readers advisory for all discussion

I think someone asked about classics in another thread (Danielle?) and karen suggested a new thread.

Dickens was a stated no-go (although, if you want a Dickens, it's Bleak House all the way) so here are some others:

If you're looking for true Gothic Romantic fiction, try The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole; it contains all the classic elements (castles, ghosts, long-lost relatives, crazy hermits, violent death) but is only about 200 pages long. The Mysteries of Udolpho is the high-flyer of the genre but the action is intercut with long, dull travelling sequences, though beautifully described, and you want to strangle Emily by about page 100 with 300 to go.

Jane Austen: queen of the marriage plots, Pride and Prejudice is a perennial favorite but I also recommend Persuasion (mostly because of Wentworth's letter). If you like Gothic fiction, try Northanger Abbey - Catherine lets her imagination run away with her after reading too many Gothic romances.

Wilkie Collins: Dickens's contemporary (they collaborated on some plays - then Dickens took up with some actress and Wilkie with opium) and the originator of "detective"-type novels. The Woman in White is more Gothic in taste (doppelgangers, evil Italians, murder) but has an interesting structure made up of different first person POVs; The Moonstone is more like a traditional detective novel.

Thackeray's Vanity Fair - the best anti-heroine/bad girl in Victorian fiction is Becky Sharp. Driven, charming, resourceful, amoral, she contrasts well with her school-friend, the sweet and submissive Amelia Sedley. Spans a length of time from just pre-Napoleonic War to about 1845.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell is a series of interlinked short stories about the town of Cranford, populated almost entirely by genteel middle-aged ladies.

Poe short-stories and novels are great at tingling the spine, my personal favorite is The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings: Poems, Tales, Essays, and Reviews.

We are going to read Three Men in a Boat as the group read so that would be a good one, too :)

This is such a big area, what kind of topics or settings or plots are you looking for in a book?

Yes, feedback please! Otherwise we'll generate a very long list :)

i don't know! any classic really! i already read pride and prejudice. the others i havent. i think i will try vanity fair since i've heard of it before. thanks!

My favorite classics: A Tale of Two Cities and Brave New World. :)

My favorite classics are Don Quixote, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Northanger Abbey. (:

Nenia wrote: "My favorite classics are Don Quixote, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Northanger Abbey. (:"

Oh yeah, Jane Eyre. I had to read that for school so I was sure I would hate it, but then I ended up loving it. :D

Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Persuasion
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Fahrenheit 451
1984
Animal Farm
Brave New World

^Some of my favorites

and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Actually, anything by Arthur Miller.