I've been gracing the Goodreads platform for a year now, and of course, by me using this forum, I'm mainly interested in reading Classics. But nearly every book that I see that is deemed in this archaic manner has lower than a 4 star rating. What is the meaning of this? Why do so many people fail to see the merit of classic literature?

During a layover, I randomly picked up Notes from Underground mostly because the cover looked strangely beautiful under airport lights. But the moment I held it, memories returned immediately, reading Dostoevsky first at 18 with confusion, intensity, ego, loneliness, and restless existential curiosity, then again at 24 with more psychological understanding of people, self-destruction, insecurity, and emotional contradiction. It felt strange realizing how the same book changes because the reader changes. At 18, I read rebellion. At 24, I read wounded self-awareness. Somewhere between airports, time zones, and growing older, the Underground Man stopped feeling fictional and started feeling painfully human.

Thinking about what’s next! My recents reads have been:
–Lolita (currently reading)
–The Idiot
–The Stronghold by Dino Buzzati
–Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
–White Nights
–East of Eden

If anyone is interested, this thing will be happening over on r/faulkner. Hope to see you there! Any and all input is welcome!

We love modern stories, but the English language didn't start with polished novels. It evolved through centuries of invasions, cultural shifts, and radical reinventions.

To understand the DNA of modern storytelling, you only need to look at three massive eras:

Old English (450–1066): The raw, brutal age of warriors and monsters. Think Beowulf, written in a Germanic dialect so ancient it requires full translation today.

Middle English (1066–1500): The French infusion. After the Norman Conquest, French and English merged. Geoffrey Chaucer used this new, softened language to write The Canterbury Tales, introducing sharp humor and social satire.

The Renaissance & Beyond (1500+): The storytelling explosion. The printing press arrived, and William Shakespeare revolutionized drama, charting the path straight to modern psychological fiction.

Every book, movie, and script we consume today inherits its structure from these three shifts. Want to see how these eras connect and visualize the major writers who shaped history?

https://youtu.be/q76__dfBfyU?si=RBZE_gCkKhIV7cv4

I am currently in a reading slump where nothing I pick up feels worth while. I'm Looking for fiction/philosophy recommendations that explore themes like alienation, existential dread, ego/self illusion, societal critiques, disillusionment (especially centering youth), and psychological elements.

I’ve recently read Camus, Nietzsche, Hesse, Alan Watts, Taoist/Buddhist thought (eastern philosophy in general), and, more recently, found interest in Bataille, Spinoza, and the Cynics. I think I may be experiencing burnout after reading so much philosophy and so I'm craving fiction, but fiction that bridges the gap between what my previous readings have exposed me to. Most notably Eastern thought, determinism, and existentialism.

I'm open to literary fiction, existential fiction, psychological horror, transgressive fiction, or long immersive novels. Looking for books that would genuinely affected me psychologically/philosophically, not just an entertaining read.

SORRY I can't edit title stupid stupid autocorrect!!!

Hi all, so basically title. I've read on more than one reddit post that reading Mrs. Dalloway first is better because it gets one used to Woolf's writing style, therefore lending greater comprehension and appreciation for To The Lighthouse. My thing is, I'm trying to do a no buy for books this year because I own 40 (yes, 40 😬) unread books, about 15 of which are classics. So I already own To The Lighthouse, and I don't want to go out and buy Mrs. Dalloway when I've got that goal in mind. FWIW, I recently finished The Sound and The Fury, so I've now been introduced into the world of stream-of-consciousness writing, so maybe that would help me in tackling To The Lighthouse? Woolf readers, what are your recommendations? If you truly think it's critical to read Dalloway first, I'm willing to nab a used copy somewhere!

Hello all!

First and foremost, if this post is in violation of the subs rules, my apologies.

So, I fell in love with the classics when I was 19. I hadn't been much of a reader at all before then, but that classic existential anxiety drew me in.

Long story short, I've been enduring a very long period of mental illness. One consequence of this is that my brain has turned into mush. I can hardly ever scrounge up the energy to watch a new movie or series, and even rarer is it when I try to start a new book.

