[Closed] Easy reading classic books?

Asterix.

Although it's debatable if they are "classics", I really enjoy Robert Louis Stevenson.

I re-read Kidnapped when walking the West Highland Way a few years ago and it was brilliant.

HG Wells as well. War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, loads more.

Also, they are available for free on https://www.gutenberg.org/

There's classics and there's classics.

Jules Verne (20k leagues under the sea is good)
Dracula

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Ooh, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a fantastic story and very much worth a read.

Sideways suggestion "little house on the prairie" series. Its not saccharine and icky like the TV series - its really nicely and simply written and tells a wonderful story of pioneering in the US. I really enjoyed it and its very easy to read.

The old man and the sea, you'll read it in a few hours, but it'll live on with you for a long time.

Three men on a boat is hilarious as well

Steinbeck
Although the angry raisins is heavy going.

Albert Camus - The Outsider

Anything by Orwell.
Anything by Conan Doyle.

1984

I've always found Kurt Vonnegut fairly accesaible.

Slaughterhouse Five obvs. but also Cat's Cradle.

Would heartily recommend Cider With Rosie - Laurie Lee.

Very accessible, absolutely *beautifully* written, evokes a bygone age, and really quite dark in places (not twee at all).

Sideways suggestion “little house on the prairie” series. Its not saccharine and icky like the TV series – its really nicely and simply written and tells a wonderful story of pioneering in the US. I really enjoyed it and its very easy to read.

They're fascinating bools, though they're easy to read because they were written for children. Also steeped in the inherent racism of Manifest Destiny and with some more overt dehumanising and objectivication of Native Americans.

Would heartily recommend Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee

Excellent call, worth following up with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment Of War.

My Quick list of would-recommend more modern classics would include (in no particular order)
Catch-22
The Great Gatsby
Orwell esp Animal Farm and 1984

Johnners - very much a product of their time indeed. I just found them surprisingly enjoyable - as much for the historical detail

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene is quite a short but very good read flows well and is very dark.

Oh, and another vote for Catch-22

Depends what you mean by 'easy' but Dickens books are surprisingly funny and quick to get through. Mark Twain is very funny too.

Three men on a boat is hilarious as well

Read this last month. Very funny indeed. Slightly dismayed to see the n word crop up at one point. Different times of course, but it really jarred! Still really enjoyed the book though.

Johnners – very much a product of their time indeed. I just found them surprisingly enjoyable – as much for the historical detail

Indeed they are, and I'd certainly be a lot happier having a bash at building a log cabin after reading a couple of them!

Slightly dismayed to see the n word crop up at one point.

I'm sure it's was in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer when I was kid in the 1970's?

Oh yes, another vote for Orwell. I'd read pretty much anything by him

I’m sure it’s was in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer when I was kid in the 1970’s?

I haven't actually read those! I've only read his travel stuff. But yeah, I can well imagine 😬

But yeah, I can well imagine 😬

A quick google shows the N word is used a lot.

Really interesting article on the censorship here.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable

To Kill a Mockingbird
Great Expectations (wrong century, but an easy read and definitely a classic)
Of Mice and Men
Ulysses
Lord of the Flies
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Brideshead Revisited
A Handful of Dust

Joking about Ulysses, of course

Electric Kool aid acid test,On the road,The Dice Man,Valis,Fear and loathing in Las Vegas,Junky,Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance(not so easy a read).

Excellent call, worth following up with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment Of War.

Have loved the Slad Valley and Laurie Lee since I moved to nr Stoud 10 years ago. We've just bought a house at Bull's Cross so The Woolpack is now my local 🙂

Really interesting article on the censorship here.

It's an interesting piece - I'd always rather read an unexpurgated original, uncomfortable as it can be at times. To do otherwise is as much editing the times they depict as the books themselves. I read Huckleberry Finn as a child in the early Seventies and have no memory whatsoever of finding the use of the n-word at all jarring or offensive. That also tells its own story about me and the time I was living in.

Fahrenheit 451.

Very easy reading. And a fantastic read as well. Scary how close to the mark he got.

I don't really agree about catch 22 be an easy read. It's great but it jumps all over the place. Or have I totally misremembered?

I read Huckleberry Finn as a child in the early Seventies and have no memory whatsoever of finding the use of the n-word at all jarring or offensive.

I remember the stories being very anti-racist. The characters who behaved in a racist manner, were the bad guys and made to look like ignorant fools.

Dostoevsky is very accessible and popular to this day - notes from underground (very short) and Crime and punishment are common starting points.

Was an epiphany for me reading these as I just read SF and fantasy as a teenager, couldn't believe something so old, dry-sounding and Russian could be such a pageturner. I think a lot of people experience Dostoevsky as a gateway author into more literary reading.

