Oh I've got some recs for you if you want meaty! I've been reading classics this year. It started with East of Eden; if you've got a philosophical leaning and appreciate your characters deeply fleshed out, you owe it to yourself to read this book.
The next one was Lonesome Dove, this was my first time reading a western and I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did. The book is also absolutely hilarious and has one of my favorite characters in a book(shoutout to Gus).
I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cresto and, boy, it's turning out to be quite the epic tale of revenge(no spoilers please!).
I like a good thick book but I could not finish Monte Cristo. After about the 40th character introduction I just had to put it down. The problem is me, not the book.
Oh, yeah, the BBC/PBS (?) series was well done. Took a little license with the story, but, as you say, "drove the point home very effectively".
Also read Lonesome Dove this year, also my first Western. I'd watched the amazing miniseries I thought it was great. I'm honestly not sure the book has much over the miniseries which is a rare statement.
If you liked Lonesome Dove and attempted to read the prequel and sequels I strongly recommend against it.
I'm partway through Dead Man's Walk and it's held up well so far. Streets of Laredo was tough at first but by the end I found it enjoyable overall. Still, I'm not sure how much of it was McMurtry being willfully antagonistic to readers with the decisions he made for the plot based on how well received Lonesome Dove was.
Dead Man's Walk was the best of the rest...but it even it was flawed, with all the brutality of Lonesome Dove without the beautiful interstitial moments.
I'm halfway through Stoner right now and think about it quite a bit when I'm not reading it. I really don't know what to think about William Stoner (or Edith!).
I am halfway through my second read of Stoner, and I still don't know what to think of William Stoner, and I think that's deliberate to portray a complex human that can be in the world in contradictory ways. That's all I will say out of fear of spoiling anything.
This sentence from the first page is what piqued my interest in the book: "Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers." I thought, "Why write about him then? There must be something here.". I was not disappointing. :)
The stories in A river runs through it - and the movie - move at a slower pace than modern life, but then sometimes hit at just the right place when that's exactly what I need.
I'm also reading The Count of Monte Cresto. It's taken me forever! I made the mistake of reading the public domain version, which uses Victorian English. Switching to the Penguins classic version has been a lot easier for me to read. But I'm also listening to the Victorian audiobook while I work out narrated by Bill Homewood, and it's fantastic!
I'm going to need a nice, short book after this one.
I don’t know if this is considered a classic, but I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Daphne Du Maurier’s “Rebecca”. I think I might have read it in a single sitting.
I was lead to Rebecca after I found and read a discarded copy of Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History”. I wanted more and Googled “books like
Rebecca”. Sadly, I thought Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”, which lots of people raved about, was not very good.
I first read _Rebecca_ as a teen, years ago. Still recall the thrill of the book. Few writers wrote so engagingly as Du Maurier. Hitchcock's movie was fine, but the book is the real deal.
Diff'rent strokes. In the depths of a 1.75-year-long major depressive episode in 2015-2016, one of the VERY few books that completely made me forget my misery while I read it was "The Goldfinch." The others: Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series.
I tried multiple English translations of The Count of Monte Cristo, and the Robin Buss translation was the only one I enjoyed. (Unfortunately, there is no audiobook of this translation, but I had Codex create one for me.
If you're unconvinced, try comparing a few random passages to see which one you prefer, or just check the beginning of Chapter 1. You could also show a few translations of a passage to an LLM and ask it which one best conveys the nuance of the original French.
I started the year reading Demons by Dostoevsky. Seemed prophetic in a lot of ways about what was coming about 40 years later in 1917.
At the beginning of the summer I read All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I'm not into westerns, but I really liked that one. A modern classic.
Just finished The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry. Such a gorgeously written book.
> I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cresto and, boy, it's turning out to be quite the epic tale of revenge(no spoilers please!).
Once you get done, try The Three Musketeers. It's both romantic (like Monte Christo) and also really funny, not dark at all. Dumas was an amazing writer, backed by August Maquet, who wrote the first drafts on both novels.