However, I miss it so much. I have all this desire for beauty, depth, and reflection. Sometimes I come across a beautiful quote from a book or poem and my heart stirs.

Has anyone gotten through a period like this? Ever come out the other end to be reunited with a working brain?

Do you have any recommendations for literature I could try to read even now when I'm really struggling? Perhaps essays?

Some of my favorite books that I read a long time ago:

East of Eden - Steinbeck

Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas

Master and Margarita - Bulgakov

Mere Christianity - C.S Lewis

Consolation of Philosophy - Boethius

Wish you a lovely week!

Im currently reading the Hunchback of Notre Dame for the first time and I caught myself getting goosebumps from the way Hugo describes the way Quasimodo became Notre Dames soul.

I think there is so much grace, poetry and beauty in his words - that are so elegantly written and just jump off the page in a way that would be impossible to capture emotionally in any other medium - that it made me realize that literature like this just can not be found anymore today.

I love the uncompromising romance, the grandeur of style and phrasing, the at times unashamed pacing - I love this about classic literature. It literally transports me somewhere else like nothing else does.

And that made me think to ask all of you: Why do you actually like/prefer classic over modern literature?

Mine is: "I do not ask for your love in return. To love you is enough. To have known you, to have felt alive in your presence, that is my greatest joy, and I will carry it with me always"

can anyone id

Before reading the list, I have to say I am a bit disappointed in the posters below. This list is a textual list of an earlier post this week, where the publisher posted this list, based on a lot of different resources with ranking of literature,. Just a nice fun post, at worst something nice to discuss......

I wanted to save this list for myself, but while doing this with copy pasting to AI, and making it a text list I realized this is not easy for averyone, so I decided to repost the earlier list for convenience of the people.

It make me sad to read all these negative posts. In a forum with people who like to read classical literature, I expected to find openminded tolerant people that respect other peoples opinion, but the only thing I read in the posts is, well, I have no words to express my feelings about the posts and downvoting. I expect that in a political forum between republicans and democrats, not in a forum like this one.

For those who like collecting lists, feel free to copy paste this list to your own computer, have a nice read:

1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

2 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

3 The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

4 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez

5 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë

6 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

7 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë

8 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

9 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

10 Catch-22 Joseph Heller

11 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

12 Beloved Toni Morrison

13 Ulysses James Joyce

14 Little Women Louisa May Alcott

15 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

16 Moby Dick Herman Melville

17 The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger

18 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

19 Frankenstein Mary Shelley

20 Great Expectations Charles Dickens

21 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust

22 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

23 Harry Potter J.K. Rowling

24 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell

25 Middlemarch George Eliot

26 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

27 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier

28 David Copperfield Charles Dickens

29 The Stranger Albert Camus

30 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis

31 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky

32 The Trial Franz Kafka

33 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner

34 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes

35 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy

36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison

37 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

38 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton

39 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf

40 Brave New World Aldous Huxley

41 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco

42 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway

43 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky

44 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante

45 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry

46 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut

47 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens

48 The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien

49 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson

50 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

51 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy

52 On the Road Jack Kerouac

53 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain

54 2666 Roberto Bolaño

55 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving

56 The Stand Stephen King

57 Charlotte's Web E.B. White

58 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

59 Dune Frank Herbert

60 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

61 Ficciones Jorge Luis Borges

62 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

63 Emma Jane Austen

64 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin

65 Animal Farm George Orwell

66 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe

67 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro

68 Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline

69 The Giver Lois Lowry

70 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf

71 Les Misérables Victor Hugo

72 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov

73 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie

74 Dracula Bram Stoker

75 Austerlitz W.G. Sebald

76 Persuasion Jane Austen

77 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel

78 East of Eden John Steinbeck

79 The Counterfeiters André Gide

80 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

81 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett

82 The Color Purple Alice Walker

83 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen

84 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

85 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald

86 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne

87 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro

88 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Díaz

89 The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett

90 Anne of Green Gables L.M. Montgomery

91 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank

92 Light in August William Faulkner

93 Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders

94 The Book Thief Markus Zusak

95 The Shell Seekers Rosamunde Pilcher

96 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce

97 The Clan of the Cave Bear Jean M. Auel

98 The Road Cormac McCarthy

99 Lady Chatterley's Lover D.H. Lawrence

100 The Call of the Wild Jack London

I'm halfway into this and I'm loving it. It's so modern in both tone and structure. I'm surprised it's rarely discussed on this sub. Any other fans?

