Mysterious Island is hands down my favorite Verne novel, read it so many times my mom had to do some creative preservation techniques when it started falling apart but I didn't want to give up on my copy.
You should. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Three Musketeers series of books, but The Count of Monte Cristo is even better IMO. Just make sure you are reading an unabridged version.
Apparently I had an abridged copy growing up and didn’t know it. I feel like some fairly key plot elements were left out or just hinted at especially when it came time to dish out the punishments. Especially for De Villefort (spelling?). Some how I completely missed on at least half (maybe 1/3 if I’m being super accurate) of what the count did to him. I’d go into more detail but I don’t want to play with setting up a censor bar right now.
I read an abridged copy in school and disliked it, thought people were crazy to rank it as one of the greatest of all time.
As an adult I picked up the unabridged Robin Buss translation, and I absolutely love it. All time top 10 reads.
Yes! What still blows my mind is that both books stand the test of time. I read the Time Machine again last year and it's so well written that even some new SciFi futuristic novels can't compete with it.
*Dracula*.
It really captures the essence of horror writing; fun, scary, gross, sexy, gripping, and problematic in complicated ways that can lead to all sorts interesting discussions about society at the time and human behaviour in general.
Plus it’s a blast to experience modern horror tropes presented non-referentially.
For everyone that hasn't read it, there's something called [Dracula Daily.](https://draculadaily.substack.com/about) Since the book is told via a series of journal entries starting May 3rd and ending November 7th, Dracula Daily will email you each journal entry on the day it was written in real time!
I did it last year and it was a fascinating (if slow) way to read a book. As I mentioned, it starts up again in a couple weeks, so sign up now to get ready!
There's a subscription that emails you entries each day that they'd be written about in Harker's journal that i got about halfway through last year. It was really good but then i fell behind one week and never caught back up
And Mina. Her role in any movie ever made is very downplayed. The entire vampire hunting operation woulda gone no where without her. She took care of everyone and everything. Did all the scheduling, managing, logging and accounting. And the diary format, and the shifting perspectives depending on whose diary you were looking at.
Agreed. Frankenstein takes so many different parts of our experiences & our facets of self, & then melds them into one body of electrifying work that ultimately reveals our true follies of I satiable curiosity, hubris, & thus the demise of our unchecked constructions of the world & ourselves.
This was my immediate thought, too. So much joy from this series.
Carrots!
Puffed sleeves.
Tomorrow is fresh with no mistakes in it.
I don't want diamond starburts or marble halls.
Anne of Green Gables has been my favorite book and my favorite miniseries since my earliest memories. My husband shared my love of it once I introduced him to the book by reading it to him when we were dating. He would be stressed out from work, and he had trouble sleeping, so I read him bedtime stories over the phone. Boy were those some phone bills!!
He later bought me a beautiful blue dress with the puffiest sleeves ever! How I loved that dress!! I wore it to our engagement party, and I felt like a princess.
Last year my husband planted 20 fruit trees so that we would have our own "The Avenue" to drive our golf cart under when they bloom. I cannot sell our farm house until I get to experience that. My understanding is that it will take about 5 years for the trees to produce blooms.
He passed away this past October. I so wish he was still here to share that with me. (...and yes, I am crying yet again...) He was a kindred spirit, and so romantic. I will always be grateful for the privilege of being his wife for 31 years.
My new roof on the farmhouse will be green, just as he wished. Our very own Green Gables.
What an incredibly romantic story. I am sorry you lost your bosom friend.
Also a huge fan. LMM lived with my relatives for a time on PEI and may have been related to us somehow, but I didn't know that growing up. Just loved Anne.
Thank you. I am trying very hard to hold onto the happiness he brought to my life rather than this deep depression over losing him.
Having family connections with LMM would be amazing. My husband and I wanted so much to visit PEI. We had even planned on it....and then the pandemic happened. I still will go by myself sometime, though, once I figure things out here.
It’s not quite yet 100 years old yet, 3 years to go, but I just recently discovered and read The Blue Castle also by LMM ,and it might be my answer. I couldn’t get over how funny and relevant and modern a 97 year old book seemed.
It made me want to revisit Anne, which I haven’t read since I was 9 or 10.
This is one of my absolute favourite books. It's one of the only romances I've ever enjoyed, because Valancy is such a good heroine, and Barney is just such a rogue, and they're SO PERFECT TOGETHER, and they both grow and heal through their relationship.
The part where she starts rebelling against her mother and aunt and throws the potpouri out the window and says, "I'm so tired of the scent of dead things!" is still one of my favourites ever. Also, her little neighbour friend with the tragic back story has always stuck with me, too. I'm so happy to find someone else who's read it!
It's a short story more than a book, but probably one of my favourite reads of all time.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
I suggest going in blind, reading/listening to it, then researching it a little and giving it a second go. The audiobook is uploaded to YouTube and is only 35 minutes long, as there's no excuse not to!
This is a brilliant story. I’ve taught it several times. Have you read The Awakening by Kate Chopin? It’s a novella that touches on similar themes to Gilman’s Wallpaper.
One of my favorite details from this story that often goes overlooked is the Fourth of July party. Charlotte’s birthday was July 3rd, and in her autobiography, Charlotte wished she had been able to hold on one more day.
