever! and the book was good, but very thick with very small typing.

The Hobbit. It's wonderful! and the only J.R.R. Tolkein book I could get through.

Chronicles of Narnia. I'm not a big fan of the movie, though it did follow the book extremely well (which makes Anna skip with glee) But the books just fill me with this intense sense of adventure and I always want to climb a tree to read them. Couchs and beds just don't work with these books.

Any Sherlock Holmes. The only mystery books I like.

cassingtonscholar, I dont know about any movie, but Mark Chapman, who killed john lennon, infamously had a copy of the book with him when he did it.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and Watership Down (although they're both a little more "recent" than most classics)

EDIT: Almost forgot Lord of the Flies

My brain is slightly less wandery today, so I've got a few more...

The Hunchback of Notre Dame- when the Disney movie came out I was 11 or so, and of course wanted to see it. But my mum wouldn't take me until I had read the book. So of course, I read it, understood about half of it, but loved it anyhow. I got very excited about the movie. We went to see it and I was very, very disappointed.

John Wyndam- are they old enough to count? He's dead, anyhow. I love them all, but Chocky and The Chysalids are my favourites.

And Fairy Tales! Anderson, Bros. Grimm, Perrault. I can read them for hours and hours.

Alexandre Dumas- The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask. Great stuff.

And as has been said, Gulliver's Travels, Watership Down, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Narnia, LoTR, 1984, and all of HG Wells.

Jane Eyre C. Bronte
Tess of the d’Urbervilles- T.Hardy
and
MACBETH is my ultimate fave!!

Depends what you class as classics

If its old classics (SA in classic classics) then Platos Republic, Machvillies The Prince and any Virgil. IF you eman p[ost 1500 books then it'd be Shakespeare, Blake, some Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby in particular, some of its rubbish, eg.Oliver) Orwell, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Dunn, Locke, John Stuart Mill, Disrali (Sybil), Gladstone (His retoric is fantastic, see the Bulgarian Horrors panflets), Jefferson, Hemmingway, Stienbeck, Wells, Dumas, Goodnight Mr Tom, Lord of the Flies...

*adds The Age of Innocence to my list*

It was totally engrossing for a story about an affair that never happened.