Classics for Beginners discussion

The other day on Facebook someone sent this to me, and I thought this would be a good discussion for this group:

"[...] list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard. They [should be] ones that have affected you in some way. [...] Nice way to add to the reading list!"

What are your personal top 10 classics?

Based on the averages of the responses, this is our collective Top 10, I will update this from time to time as responses are added!

Animal Farm
The Count of Monte Cristo
Jane Eyre
1984
The Catcher in the Rye
Dracula
Gone with the Wind
Great Expectations
Little Women
To Kill a Mockingbird

My top 10 (so far) are:


Les Miserables
The Catcher in the Rye
Animal Farm
1984
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Count of Monte Cristo
Gone with the Wind
Anna Karenina
The Iliad
Atlas Shrugged**

** I am most surprised to be including Atlas Shrugged as I don't consider it to be extremely well written. But considering books that have "stayed with me" I can't count the number of times I have listened to someone talk (politician or otherwise) and said "they sound like a character straight out of Atlas Shrugged"!

Barchester Towers
Pride and Prejudice
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The Night Circus
The Housekeeper and the Professor
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Leaving Atlanta
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Mary Barton

These are not all classics, but they are the top ten books that came to mind.

My current top 10.

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot
6. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
8. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
9. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
10.A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

These are the classics that have affected me the most:

Franny and Zooey
Nine Stories
Medea
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
The Master and Margarita
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Three Comrades: A Novel of Germany Between the Wars
A Separate Peace
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Animal Farm

These are my favorite classics:


Lolita
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Atlas Shrugged
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Tale of the Heike
The Count of Monte Cristo
Don Quixote
David Copperfield
The Iliad/The Odyssey
The Tale of Genji
The Tale of Genji: The Arthur Waley Translation of Lady Murasaki's Masterpiece with a new foreword by Dennis Washburn

Mine are (at least at the moment).

The Count of Monte Cristo - this is one of the most entertaining books I have ever read. Definitely a favorite.
Les Misérables - I read this years ago, but it left a huge impact on me. I just love the themes of redemption and forgiveness in this. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame - is a very, very close third.
The Phantom of the Opera - Definitely not the "best" book on my list, but its a personal favorite.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Hobbit
Frankenstein
Dracula
Jane Eyre
Persuasion.

I'm not sure how to do this. I'll probably miss some. But off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Dracula
Frankenstein
Jane Eyre
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
Heart of Darkness
The Call of Cthulhu
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Pride and Prejudice
The Day of the Triffids
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Handmaid's Tale
The War of the Worlds
1984
A Christmas Carol

I'm not sure in what order, but those would definitely be among my favourites:

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Faust
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
1984
Alice in Wonderland
The Physicists
The Sorrows of Young Werther
The Complete Sherlock Holmes (even though naming a complete series might be considered cheating *cough*)
Brave New World
Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Ok, not necessarily 'best' but those that have stayed with me in some way, in no particular order:

The Jungle Books
The Odyssey
Animal Farm
Titus Groan/Gormenghast (these two should really be considered a single book)
The Count of Monte Cristo
Persuasion
The Last Battle
War with the Newts
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Inimitable Jeeves (or most -but not all- Jeeves books to be honest)

The Jungle Book I barely remember the details of, it was a book I associate strongly with my grandad and haven't reread it since he died 16 years ago cause I don't want to ruin it, but I remember it being my favourite book as a kid and the 'feel' of reading it.

Last Battle was the first book I read as a kid where I realised that authors and books were not beyond criticism and that a wonderful beginning cannot excuse a dreadful mess of an ending.

And Jeeves just basically equals summer for me. Wanting to read a Wodehouse is how I know the season has changed.


Hmmmm...I feel there needs to be more gothic lit on my list considering the sorts of classics I normally go for...maybe The Picture of Dorian Gray, but I don't know which one I would take off to fit it in!

I have updated the list (first message). Currently the list has 13 books on it due to a number of ties.

1. The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells) - This is the only book I have ever read twice. My top favorite.
2. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - the close second.
The rest, first names that come to mind, are in no particular order:
3. Dracula
4. The Picture of Dorian Grey
5. Great Expectations
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
7. Animal Farm
8. Jane Eyre
9. Wuthering Heights
10. Dante's Inferno

I could continue with my list, but I have to admit I haven't read a lot of classics listed here. Where have I been? Time to catch up!