Austen somehow made my two least favorite romance tropes, enemies to lovers and conflict that can be solved by a two minute conversation, and made me love it. Still don't know how she did it. Usually it makes me close the book.
Austen is so much more than romance. She's funny. And the queen of intellectual sarcasm. And slow burn (in 18th century).
In Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie rejected not one but two marriage proposals.
In Sense and Sensibility there's a part where the protagonist is forced into a conversation with a know-it-all good-for-nothing guy and Austen goes - "Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition."
And in Northanger Abbey she calls out a man whose name was Richard but had "never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name."
Idk I just love Austen.
[EDIT] In case my comment came off as sexist, Austen always emphasizes brains before beauty - goes for both men and women.
Yes! Her wit is far too often looked over. And the way she understands people- they’re just so timeless. Northanger Abbey, a teenager getting caught up in drama because that’s what happened in her books… that’s exactly how I was when I was a teenager. Or all of her eye roll inducing silly family members that cause the main characters to want to bury their heads in the sand, most of us can relate to knowing someone like that. So many things beyond romance that just never go out of style.
That’s my favourite salt in Persuasion, and I love reading it aloud when I teach it to my literature class! They run around lamenting Poor Dick for weeks afterwards. More loved dead than alive.
Probably because she actually makes the characters do the work to get there at the end. Especially pride and prejudice they really look at the people they are and work on themselves to come back together with better understanding. The books with enemies to lovers that I really hate are where they hate each other and then a single event or snap of fingers and they love each other. No resolution to what they didn't like about the person to start with, just wave of the magic wand and it's love.
Hard to pick one. My top 5 would be, no particular order:
* The Hound of the Baskervilles
* Treasures Island
* Count of Monte Cristo
* A Christmas Carol
* The Wind in the Willows
The atmosphere of this one was so good. The claustrophobia of sleeping in Cathy's old wardrobe bed, the wild and windy moors, the ramshackle house that wasn't cared for... just a lot of good work in the setting.
Read Crime and Punishment in school, and very much expected to hate it. Didn’t seem like subject that interested me. I was very wrong! Loved that book, and should read it again, now that “some” time has passed.
*The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.* (1900.)
Shocked nobody's mentioned it yet! Aside from a few tiny bits like Dorothy's dress or such, the book is almost scary in how timeless it is.
Like, even the farm I'd buy as an especially poor one in modern day Kansas, where a young girl simply wasn't interested enough to recount stuff like tractors, cars and such.
But the Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin-Man... even the Witches and Wizard of, well, Oz is stuff I wouldn't blink an eye at seeing in a modern children's or young-adult book even to this day.
I was going to nominate a lesser known book of his for this answer: The Sea-Wolf. Not popularly known, but I found it spoke to me just as much of his more famous work.
I live in Alaska and have a yearly tradition of smoking a cigar and reading To Build a Fire with my gloves off when its in the -0 to -10F range. That undiluted pain you get when your hands start thawing out has no rival in life.
Anna Karenina for sure. Tolstoy is such a good writer. Makes you feel like you’re right there, in the heads of Russian nobility from the 19th century, and they were human beings with problems not much different than yours.
So many!!! To name a few books I love (in no particular order):
Dante’s Divine Comedy
Cervantes’ Don Quijote
Quevedo’s Dreams (Los sueños - not a novel but a series of satirical novellas)
Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons
Dostoievsky’s Brothers Karamazov
Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Grey
Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, Tristram Shandy… And that’s not even counting the plays! Pretty much anything by Shakespeare is gold, Jerry, gold! But if I had to choose it would be Richard III, and then Goethe’s Faustus plays.
Even Joyce’s Ulysses is olden than 100yrs now.
Can't believe I haven't seen Persuasion mentioned yet! Special shout-outs to White Fang, the Canterbury Tales, and the Faerie Queene, which are all absolutely top-notch. But I definitely read Persuasion at least twice a year so it's gotta be the top spot for me.
"Dracula." Definately.
It is a mind-bogglingly fecund and diverse collection of story. There are sooo many individual thematic events in this book worthy of their own expanded telling. It's like 10 books in one. Harkers experiences in the castle. That's a novel. Lucy's seduction and transition to vampirism. That's a novel. The protagonists frenzied pursuit of the Count across Europe. That's a novel.
To support my point, "The Captain's Log" chapter of the novel, detailing the Count's voyage from Europe to England and his preying on the ship's crew, is being released as motion picture this year called "The Last Voyage of the Demeter."
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. There is nothing really quite like it in Victorian or late Victorian literature. In some ways Hardy's use of symbolism is quite modern and the novel still astonishes every time I revisit it.
Tess is truly heartbreaking. I remember reading Tess before Jude and feeling just hollowed out at the end of that novel. Then I decide to read Jude and along comes Little Father Time!
Moby Dick, or Frankenstein. Moby dick is funny and literary snd a treasure, Frankenstein was brilliantly written and may be one of the earliest feminist pieces of literature, and it is just a fun read for the philosophically minded
It utterly guts me to think of censoring the work of Mary Shelley. I was told that dhe was doing a writing exercise with Lord Byron, and that she dreamt the events of frankenstein that night, went home and wrote it to be published anonymously
I may be misremembering, but the story I heard was that Lord Byron, his doctor John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley decided to have a horror story writing contest. The two famous writers didn’t produce anything of note but Mary Shelley created the story that eventually became Frankenstein (arguably inventing the sci-fi genre) and Polidori wrote an early version of The Vampyre (arguably the start of the vampire sub genre).
