I loved Kristin Lavransdatter! I also love Brideshead Revisited.
I began to read Lolita, and I just could not do it. I understand that it’s a “literary masterpiece,” on many levels, but the subject matter was just so grotesque. I’m not the type of person who is squeamish, but the heavy themes of pedophilia were just too much, and I just felt that with every word I read, I was endorsing it. I hated how it made me feel. This is not a novel that makes you “feel things,” in the sense that it is emotionally powerful, but rather it is utterly repugnant. I just hated it lol
For someone looking for a more accessible work by Faulkner, try “The Reivers.” It’s his last novel and much more straightforward and narrative than many of his other works.
I originally read it as part of a course in literature of the 60’s. Faulkner on one end, Hunter S. Thompson and Thomas Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-aid Acid Test” on the other. Literary whiplash!
I love novels with unreliable narrators because I love puzzles and unreliable narrators (such as in Lolita) challenge the reader. That’s one of the things I like about Wuthering Heights, even though the characters seriously challenge my sensibilities. Trying to unravel the various levels of narration (the Narrator tells us something he’s heard from Nelly, who received a letter from Isabella, who heard s/t from someone else.) fascinates me.
I was forced to read Les Miserables in high school. I loved it, but I’m not sure I could get through it today. And now the musical is my favorite of all time.
I read Moby Dick when I was in middle school and loved it. I don’t think I’d have the patience to sit through all that detail today, but it really pays off if you give it time, like the Rachel needs her time…
I haven’t attempted Ulysses but loved the short stories in Dubliners. Maybe that’s the way to go with “dense” authors - try their short stories. I couldn’t even finish the first chapter of The Name of the Rose, but a friend loved it and I tried a few times. Same with The Sound and the Fury. Did Faulkner write any short stories? I found the Sound and the Fury to be beautiful, but just too difficult.
I love the work of E. Annie Proulx (sure to be a future “classic”). If you tried the Shipping News and couldn’t take it, be sure to try one of the volumes of Wyoming Stories. The language she writes is so beautiful, like looking at a piece of art where you can’t open your eyes all the way right away to take it all in. One of her short stories is Brokeback Mountain.
Another English Lit major here. There’s not a Jane Austen novel I ever made it through. Though I like the movies. James Joyce’s Ulysses. Just … ugh. Nothing should be that hard to get through. Of the more modern classics: I have tried, but never could read more than a hundred pages of Infinite Jest or Gravity’s Rainbow. I am disappointed in myself, but at 54, I don’t think I will ever get through them. The smartest and most thoughtful version of me loved Dostoevsky but hated James Joyce.
Shipping News is one of my Top 10 favorite books.
If anyone is looking for a classic that is yet to be designated so, read Heft by Liz Moore. I read it in 2012 and it’s stayed with me. It’s so simple, touching, perfectly crafted, and about “unlovable” people. One of the few books that made me cry and that I’ve recommended since the day I finished reading it.
Has anyone else read Master and Margarita? Bulgakov. Prepare to have your mind blown. Can’t believe it took me 54 years to find and read that book. Wow. Amazing.
Another classic I started reading but never finished, and I’m ashamed to say it: Grapes of Wrath. I tired again when my kid had to read it in high school. Nope.
@Sue22: Faulkner wrote screenplays for the movie industry in Southern California.
@Sue22 : Read the reader reviews on Amazon for Faulkner’s last work–The Reivers–which one reader / reviewer compared to the work of Mark Twain for its humor & insight.
Yes, it’s a little like Huck Finn in that it involves a boy on a road trip and it’s lighter and more narrative than some of his more challenging works.
My same friend who loves 100 Years of Solitude made me read *The Master and Margharita/i. OTOH she also made me read Dune which I did love!
I love Jane Austen, but Sense and Sensability was always my least favorite, because the younger sister was so annoying. I thought the movie really made me understand her better.
One thing I learned from *Vanity Fair/i, is that I really don’t care to spend my time with characters I don’t like. I get that it’s well done, but it was just so unpleasant to read.
I’ve always meant to read more Proulx, I read Brokeback Mountain after I’d seen the movie and it was one of the few times when I thought both were both equally perfect.
I suspect many “authors” of “literature” are different than writers of run-of-the-mill stories/books/novels
Somewhat like “art film” writers/directors who proudly state that “my films aren’t for everyone” with a bit of an arrogant smirk.
Surely Joyce didn’t write Ulysses for Joe Lunchpail.
@Lindagaf - I was lucky to read The Master and Margarita as part of a comparative literature course in college. That was decades ago and I should find it again. There was a lot going on!
We named a cat Begemot after the cat in The Master and Margarita.
I have a feeling that I will have a LOT more time to read classic novels in the next few weeks. Maybe I should check out “The Plague” from the library.
Maybe you Hundred Years of Solitude haters should re-read the chapter on the plague of insomnia and memory loss that hits Macondo.
(For a long time, I considered A Hundred Years of Solitude as one of my very favorite books, one of the three I was always promoting as the best books published during my lifetime – which was a period much shorter back then than it is now. The last time I read it, though, I was much more aware of its flaws, and I am no longer certain that it’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s best novel, much less one that should be required reading for everyone. That said, it remains a book that you can open at random to any page and read something funny, astonishing, beautiful. It may be more enjoyable as a series of vignettes than as a novel you read through from start to finish.)
Someone upthread mentioned Kristin Lavransdatter. I pulled out my 3 volumes from 30 years ago and started re-reading it.
David Foster Wallace has several essay collections that are brilliant–A Supposedly Funny Thing I’ll Never Do Again[/quote} and Consider the Lobster. I loved them both. That being said, I made myself read Infinite Jest five years ago. It was painful.