2027 "Classics" Reading Challenge for Voracious Reader

[Fryan]

I gathered up all the suggestions from forum members and made a mega-list. I thought it might be helpful for us to have them all in one place to make it easier to choose which book/s to read. Not that we have to use any of these suggestions, but thought it might be handy!

Vathek - Williams Beckford

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes

The Oxbow Incident - Walter Van Tilburg Clark

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel DeFoe

David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

Hard Times – Charles Dickens

Three Soldiers - John Dos Passos

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle

The Count of Monte Christo – Alexandre Dumas

Adam Bede - George Eliot

As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

Intruder in the Dust – William Faulkner

Light in August – William Faulkner

The Hamlet – William Faulkner

Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding

I Claudius - Robert Graves

King Solomons Mines - H Rider Haggard

She - H Rider Haggard

The Maltese Falcon - Dashell Hammet

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

True At First Light – Ernest Hemingway

Lost Horizon by James Hilton

A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo

Kim - Rudyard Kipling

A Separate Peace – John Knowles

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis

The Star Rover - Jack London

The Last Days of Pompeii - Edward Bulwer Lytton

On Human Bondage - W Somerset Maugham

A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kenedy O’Toole

Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins

Cannery Row - John Steinbeck

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Sweet Thursday – John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

War and Peace -Leo Tolstoy

Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

 

[RedMage]

SFFWorld didn't send me notices of more replies. Or it did and I didn't see them...

A Penguin translation sounds like a good option if all the others are stilted and odd for modern readers. I'm sure I'd have the same struggles @Raf.

At the moment, I've begun listening to a 2010 audiobook of Dracula by Bram Stoker, narrated by Tavia Gilbert and J. P. Guimont. This is the first time I've read/listened to the book! It's one of several books I'm reading for Halloween this year, a few of which are audiobook and some on Kindle or actual paperbacks.

I tried another audiobook version of Dracula a few years ago and DNF'd it. It had 6 or so narrators and, I think, was made as an anniversary version. I want to say the narrators were all horror authors or maybe horror narrators... I can't remember. The narrators alternated chapters/diary entries and letters. Whichever. Most of the narrators were at least decent to listen to, though I struggled with so many different voices portraying the same character. Coupled with, IMO, one really terrible narrator casting choice and I didn't even make it to Mina and Lucy's first set of correspondence, which I've just now reached in the current audiobook. I'm enjoying this 2 narrator, 2010 version much better. So far, Guimont read Harker's portion with Gilbert taking over once Mina and Lucy's correspondence began.

 

[Cicero]

SFFWorld didn't send me notices of more replies. Or it did and I didn't see them...

A Penguin translation sounds like a good option if all the others are stilted and odd for modern readers. I'm sure I'd have the same struggles @Raf.

At the moment, I've begun listening to a 2010 audiobook of Dracula by Bram Stoker, narrated by Tavia Gilbert and J. P. Guimont. This is the first time I've read/listened to the book! It's one of several books I'm reading for Halloween this year, a few of which are audiobook and some on Kindle or actual paperbacks.

I tried another audiobook version of Dracula a few years ago and DNF'd it. It had 6 or so narrators and, I think, was made as an anniversary version. I want to say the narrators were all horror authors or maybe horror narrators... I can't remember. The narrators alternated chapters/diary entries and letters. Whichever. Most of the narrators were at least decent to listen to, though I struggled with so many different voices portraying the same character. Coupled with, IMO, one really terrible narrator casting choice and I didn't even make it to Mina and Lucy's first set of correspondence, which I've just now reached in the current audiobook. I'm enjoying this 2 narrator, 2010 version much better. So far, Guimont read Harker's portion with Gilbert taking over once Mina and Lucy's correspondence began.

I read Dracula a long time a go. I di enjoy bed I see why the Epistolary writing style would be put off t many writer. I'll read book with this type of writing if I deem the story interesting and worth the effort but in truth, it's not all my favorite style of writing at all.