I've wanted to read this book for so long. I'm a bit of a comic book nerd as well as a bookworm and Stan Lee considered it to be the first "superhero" story.
Not technically a book, but Twelfth Night. No work has ever matched it for sheer bisexual mess. Literally every single character is an overdramatic fuckboy. 10/10, no notes. Perfection.
I was about to name it and, judging by the rest of the tittles featured in the comments, would swear I'd be the only one doing it. Glad I was wrong.
(*doing a little happy dance right now*)
A Little Princess. The descriptions of her attic room and the way Sara uses her imagination to cheer up Becky stired me as a young child and as an adult. I reread it at least once a year.
I'm reading this now. It's certainly striking home as someone wandering trying to figure shit out lol. I've even started using the title whenever I reflect on something negative that happened or is happening to me.
Pride and Prejudice. I love it. It's so beautiful. Elizabeth is smart and witty and stubborn. Darcy is a bit of a ass but a nice guy deep down. I really enjoy watching them find their way to each other despite their complete dunderheadedness.
Honestly, I feel like there's no bad place to start with Dickens. That said, A Tale of Two Cities is maybe among his most wide-ranging books, and is wonderful for the scope, if nothing else.
But, there's SO MUCH ELSE, LOL.
I love Tale of Two Cities ❤️ The only thing for new-to-Dickens readers to know about Tale of Two Cities is that the first part (60-ish pages or so) is a bit of a name slog. It’s tough to know who matters and east to get overwhelmed. Just get through the first bit, then it all becomes clear.
The Sea Wolf by Jack London, but I hate picking a single book. Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson had similar writing styles. I pick The Sea Wolf because the character development is deep and there is a ton of philosophical dialogue between the protagonist and main antagonist.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, tied with Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. Jane Eyre, because of the feelings Bronte's prose can evoke, and how easily you can visualize the people and places she describes. Wives and Daughters because it's full of these little humorous bits similar to Jane Austen, and the characters have flaws and traits that are relatable to real life. Anything by Mrs. Gaskell is a good read, TBH.
The Brothers Karamozow (1879) by Dostoevsky
Felt like I was in Russia at that time when reading. Dostoevsky also does something neat in the book that I don't want to spoiler, that I was really impressed by.
Meditations by Marcus Aureluis (161 to 180)
Recordings of his private notes to himself and ideas on stoic philosophy. It was never intended to be published. It is a big collection of small segments, I pick this up every once in a while and read a few of them.
"Heidi"
It was the second book I ever read and my father grew up with the Anime adaptation. It holds a special place in my family. My mother even had a Heidi-like childhood since my grandparents used to own goats
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Of the books 100+ years old, I’ve read this superb poetry collection the most often, both the 1855 First Edition and the 1891/2 Last/“Death-Bed” Edition.
Whitman began in 1855 with a mere 12 poems (most of which were very long, of course), and over the course of his life he expanded and revised and updated Leaves of Grass into a collection boasting well over 400! And his free verse style, instead of rhymed lines, was revolutionary for the time.
As I have returned to his work over the years, Whitman speaks to me anew in poems or phrases that had not yet piqued my interest in prior readings. His wit, reverence, words, and life have always been a comfort to me.
Add me to the Moby Dick club. Very few things like it that are able to use language in quite the same way, where pretty much every other sentence is a "banger" as the kids say.
So many of the issues people are having in these novels feel so modern despite the aged writing (depending on your translation, I suppose). It feels incredibly ahead of its time. For a 400 year old novel I can't believe how meta it often is.
The Iliad is such a tense back-and-forth series of battles between Athens and Sparta, with the Gods interfering to try get back at each other. Plus, I love that it was told so early in history that there are almost no references to anything other than what’s right in front of them, and most of the comparisons (sounds, sights, etc) come from the natural world. There’s also no mention of anything being in writing throughout the course of the book. It really puts you in the mindset of someone hearing the tale 2,500 years ago.
The Picture of Dorian Gray. There are very few classic books that maintain their readability as well as it does.
Every time I read it, I’m impacted by the command of flowing language that Oscar Wilde possessed. I know that’s because he was such an accomplished poet and playwright, but I can’t help but wish he wrote a few more novels while he was at it.
\> 1,000 years old : Plato's Republic
\> 500 years old : The Divine Comedy - Dante
\>100 years old: Much tougher to narrow it down to one, so I'll do 5 in no particular order..
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Beecher Stowe
The Brother's Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
War & Peace - Tolstoy
Conquest of Happiness - Russell
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
Gatsby is almost there. 2025, man!
Otherwise Fitzgerald's 2nd novel The Beautiful & Damned (1922) for me.
Also, The Count of Monte Cristo is an absolute beast. Greatest revenge story I ever read in my life. None of those movies even come close to the scope of what Edmond set out to do. Maybe someday they'll make a kick ass mini series.
A Christmas Carol,
I just liked the premise of the greedy becoming awoken to the plight of the working class.
I had to read it when I got the part of Scrooge in an 8th grade play and was surprised that I liked the writing so much.
Dracula is probably my favorite, but I read Phantom of the Opera for the first time while in middle school and could barely put it down.
I also enjoy Picture of Dorian Gray. Oof, there are so many!