Orwell's essays are really good too

Thanks all. I've read and enjoyed Catch 22 so guess that can be used as a barometer!

I think in terms of 'easy' I've tended to discard books where every other word is deliberately complex. It's hard to explain but I once read a Will Self book that was hard going!

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I've read one and a half Will Self books, and I think that's enough for this lifetime!

Brave new world

Many of these were curriculum books I grew up with. They remind me of school lessons and forced reading to analyse the story. Shame it's put me off what are no doubt great reads.

In addition to those mentioned -
Nabokov - Lolita
O’Connor - Wise Blood
Norman Mailer

then go back and read them as stories rather than future exam questions. I reread 1984 recently and while it does still make you think, it's on my terms now.

Can I not add Moby Dick to this list...... I got through it, in the same way as Cav got through the Pyrenees.

Evelyn Waugh: Work Suspended & other stories (a compilation of beautiful short stories).
George Orwell: Down & Out in Paris & London (A stunning & evocative memoir).
Hemingway: Paris, a moveable feast. (Memoirs of his time in Paris as a young writer learning his craft).
Hemingway: The first 49 stories (a lovely compilation of early short stories).

Dickens is actually really readable. Don't be intimidated by the size of the books - they were the equivalent of soap operas in their day and were serialised in magazines so the chapters are short and often end on a cliffhanger. Great Expectations, Bleak House and David Copperfield are probably the big three. The stories are timeless and there's much more going on than in the TV adaptations. I'm also a fan of Conrad and Hemingway - again really easy to read, with short, to-the-point sentences and generally no messing about with time shifts etc.

The Three Musketeers series is well worth going through... I always thought it’d be stale but it rolled along nicely. Funny as f with some really inventive dick jokes.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

In cold blood
Truman Capote

I think Dickens, you're either enchanted by it or you just want to chuck it as far as you can. I've never quite understood what defines a classic author and why old is regarded as a quality. Modern literature (literature as opposed to churned out pap) can be fantastic. Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, written in 1470 is a brilliant (if impenetrable to start with) read.
I don't want to just list authors, but Evelyn Waugh, Tom Woolfe, John Le Carre, Jane Austen, PG Wodehouse, Jonathan Coe, Stephen Fry, Anthony Powell (wrote a 12 volume novel where nothing happens - brilliant!) might get you on a path from which you can explore. I just love the way you can delight in rolling the phrases around on your tongue.
Don't try David Mitchell (the author not the comedian) without a user guide and a safety net though. Ian Rankin and Iain Banks, while popular, are first class writers.
And I quite like the definition of a novel, a a story which describes the life of a person experiencing events which means that they are a different person at the end. A good novel should "inform you on the human condition". Not necessarily tell you how many baddies you can shoot.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

good call

There are some great short novels/novellas considered classics.

Try these two for starters:

The Pearl (John Steinbeck)
The Old Man And The Sea (Ernest Hemingway

Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
A Clockwork Orange
Catcher in the Rye

Can I not add Moby Dick to this list…… I got through it

Same here, just didn't think it was very interesting. Quite funny at the start, but pretty boring once they go to sea. Lots of whale facts, if you're into that sort of thing.

Jane Austen, Thackeray, George Eliot, Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell - I've been "getting into" the C19 classics now I have more free time. Having been cycling round the countryside a lot in the last year, they make a lot more sense to me now as I've been riding past villages not *that* much different from the settings of a lot of these.
I always like a good Dorothy Sayers too but possibly too modern / genre to be considered classics?

Although it’s debatable if they are “classics”, I really enjoy Robert Louis Stevenson

Definitely classics. As well as being enduringly popular there has been a real reassessment of RLS in academic circles. He was out of fashion in that regard in part because of his popularity but there's way more to him.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes is superb, perhaps the best thing I've read in the last year.

Dostoevsky is very accessible

This is a joke right?

No joke - Dostoevsky is solid red route riding for the improving mountain biker, imho. Some rocky sections that feel tricky first time out, a few fast berms, a chute or two with some stepdowns. But excellent trail design with nice lines of sight and no mandatory air.

The Brothers K is a bit chewy, mind - you wouldn't start there. It's not hard on a page by page level but I found the story difficult to get into (which I think is a common complaint), and it's a big book to read if you're not really feeling the basic narrative.

Right any decent easy to read books from any era! 👍👍👍 I meant classics in a general rather than time sense.
Thanks be again for the suggestions.

Dostoevsky is solid red route riding

If someone asked me for easy mountain biking I wouldn't point them at a red! 🙂

It is a long time since I read Dostoevsky and it's possible there are better translations so maybe I should give him another go. I don't recall finding him difficult to read, just dull.