My favorite from my meager collection of classics are
Animal Farm
Little Women
All Agatha Christie
Great Expectations
Huckleberry Finn
1984
The Count of Monte Cristo
David Copperfield
A Christmas Carol

My favourites are:

1. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies;
2. The Count of Monte Cristo;
3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes;
4. Any Agatha Christie:
5. Handmaids Tale;
6. The Fountainhead;
7. Of Human Bondage
8. A Prayer for Owen Meany
9. The Illiad/The Odyssey
10. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
Persuasion by Jane Austen
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I have updated the list (first message). Currently the list has 12 books on it due to a number of ties. Sorry to see Anna Karenina bumped from the collective Top 10.

Mine will be
1984
Brave New World
Jane Eyre
Little Women
The Catcher in the Rye
Animal Farm
Love in the Time of Cholera
A Little Princess
The Good Earth
Dune

The top votes have been going to The Count of Monte Cristo and Animal Farm.

So far -

Animal Farm
Catcher in the Rye
Flowers for Algernon
Of Mice and Men
Gone with the Wind
Dracula
The Invisible Man
Grapes of Wrath
The Haunting of Hill House

My favorite classics so far:

Gone with the Wind
Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Cranford
Jane Eyre
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
A Room with a View
Great Expectations
Little Women
Emma

I have updated the list (first message).

Thanks Chris! :)

I updated my list (message #6) with 2 translations of the same title since they are very different from each other (I still have 2 more translations to read, but since it's a 1200 page tome, those will be in the future).

Now I have 11 classics on my list.

My top ten classics (in no particular order except that in which I think of them...)
1. Jane Eyre
2. David Copperfield
3. A Christmas Carol
4. Rebecca
5. Wuthering Heights
6. Fahrenheit 451
7. The Handmaid's Tale
8. Dracula
9. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
10. The Color Purple (not always considered a classic but I'm sure in another 10-15 years or so it will be)

The list has been updated, happy New Year!

Ulysses
Don Quixote
The Brothers Karamazov
Moby Dick
Remembrance of Things Past
The Peloponnesian War
Walden
Wise Blood
The Mysterious Stranger
Waiting for Godot

That is a lot of unique votes!

My top ten classics:

Jane Eyre
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Fountainhead
And Then There Were None
The Scarlet Letter
The Hobbit
The Catcher in the Rye
Frankenstein
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Canterbury Tales

Great, the top 10 list in the first entry has been revised...

In no order :

Villette
Rebecca
Little Women
Gone with the Wind
The Count of Monte Cristo

The Ladies' Paradise
Père Goriot
The Charterhouse of Parma
Froth on the Daydream
Lorenzaccio


Lot of french classics since more than half of the classics I read are french.

Do you read them IN French? I would be envious!

I have updated the list at the top on the thread, for the first time (even with ties) the list is exactly 10 books in length!

A little disappointed to see The Iliad and
Les Misérables drop off the list...

I am french, so I mostly read at first french classics and probably abridged english classics in french.

Though I am not sure if I was mistaken but it seemed to me some french classics weren't considered really as classic because they were more "entertainment" like the Jules Verne books or "The Three Musketeers" so they aren't the to-be-read books suggested by school. That's probably why I discovered The Count of Monte Cristo so late and read it even later.

Oh my gosh, too hard to narrow down.

The Lord of the Rings
Fahrenheit 451
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
I Am Legend
Little Big Man
True Grit
The Hobbit
Anne of Green Gables
The Jungle Book
Little House on the Prairie series
The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson
The Hobbit
Giants in the Earth
Persuasion
Canoeing with the Cree
Cannery Row
Wives and Daughters

You have a number of unique choices!

I still got many classics to read. But from what I have read thus far, here are my top 10.

The Lord of the Rings
Pride and Prejudice
The Brothers Karamazov
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
A Room with a View
The Hound of the Baskervilles
North and South
Lorna Doone
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Black Tulip

I haven’t read that many classics, but here are my top ten in no particular order:

Robinson Crusoe
Treasure Island
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Old Man and the Sea
Heart of Darkness
The Most Dangerous Game
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Frankenstein
The Hobbit
Beowulf

Anna Karenina
The Great Gatsby
Of Mice and Men
The Winter of Our Discontent
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Fahrenheit 451
The Mayor of Casterbridge
The English Patient
Master and Man
Carmilla

Following are my top 10 of all time, although ordering them would be impossible.

The Brothers Karamazov
The Ten Thousand Things
Othello
Kokoro
Candide
Madame Bovary
The Moviegoer
Animal Farm
The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk / Palace of Desire / Sugar Street
In Praise of Shadows

A number of recent entries, no change to the overall top ten this time around... :-)