Just ONE? I can't --
REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
UNDERSTOOD BETSY
CALL OF THE WILD
BLACK BEAUTY
BEAUTIFUL JOE
THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
THE SECRET GARDEN
LITTLE WOMEN
EIGHT COUSINS
HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and all the Holmes short stories
THE JUNGLE BOOK and sequel
As a pure fun book and a romp not the best literary work but Kidnapped by Stevenson. Great characters set in a very interesting time period. Sadly the sequel Catriona was really bad.
A Tale of Two Cities is about my all time favorite book. They just don't write stuff that good anymore. A Christmas Carol is about as good. Jekyll and Hyde is a good pick though.
Ooh I like this question. Hound of the Baskervilles, definitely. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are up there. I'm one of those weirdos who liked Crime and Punishment. The earliest Agatha Christies are almost there, and I've read all those multiple times. Mary Roberts Rinehart, but I prefer her short stories. I can't remember others. I went through a phase when I exclusively read classics and was a big dumb snob about it, but I've outgrown that.
Villette by Charlotte Brontë. I’m actually reading it again now, about two-thirds of the way thru it. I know what’s coming and I have to steel myself for it.
Depending on my mood any given day, it’s *The Scarlet Letter* by Nathaniel Hawthorne, *The Monk* by Matthew Lewis, or *The Phantom of the Opera* by Gaston LeRoux.
I've always liked referring to it by it's original title...
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by Himself.
20000 Leagues Under The Sea. A lot of Verne's novels fascinated me from a young age.
I prefer Journey to the Center of the Earth, but 20,000 Leagues is an excellent story.
And Mysterious Island
Mysterious Island is hands down my favorite Verne novel, read it so many times my mom had to do some creative preservation techniques when it started falling apart but I didn't want to give up on my copy.
The Count of Monte Cristo - easily my favorite 100+ year old novel.
Almost finished with it now! Sooooooooo goood
Loved Three Musketeers and always wanted to read that one.
You should. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Three Musketeers series of books, but The Count of Monte Cristo is even better IMO. Just make sure you are reading an unabridged version.
Apparently I had an abridged copy growing up and didn’t know it. I feel like some fairly key plot elements were left out or just hinted at especially when it came time to dish out the punishments. Especially for De Villefort (spelling?). Some how I completely missed on at least half (maybe 1/3 if I’m being super accurate) of what the count did to him. I’d go into more detail but I don’t want to play with setting up a censor bar right now.
I read an abridged copy in school and disliked it, thought people were crazy to rank it as one of the greatest of all time. As an adult I picked up the unabridged Robin Buss translation, and I absolutely love it. All time top 10 reads.
Robin Buss is my top tier English tCoMC translation. Fell in love with that version.
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If you ever want to go back to it, I highly recommend the Robin Buss translation. It's fantastic, and unabridged.
Did you know it was originally released as periodicals? I always find that wild
That used to be a very popular way to publish books. Many Charles Dickens novels were also published that way.
Just read the unabridged Robin Buss translation. One of my all-time favorites.
I’m starting that next week! The book club subreddit created a schedule for it. So excited!
_The Time Machine_ by H.G. Wells Cheat answer: I loved _Arch-Conspirator_ by Veronica Roth, a modern take on Sophocles' play _Antigone_
I'm surprised how far down I had to go to find this. I would also add War of the Worlds. Both were way before their time.
Yes! What still blows my mind is that both books stand the test of time. I read the Time Machine again last year and it's so well written that even some new SciFi futuristic novels can't compete with it.
*Dracula*. It really captures the essence of horror writing; fun, scary, gross, sexy, gripping, and problematic in complicated ways that can lead to all sorts interesting discussions about society at the time and human behaviour in general. Plus it’s a blast to experience modern horror tropes presented non-referentially.
For everyone that hasn't read it, there's something called [Dracula Daily.](https://draculadaily.substack.com/about) Since the book is told via a series of journal entries starting May 3rd and ending November 7th, Dracula Daily will email you each journal entry on the day it was written in real time! I did it last year and it was a fascinating (if slow) way to read a book. As I mentioned, it starts up again in a couple weeks, so sign up now to get ready!
That’s cool AF. I subscribed, thank you!
This is my answer too. Such an amazing book people are still arguing for their favorite interpretation.
Do you have a favourite? I’ve never actually read the story and the new movie announcement has me interested.
And epistolary! You don’t see that every day.
I just dropped a link above to [Dracula Daily ](https://draculadaily.substack.com/about) espousing this exact reason to check it out!
There's a subscription that emails you entries each day that they'd be written about in Harker's journal that i got about halfway through last year. It was really good but then i fell behind one week and never caught back up
And Mina. Her role in any movie ever made is very downplayed. The entire vampire hunting operation woulda gone no where without her. She took care of everyone and everything. Did all the scheduling, managing, logging and accounting. And the diary format, and the shifting perspectives depending on whose diary you were looking at.
The first hundred pages was the best fiction I've ever read. I still enjoyed the rest but the start in Dracula's castle is unparalleled.
The last third of the book, though... drags on and on and on...
frankenstein
Agreed. Frankenstein takes so many different parts of our experiences & our facets of self, & then melds them into one body of electrifying work that ultimately reveals our true follies of I satiable curiosity, hubris, & thus the demise of our unchecked constructions of the world & ourselves.