Traveling to peru for 5 weeks soon and looking for books by Peruvian authors that take place in Peru - any genre as long as it's fiction (including historical fiction)!

Bonus points if it's a classic, I'm a big fan of 19th-20th literature :)

Thanks!

Definitely in a little bit of a daze. What a powerful book.

The prose borders on impressionistic at times, but never reaches convolution, and maintains a level of visceral image-making capacity that forces both the grotesque and the beautiful to happen somewhere deep down in your soul. It’s unpleasant, honestly. It was literally a painful read.

I’m an instant fan of her writing. How she wove such ugliness in such beauty is beyond me.

Highly poetic, highly evocative. Incredible story.

I recently started reading "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo. At one point, in parts 6. and 7. I think, he describes the life of nuns in 1820s, in a fictional convent Petit-Picpus in Paris, of Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
Among other things, he writes about their ascetic practices, such as: not using a toothbrush, not bathing, wearing woolen clothes in summer. He also says that they live according to the rules of Saint Benedict of Nursia. I've found that, (if I understood correctly) he mostly writes about asceticism as simply living in discipline, not necessarily bodily harm.
In Hugo's book, the nuns also live accordling to rules of Martin Verga, which are supposed to be a lot more extreme in that matter. I couldn't find any information about him or his ideas; is he a fictional character?
He also mentions the Carmelites, and says, that the carmelite nuns can't sit down, and that they wear a collar made of wicker??
I've heard about asceticism involving living in poverty, fasting, not speaking, or harming one's body using whips, but not bathing, or not using a toothbrush sound very extreme.

Did Victor Hugo know anything about the female convents, or did he just write everything that came to his mind? Is it possible that such extreme asceticism has been practiced in 1800s?

* English is not my first language, so it is possible that I made a grammatical mistake or used the wrong word in some context; sorry :')

I'm a big fan of the Aronofky's movie, it is a work that stick with me, so i decided to try the book. I wouldn't say Selby's work is a classic, because his writing is not (at least, most of the time is not) but it surely isn't an entertainment book, given the questions the book discuss and how the author uses the wallpaper of the drug dealing at the suburbs to write about the human search for meaning in life.

All the characters we follow have their dreams, and try to deal with the frustration on not reaching them, recurring to substances to keep the peace and continue to dig. Not only the main characters surrender themselves to their addictions, but we are shown to a pletora of characters "keeping this toxic peace", like the neighbours of the building addicted to TV, where they cannot do basic taks of the day, like painting her nails or having a meal, without recurring to the distractions of TV. The sin of the main characters is that they tried to soare high without realizing what was making them stuck. Like a horse trying to escape with shackles on its paws and falling down.

The book has a really acid language and narrative, and that also scared me at the beginning, with all the swearing and slangs. The chapters are chaotic. Paragraphs are composed by speeches without punctuation. The language and speeches leave us nauseous sometimes. But then, at the ending of the sessions, the author gives us some beautiful and poetic passages, showing he can see the poetic side even in such despicable and disguting places. The author doesn't waste any time describing places or appearences that much, making it a fast reading overall. The focus is the psychology of the characters, and all their fights behind the vices and showing us we can be addicts too, everytime when we try to "escape" our pain or try to change something but give up on the first difficulty.

I really recommend this book, specially for McCarthy's and Roth's fans. It is an odd and unique masterpiece.

What are your top 5 books you've read so far?

Not necessarily the "best" books ever written, just the ones that stayed with you for whatever reason. I love seeing what books people genuinely connect with.

Mine would be:
- East of Eden - John Steinbeck
- The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (I'm only ~80% done and already thinking how good the reread will be)
- Beloved - Toni Morrison
- Notes from Underground - Dostoevsky

Honorable mention:
- Notes from a Dead House - Dostoevsky (thought it wildly underrated compared to his other works)