The Crow Road, by Iain Banks. Has possibly the greatest opening sentence of any book writ.

Ulysses

You have got to be kidding...One of the greatest works of literature, indeed.

Easy reading...no way...My paperpack fell apart before I finished it...

Candide by Voltaire is pretty easy reading. Short chapters, not complex, moves along

I greatly enjoyed the Dostoevsky red route analogy. Also totally agree with Candide. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Sant Exupery is also great, though not a novel. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding is a riot. Oroonoko by Aphra Behn also enjoyable. Just avoid anything by Thomas Hardy and Henry James.

Infinite Jest.

I promise there are no complicated words at all (maybe just some made up drugs in the footnotes, don't need to  worry about those though)

As already mentioned:

Three Men In A Boat.
The Hemingway short stories.
Most Graham Greene.
The Conan Doyle Holmes stuff.
Anything by Rider Haggard.

And....
Huxley, Brave New World.
Most Isaac Asimov.
Spike Milligan's war memoirs.
Anthony Burgess, pretty much anything tbh.

Not sure I’ve seen many suggestions that are easy read yet! I guess that depends o where the OP is coming from but most classic books are nothing like easy read I guess.

But I’d suggest anything by John Steinbeck (I know he has been mentioned) but I’d start with Grapes of Wrath.

Infinite Jest

Worth the expense of getting a wood burner with all the damage to people's health that entails just to be able to watch it burn, page by turgid page.

IMO, of course.

Hunt for Red October.

Also currently working my way through Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books. Lots of shorter stories in there too.

Not sure I’ve seen many suggestions that are easy read yet!

Try this? (tap L-R or swipe to read)

https://fliphtml5.com/xzdz/mkwv/basic

In the beginning, there was F R Leavis.

Before The Great Tradition there were no 'classics'.

And now there are many, but Austen is brilliant, Eliot is measured, James i know nothing of, and Conrad is precise.

Of these, Conrad is probably more interesting, not just because of the whole 'chick-lit' variation, which i know is a bit shit because Middlemarch is obviously the better book here, but jeez look at the thickness of the thing, but i'm pinning it all on starting with The Heart of Darkness and then reading The Secret Agent, which is hugely underappreciated given its prescience.

Middlemarch is a great book.

Dickens is also a great shout, but not Bleak House, Great Expectations is a better 'in'.

In the circumstances, i'd second Clockwork Orange if you enjoyed Catch-22, you'll get into it if you let yourself go.

It is easy only once you have defeated its difficulty, and you will, and it will be rewarding.

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Very short and easy to read but a great book with an inspiring message.

If you're the only person who didn't read it at school, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Hunt for Red October.

Easy to read but by no measure is it a classic book!

All of William Golding’s novels. A 20th Century great who won the Nobel Prize for literature. So much more than The Lord of the Flies to be discovered there. My favourite is the Rites of Passage trilogy.

Also see: Peter Carey, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Hilary Mantel (A Place of Greater Safety is a fantastic primer on the French Revolution).

Not sure how easy you're looking for, but:

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury

Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man

Ursula Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea (and the other Earthsea books)

Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Very short and easy to read but a great book with an inspiring message.

+1, very easy to read. Though I did find it curiously like a good ‘Chinglish’ takeaway, ie utterly delightful and filling, then next morning I was more hungry than I was before I ate the takeout.

Still recommended.

I've skim read and not seen mention of Arthur Ransom yet.

When I was a kid I remember being given a massive 4" thick book, which was Swallows and Amazons and another book on the second half. Pretty daunting but I was hooked and have always read since. (It was thick as it was large print!)

Carefree adventures, boats, camping, adventures, what's not too like. Huge range of books based in The Lakes and Norfolk Broads. He has some older stuff about Russia which I didn't find as interesting.

Border Trilogy Cormac McCarthy

Easy, classic and I still love it as a grown up, Whinnie the Pooh.
.
Also any of the Jeeves and Worcester books.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Classic western - and an amazing book.

Reminds me, must give it another go!

any of the Jeeves and Worcester books

Heard they're a bit saucy

I think Dickens, you’re either enchanted by it or you just want to chuck it as far as you can

I'm in the "chuck it" camp: they're turgid victorian prose which might have made sense when you're stuck in a smelly steam train for a couple of hours and only have to read this week's chapter, but as a modern reader they're a nightmare of longwinded descriptions, with lots of fluff and little meat.

I'd suggest Shakespeare. Hamlet is surprisingly readable, once you learn to ignore the weird words (you can look them up later) and just enjoy the story. Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet - the same.

Count of monte christo is excellent

I found checkov the easiest of the Russian lot to read.

Sherlock's good and accessible too