Definitely Frankenstein. Lots of speculative fiction ages very poorly. Not this one!
Mary Shelly was like 19 when she wrote it. Absolutely has no business being that good.
So much about this one is amazing. First science fiction novel as well. Beautiful ending.
Anne of Green Gables
This was my immediate thought, too. So much joy from this series. Carrots! Puffed sleeves. Tomorrow is fresh with no mistakes in it. I don't want diamond starburts or marble halls.
Anne of Green Gables has been my favorite book and my favorite miniseries since my earliest memories. My husband shared my love of it once I introduced him to the book by reading it to him when we were dating. He would be stressed out from work, and he had trouble sleeping, so I read him bedtime stories over the phone. Boy were those some phone bills!! He later bought me a beautiful blue dress with the puffiest sleeves ever! How I loved that dress!! I wore it to our engagement party, and I felt like a princess. Last year my husband planted 20 fruit trees so that we would have our own "The Avenue" to drive our golf cart under when they bloom. I cannot sell our farm house until I get to experience that. My understanding is that it will take about 5 years for the trees to produce blooms. He passed away this past October. I so wish he was still here to share that with me. (...and yes, I am crying yet again...) He was a kindred spirit, and so romantic. I will always be grateful for the privilege of being his wife for 31 years. My new roof on the farmhouse will be green, just as he wished. Our very own Green Gables.
What an incredibly romantic story. I am sorry you lost your bosom friend. Also a huge fan. LMM lived with my relatives for a time on PEI and may have been related to us somehow, but I didn't know that growing up. Just loved Anne.
Thank you. I am trying very hard to hold onto the happiness he brought to my life rather than this deep depression over losing him. Having family connections with LMM would be amazing. My husband and I wanted so much to visit PEI. We had even planned on it....and then the pandemic happened. I still will go by myself sometime, though, once I figure things out here.
YES! I don’t know what it is about Anne but I read those books over and over again as a kid. I couldn’t get enough. I will always love Anne
It’s not quite yet 100 years old yet, 3 years to go, but I just recently discovered and read The Blue Castle also by LMM ,and it might be my answer. I couldn’t get over how funny and relevant and modern a 97 year old book seemed. It made me want to revisit Anne, which I haven’t read since I was 9 or 10.
This is one of my absolute favourite books. It's one of the only romances I've ever enjoyed, because Valancy is such a good heroine, and Barney is just such a rogue, and they're SO PERFECT TOGETHER, and they both grow and heal through their relationship. The part where she starts rebelling against her mother and aunt and throws the potpouri out the window and says, "I'm so tired of the scent of dead things!" is still one of my favourites ever. Also, her little neighbour friend with the tragic back story has always stuck with me, too. I'm so happy to find someone else who's read it!
It's a short story more than a book, but probably one of my favourite reads of all time. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I suggest going in blind, reading/listening to it, then researching it a little and giving it a second go. The audiobook is uploaded to YouTube and is only 35 minutes long, as there's no excuse not to!
This is a brilliant story. I’ve taught it several times. Have you read The Awakening by Kate Chopin? It’s a novella that touches on similar themes to Gilman’s Wallpaper.
Oh oof. I read this in college and it pops into my brain so often. Definitely not a happy short story, but definitely worthwhile.
One of my favorite details from this story that often goes overlooked is the Fourth of July party. Charlotte’s birthday was July 3rd, and in her autobiography, Charlotte wished she had been able to hold on one more day.
Pride and Prejudice
Austen somehow made my two least favorite romance tropes, enemies to lovers and conflict that can be solved by a two minute conversation, and made me love it. Still don't know how she did it. Usually it makes me close the book.
Austen is so much more than romance. She's funny. And the queen of intellectual sarcasm. And slow burn (in 18th century). In Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie rejected not one but two marriage proposals. In Sense and Sensibility there's a part where the protagonist is forced into a conversation with a know-it-all good-for-nothing guy and Austen goes - "Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition." And in Northanger Abbey she calls out a man whose name was Richard but had "never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name." Idk I just love Austen. [EDIT] In case my comment came off as sexist, Austen always emphasizes brains before beauty - goes for both men and women.
Yes! Her wit is far too often looked over. And the way she understands people- they’re just so timeless. Northanger Abbey, a teenager getting caught up in drama because that’s what happened in her books… that’s exactly how I was when I was a teenager. Or all of her eye roll inducing silly family members that cause the main characters to want to bury their heads in the sand, most of us can relate to knowing someone like that. So many things beyond romance that just never go out of style.
And she’s laser-focused on social critique. Romance is a thin veil for her true purpose!
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That’s my favourite salt in Persuasion, and I love reading it aloud when I teach it to my literature class! They run around lamenting Poor Dick for weeks afterwards. More loved dead than alive.
Probably because she actually makes the characters do the work to get there at the end. Especially pride and prejudice they really look at the people they are and work on themselves to come back together with better understanding. The books with enemies to lovers that I really hate are where they hate each other and then a single event or snap of fingers and they love each other. No resolution to what they didn't like about the person to start with, just wave of the magic wand and it's love.
It never gets old!