John Steinbeck's East of Eden is from 1952, and on Archive.org [0], I assume that is the one? It's not on Gutenberg (as a nice epub), but there is another one from Isa Glenn [1]. Since Netflix has a miniseries based on Steinbeck's novel I'm going to assume it's that one :)
The Count of Monte Cristo was my introduction to classics. I remember being intimidated yet excited by it's length. It's a great adventure, a page turner, and has interesting characters and sub-plots. I had the honor of visiting Dumas' tomb in the Pantheon this summer. Notably, his tomb was raised above the others who shared his room, including Victor Hugo.
I've read The Count Of Monte Cristo thrice. Best book ever. It's one of the few books that made me really feel like I was there with the protagonist.
The Count of Monte Cristo is probably the worst "popular" classic I've ever read. It was trash. So repetitive. It's clearly a product of its time and not a proper "novel". It's a series of newspaper serials aggregated into a book where Dumas was paid by the word. And he used as many words as he could to say as little as possible. One of the rare examples of where many video adaptations are better than the original written version. My favorite part of the movies was him learning to be the Count and that part is basically non-existent in the books. It just skips over to him being a master of everything.
I've read all three of those in the past three years and I loved them all for wildly different reasons.
If you want a classic novel that's enjoyable to read and has a moral point to make, I'd add War and Peace. The story ends and then the author has a whole afterward dedicated to "In case you missed the point, let me spell it out for you."
creature_x · · focus · HN ↗
The next one was Lonesome Dove, this was my first time reading a western and I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did. The book is also absolutely hilarious and has one of my favorite characters in a book(shoutout to Gus).
I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cresto and, boy, it's turning out to be quite the epic tale of revenge(no spoilers please!).
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Now I want to read it again.
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when you’re done, read Umberto Eco on it: <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/10/28/the-cult-of-the-imperfect/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/10/28/the-cult-of-t...
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If you liked Lonesome Dove and attempted to read the prequel and sequels I strongly recommend against it.
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- The Friends of Eddie Coyle
- A River Runs Through It
- Stoner
- The Tartar Steppe
- Siddhartha
And a very cliche recommendation but will still make it, the first 3 Game of Thrones books. I also like the Dark Tower series.
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I also loved The Glass Bead Game, and Steppenwolf
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This sentence from the first page is what piqued my interest in the book: "Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers." I thought, "Why write about him then? There must be something here.". I was not disappointing. :)
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I'm going to need a nice, short book after this one.
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I was lead to Rebecca after I found and read a discarded copy of Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History”. I wanted more and Googled “books like Rebecca”. Sadly, I thought Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”, which lots of people raved about, was not very good.
aanet · · focus · HN ↗
I first read _Rebecca_ as a teen, years ago. Still recall the thrill of the book. Few writers wrote so engagingly as Du Maurier. Hitchcock's movie was fine, but the book is the real deal.
bookofjoe · · focus · HN ↗
bumbledraven · · focus · HN ↗
If you're unconvinced, try comparing a few random passages to see which one you prefer, or just check the beginning of Chapter 1. You could also show a few translations of a passage to an LLM and ask it which one best conveys the nuance of the original French.
UncleOxidant · · focus · HN ↗
At the beginning of the summer I read All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I'm not into westerns, but I really liked that one. A modern classic.
Just finished The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry. Such a gorgeously written book.
hodgesrm · · focus · HN ↗
Once you get done, try The Three Musketeers. It's both romantic (like Monte Christo) and also really funny, not dark at all. Dumas was an amazing writer, backed by August Maquet, who wrote the first drafts on both novels.
teekert · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://archive.org/details/eastofeden0000john_p8l1/mode/2up" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/eastofeden0000john_p8l1/mode/2up
[1] <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75781" rel="nofollow">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75781
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If you want a classic novel that's enjoyable to read and has a moral point to make, I'd add War and Peace. The story ends and then the author has a whole afterward dedicated to "In case you missed the point, let me spell it out for you."