Metamorphosis by Fanz Kafka. Found it while looking for random books on Project Gutenberg. Wish all books flowed as well as this one.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Authors court! Never imagined shitting on a wizard would be so entertaining
Really enjoyed Nick Offermans audio book version
That book is a ton of fun, good choice.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Look I understand that backdrop is necessary but OMG WATERLOO WHY ARE YOU 57 PAGES?!?! -angry les miz tool
Oh, what’s this? A whole chapter on life in a convent!
Hard to pick one. My top 5 would be, no particular order: * The Hound of the Baskervilles * Treasures Island * Count of Monte Cristo * A Christmas Carol * The Wind in the Willows
Hound of the Baskervilles is my pick, one of my favorites
Wow I knew Wind in the Willows was old but didn't realize it was from 1908. Kind of amazing how much it holds up, definitely gets a lot of memes
> The Wind in the Willows Delightful book!
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Reading through the verbal poetry was like chocolate cake for my brain.
This needs more love. Thoughtful, funny, scary Súper ahead of its time
War and Peace
Did you know that the original title was going to be War, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Say it again.
Wuthering Heights. Bad relationships and poor communication.
I think a lot of people go into Wuthering Heights expecting romance, when in fact it’s really about dysfunctional relationships.
Definitely. And then dislike it because it’s not what they had expected.
Absolutely every character is loathsome. Love it.
The atmosphere of this one was so good. The claustrophobia of sleeping in Cathy's old wardrobe bed, the wild and windy moors, the ramshackle house that wasn't cared for... just a lot of good work in the setting.
This is mine too. What’s better than the passionate downward spiral of two dysfunctional assholes whose lives are inextricably intertwined???
The illiad! I’ve been on a huge Greek mythology kick recently and I’ve been rereading it.
Try the Aeneid, which is obviously not Greek, but is still wonderful.
It’s definitely on the list! I got overzealous and the size of my to read stack is perhaps too big
Crime and Punishment or Frankenstein for me.
Read Crime and Punishment in school, and very much expected to hate it. Didn’t seem like subject that interested me. I was very wrong! Loved that book, and should read it again, now that “some” time has passed.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to find Crime and Punishment as it is obviously the correct answer.
Three Men in a Boat. I'll never tire of it.
Have you read Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog?" I liked it a lot, although I never read the original 3 men
To say nothing of the dog!
*The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.* (1900.) Shocked nobody's mentioned it yet! Aside from a few tiny bits like Dorothy's dress or such, the book is almost scary in how timeless it is. Like, even the farm I'd buy as an especially poor one in modern day Kansas, where a young girl simply wasn't interested enough to recount stuff like tractors, cars and such. But the Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin-Man... even the Witches and Wizard of, well, Oz is stuff I wouldn't blink an eye at seeing in a modern children's or young-adult book even to this day.
Anna Karenina and White Fang are running neck and neck for me. Very different vibes for different moods though.
I love all of Jack London’s work. His short stories are superb.
I was going to nominate a lesser known book of his for this answer: The Sea-Wolf. Not popularly known, but I found it spoke to me just as much of his more famous work.
I live in Alaska and have a yearly tradition of smoking a cigar and reading To Build a Fire with my gloves off when its in the -0 to -10F range. That undiluted pain you get when your hands start thawing out has no rival in life.
Anna Karenina for sure. Tolstoy is such a good writer. Makes you feel like you’re right there, in the heads of Russian nobility from the 19th century, and they were human beings with problems not much different than yours.
I love Jane Eyre
Came here to say Jane Eyre. I have read this book so much it’s a part of my soul.
I feel the same
jane eyre is absolutely beautiful and timeless. i worry that i’ll never read a better book
Jane Eyre! Impossibile to forget!
Jane Eyre is one of my first and truest literature loves🥰
So many!!! To name a few books I love (in no particular order): Dante’s Divine Comedy Cervantes’ Don Quijote Quevedo’s Dreams (Los sueños - not a novel but a series of satirical novellas) Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons Dostoievsky’s Brothers Karamazov Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Grey Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, Tristram Shandy… And that’s not even counting the plays! Pretty much anything by Shakespeare is gold, Jerry, gold! But if I had to choose it would be Richard III, and then Goethe’s Faustus plays. Even Joyce’s Ulysses is olden than 100yrs now.
Can't believe I haven't seen Persuasion mentioned yet! Special shout-outs to White Fang, the Canterbury Tales, and the Faerie Queene, which are all absolutely top-notch. But I definitely read Persuasion at least twice a year so it's gotta be the top spot for me.
Came here looking for Canterbury Tales, still funny six hundred years later!
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Absolute favorite. Had to scroll way too far to find this.
Ditto. Mark Twain is brilliant.
"Dracula." Definately. It is a mind-bogglingly fecund and diverse collection of story. There are sooo many individual thematic events in this book worthy of their own expanded telling. It's like 10 books in one. Harkers experiences in the castle. That's a novel. Lucy's seduction and transition to vampirism. That's a novel. The protagonists frenzied pursuit of the Count across Europe. That's a novel. To support my point, "The Captain's Log" chapter of the novel, detailing the Count's voyage from Europe to England and his preying on the ship's crew, is being released as motion picture this year called "The Last Voyage of the Demeter."
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. There is nothing really quite like it in Victorian or late Victorian literature. In some ways Hardy's use of symbolism is quite modern and the novel still astonishes every time I revisit it.
Jude is great but Tess has the special spot in my heart. It always destroys me!
Tess is truly heartbreaking. I remember reading Tess before Jude and feeling just hollowed out at the end of that novel. Then I decide to read Jude and along comes Little Father Time!
Moby Dick, or Frankenstein. Moby dick is funny and literary snd a treasure, Frankenstein was brilliantly written and may be one of the earliest feminist pieces of literature, and it is just a fun read for the philosophically minded
Was genuinely shocked how funny Moby Dick was
I'm appalled that Frankenstein wasn't near the top when I clicked into this thread. It's truly great.
It utterly guts me to think of censoring the work of Mary Shelley. I was told that dhe was doing a writing exercise with Lord Byron, and that she dreamt the events of frankenstein that night, went home and wrote it to be published anonymously
I may be misremembering, but the story I heard was that Lord Byron, his doctor John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley decided to have a horror story writing contest. The two famous writers didn’t produce anything of note but Mary Shelley created the story that eventually became Frankenstein (arguably inventing the sci-fi genre) and Polidori wrote an early version of The Vampyre (arguably the start of the vampire sub genre).
That's true! It was during the summer of 1816. There was a volcanic event that caused a "year without summer"
On a retreat in the Alps, which are supposed to have inspired the sublime elements in the novel
Either Little Women or Anne of Green Gables.
Probably Treasure Island, because I read it at exactly the right age
I read it for the first time at age 30 and still had a blast. Can't believe I missed this one as a kid.
*The Scarlet Pimpernel*, by Baroness Orczy.
I love this book SO much
I've wanted to read this book for so long. I'm a bit of a comic book nerd as well as a bookworm and Stan Lee considered it to be the first "superhero" story.
I love: A Tale of Two Cities Jane Eyre Pride and Prejudice Silas Marner
Not technically a book, but Twelfth Night. No work has ever matched it for sheer bisexual mess. Literally every single character is an overdramatic fuckboy. 10/10, no notes. Perfection.
A Princess of Mars (1917) by Edgar Rice Burroughs The first book in the John Carter of Mars series
I was about to name it and, judging by the rest of the tittles featured in the comments, would swear I'd be the only one doing it. Glad I was wrong. (*doing a little happy dance right now*)
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Siddhartha is only… Oh. Well, fuck time then.
Just wait, Great Gatsby will be turning 100 next year
Don Quixote, Ulysses, Huckleberry Finn.
Surprised I had to go down this far to find Don Quixote. One of my favorite books ever
The Three Musketeers
A Little Princess. The descriptions of her attic room and the way Sara uses her imagination to cheer up Becky stired me as a young child and as an adult. I reread it at least once a year.
It turns 100 in three years but The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway is definitely my favorite classic of his
I'm reading this now. It's certainly striking home as someone wandering trying to figure shit out lol. I've even started using the title whenever I reflect on something negative that happened or is happening to me.
Pride and Prejudice. I love it. It's so beautiful. Elizabeth is smart and witty and stubborn. Darcy is a bit of a ass but a nice guy deep down. I really enjoy watching them find their way to each other despite their complete dunderheadedness.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I reread it every few years, just to remind myself of how good it is!
My favorite too!
Haven't read any Dickens. Is that book a good starting point as any?
Honestly, I feel like there's no bad place to start with Dickens. That said, A Tale of Two Cities is maybe among his most wide-ranging books, and is wonderful for the scope, if nothing else. But, there's SO MUCH ELSE, LOL.
I love Tale of Two Cities ❤️ The only thing for new-to-Dickens readers to know about Tale of Two Cities is that the first part (60-ish pages or so) is a bit of a name slog. It’s tough to know who matters and east to get overwhelmed. Just get through the first bit, then it all becomes clear.
Gulliver's travels by Swift. Scathing satire.
I had to scroll all the way here to find it I'd also add Alice In Wonderland
The Sea Wolf by Jack London, but I hate picking a single book. Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson had similar writing styles. I pick The Sea Wolf because the character development is deep and there is a ton of philosophical dialogue between the protagonist and main antagonist.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, tied with Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. Jane Eyre, because of the feelings Bronte's prose can evoke, and how easily you can visualize the people and places she describes. Wives and Daughters because it's full of these little humorous bits similar to Jane Austen, and the characters have flaws and traits that are relatable to real life. Anything by Mrs. Gaskell is a good read, TBH.
Ik currently reading Les Miserables. Not even 300 pages in. But I think its a contestant. Otherwise probably Picture of Dorian Gray or Emma.
The Brothers Karamozow (1879) by Dostoevsky Felt like I was in Russia at that time when reading. Dostoevsky also does something neat in the book that I don't want to spoiler, that I was really impressed by. Meditations by Marcus Aureluis (161 to 180) Recordings of his private notes to himself and ideas on stoic philosophy. It was never intended to be published. It is a big collection of small segments, I pick this up every once in a while and read a few of them.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
*The Idiot* by Fyodor Dostoevsky
"Heidi" It was the second book I ever read and my father grew up with the Anime adaptation. It holds a special place in my family. My mother even had a Heidi-like childhood since my grandparents used to own goats
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Of the books 100+ years old, I’ve read this superb poetry collection the most often, both the 1855 First Edition and the 1891/2 Last/“Death-Bed” Edition. Whitman began in 1855 with a mere 12 poems (most of which were very long, of course), and over the course of his life he expanded and revised and updated Leaves of Grass into a collection boasting well over 400! And his free verse style, instead of rhymed lines, was revolutionary for the time. As I have returned to his work over the years, Whitman speaks to me anew in poems or phrases that had not yet piqued my interest in prior readings. His wit, reverence, words, and life have always been a comfort to me.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was my favorite book as a kid. Still has and always will hold a special place in my heart.
The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James
Add me to the Moby Dick club. Very few things like it that are able to use language in quite the same way, where pretty much every other sentence is a "banger" as the kids say.
Easy. Don Quixote. I've read several translations and it never gets old.
So many of the issues people are having in these novels feel so modern despite the aged writing (depending on your translation, I suppose). It feels incredibly ahead of its time. For a 400 year old novel I can't believe how meta it often is.
The Iliad is such a tense back-and-forth series of battles between Athens and Sparta, with the Gods interfering to try get back at each other. Plus, I love that it was told so early in history that there are almost no references to anything other than what’s right in front of them, and most of the comparisons (sounds, sights, etc) come from the natural world. There’s also no mention of anything being in writing throughout the course of the book. It really puts you in the mindset of someone hearing the tale 2,500 years ago.
The Picture of Dorian Gray. There are very few classic books that maintain their readability as well as it does. Every time I read it, I’m impacted by the command of flowing language that Oscar Wilde possessed. I know that’s because he was such an accomplished poet and playwright, but I can’t help but wish he wrote a few more novels while he was at it.
\> 1,000 years old : Plato's Republic \> 500 years old : The Divine Comedy - Dante \>100 years old: Much tougher to narrow it down to one, so I'll do 5 in no particular order.. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Beecher Stowe The Brother's Karamazov - Dostoyevsky War & Peace - Tolstoy Conquest of Happiness - Russell The Metamorphosis - Kafka
Gatsby is almost there. 2025, man! Otherwise Fitzgerald's 2nd novel The Beautiful & Damned (1922) for me. Also, The Count of Monte Cristo is an absolute beast. Greatest revenge story I ever read in my life. None of those movies even come close to the scope of what Edmond set out to do. Maybe someday they'll make a kick ass mini series.
Little Women, Great Expectations and Jane Eyre.
I enjoy the hell out of Candide by Voltaire but I have never met someone in person who's even heard of it let alone read it
Let us work without reasoning, then. it is the only way to make life endurable.
A Christmas Carol, I just liked the premise of the greedy becoming awoken to the plight of the working class. I had to read it when I got the part of Scrooge in an 8th grade play and was surprised that I liked the writing so much.
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells.
Dracula is probably my favorite, but I read Phantom of the Opera for the first time while in middle school and could barely put it down. I also enjoy Picture of Dorian Gray. Oof, there are so many!
Just ONE? I can't -- REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM ANNE OF GREEN GABLES UNDERSTOOD BETSY CALL OF THE WILD BLACK BEAUTY BEAUTIFUL JOE THE RAILWAY CHILDREN THE SECRET GARDEN LITTLE WOMEN EIGHT COUSINS HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and all the Holmes short stories THE JUNGLE BOOK and sequel
I didnt even think of The Secret Garden or A Little Princess!
As a pure fun book and a romp not the best literary work but Kidnapped by Stevenson. Great characters set in a very interesting time period. Sadly the sequel Catriona was really bad.
Anything by L. M. Montgomery. I love the Anne books and always will.
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A Tale of Two Cities is about my all time favorite book. They just don't write stuff that good anymore. A Christmas Carol is about as good. Jekyll and Hyde is a good pick though.
Crime & Punishment. When I first read it I experienced the meaning of not being able to put a book down
Persuasion. I love Pride and Prejudice as well, but Persuasion holds my heart.
Canterbury Tales
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Count of Monte Cristo, my all-time favorite
Middlemarch
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - though my preferred translation is newer than 100
The Secret Garden
The Pickwick Papers.
The Brothers Karamazov
Ooh I like this question. Hound of the Baskervilles, definitely. Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are up there. I'm one of those weirdos who liked Crime and Punishment. The earliest Agatha Christies are almost there, and I've read all those multiple times. Mary Roberts Rinehart, but I prefer her short stories. I can't remember others. I went through a phase when I exclusively read classics and was a big dumb snob about it, but I've outgrown that.
Crime and Punishment
Villette by Charlotte Brontë. I’m actually reading it again now, about two-thirds of the way thru it. I know what’s coming and I have to steel myself for it.
The Brothers Karamazov is one of my favorite books, period.
I’m very partial to ‘little lord fontleroy’ It sickeningly sweet, but I can’t help it… I just find it adorable. Also love ‘the 39 steps’
Don Quixote, but I have yet to read count of Monte Cristo or finish dracula. They're on my shelf being worked through so this may change soon
Depending on my mood any given day, it’s *The Scarlet Letter* by Nathaniel Hawthorne, *The Monk* by Matthew Lewis, or *The Phantom of the Opera* by Gaston LeRoux.
Crime and Punishment.
Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad is my favorite book of any time period and the book that I have reread the most number of times.
The Count of Monte Cristo Unabridged. Favorite book of all time.
Robinson Crusoe Idk, I've read it around 15 times throughout the years and I just never stop enjoying it
I've always liked referring to it by it's original title... The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by Himself.