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Couldn't hack Dickens back in the day but in my 50s and with a better historic background it's a whole nother story. If stuff doesn't float your boat now just pick up something that does, it's still going to be there later if you change your mind 😉
DezB
Full MemberIn addition to those mentioned –
Nabokov – Lolita
The world of online noncery has cast a dark shadow on this book.
Thomas Hardy : Tess of the D'Urbevilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge are both easy reads and fantastic novels. I highly, highly recommend them both. Neither are exactly cheery though.
A few slightly more modern suggestions. If they're not classics yet then most of them bloody well should be soon
The entire Discworld series
The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series (a trilogy in 5 parts etc...)
The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit
The Harry Potter series (aimed at Kids but they're actually quite good)
The world of online noncery has cast a dark shadow on this book.
Maybe to you, but it's still a classic piece of writing and a very funny book, as far as I remember.
One classic I wouldn't recommend is Dracula. Seriously dull.
Quite a few suggestions along the lines of 'X is an easy read if you ignore...'
So not an easy read then.
Let's be honest, if you want an easy reading classic you want a good story well told*. No authorly tricks or overtly probing the human psyche. Just a good yarn who's depths reveal themselves slowly or over multiple readings. The ones that every generation keeps coming back to and finding something new because that's what a classic is.
*Which is the hardest thing of all to do.
a good story simply told
100% agree - hence my suggestions above
The entire Discworld series
The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series (a trilogy in 5 parts etc…)
The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit
The Harry Potter series (aimed at Kids but they’re actually quite good)
Despite their popularity these are actually a bit niche because as many people hate them as love them. Sci-Fi and Fantasy really divide people I think. And I say that as someone who loves some of your suggestions.
100% agree – hence my suggestions above
I edited that to well told. Do you still agree? 🙂
Ursula Le Guin – A Wizard of Earthsea (and the other Earthsea books)
These are the kind of thing I should have read as a child but I only discovered them this year. They are absolutely outstanding, a country mile better than any other novels about schools for wizards*.
The thing I love most is the wisdom of Le Guin's writing. They teach you something about how to live and maybe how to die.
*Don't get me wrong, I like Harry Potter but Le Guin could write.
Catcher in the Rye
Animal Farm
The Rider by Tim Krabbe. (possibly not a household name but it's a classic cycling book. I gave it to the other half to read, who has no real interest in cycling, and she really enjoyed it).
I edited that to well told. Do you still agree?
Yes.
At least if by “well” you mean “enjoyably”.
The Iron Heel - Jack London, not what you would expect
One classic I wouldn’t recommend is Dracula. Seriously dull.
There is a knack to reading Dracula.
Open book in the middle, tear down the spine, throw the second half away.
I remember Dracula quite fondly, but it's been a long time since I read it...
The Jonathan Harker portion is great then it turns to an absolute hodge podge of unnecessarily tedious episcolary* narration.
*thanks Google.
Edgar Allen Poe for short stories
All quiet on the western front – Eric Maria Remarque
Master & Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
100 years of solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One classic I wouldn’t recommend is Dracula. Seriously dull.
The thing I love about this book is the entirely surprising one liner ending to perhaps the greatest anti-hero ever devised, it pretty much just goes "And then he stabbed him and Dracula was dead" or words to that effect. You have to read it twice just to make sure it said what you think it said...Anyway dull? You have to read between the lines of Victorian/ Edwardian euphemism to get the lesbian sex scenes and the fact that Dracula is written with more than hint of queer (The character is supposed to be based on Henry Irving; a "friend" of Oscar Wilde's)...fo'shure.
The other horror classic that doesn't live up to it's own hype is of course Frankenstein which is mostly written 3rd person from Frankenstein's perspective and is essentially a bored preppie writing a "what I did in my holidays" essay.
Also, under no circumstances read any of the following; Conrad, Hemingway, Kerouac. All v dull.
You have to read between the lines of Victorian/ Edwardian euphemism to get the lesbian sex scenes and the fact that Dracula is written with more than hint of queer
I didn't get that far. If a book doesn't grab me in the first chapter or so, I ditch it. Plenty of other books to read in this world.
If you have not read either Dracula or Frankenstein then I highly recommend both. Dracula really surprised me a) because it was nothing like what I thought it would be based on a hodge podge of B movie makes of it and b) because the whole book is written entirely in the first person(s). Ended up being a bit of a page turner for me.
Similarly Frankenstein is excellent and again, nothing like the B movie fodder I based my expectations on. Somewhat shorter than Dracula but just as readable.
Sherlock Holmes - again, much better in the writing than on the screen...
If a book doesn’t grab me in the first chapter or so, I ditch it.
God yeah, life's too short to be reading novels you're not enjoying.
Jules Verne? Around the World in 80 Days as a starting point.
1984, We, Brave New World (there's a theme here!) Dracula, and I enjoyed The Count Of Monte Cristo
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.
Shakespeare - esp Merchant of Venice, Macbeth
Orwell - 1984 & Animal Farm
Treasure Island - still my favourite story to date
Easy reading spy stuff e.g. Craig Thomas, Jack Higgins, Tom Clancy
Oh, and anything by Christopher Brookmyre. In particular 'One fine day in the middle of the night' an absolutely hilarious riot from page 1
because the whole book is written entirely in the first person(s)
Its a bit more complex than that. There are first person accounts but also newspaper clippings etc to objective is to get the reader to feel like they are researching a factual historical record of events. But in reality makes you hope Dracula will kill everyone so it will just bloody finish.
Its a bit more complex than that. There are first person accounts but also newspaper clippings etc to objective is to get the reader to feel like they are researching a factual historical record of events
Yes I know but I was trying not to give too much away as, for me at least, that style of narrative unfolding in a novel from that era, was part of the charm 😀
Maybe not highbrow classics, but these are all fun to read
Treasure Island - one of my favourite books, easy to read, exciting,
Utopia by thomas.moore - easy to read and thought provoking
Candide by Voltaire
Three men in a boat, probably counts, great fun beach reading
On the classic horror note - my son did Jekyll & Hyde for his GCSE. I've not tried that, wassit like?
I'm going to interpret "easy reading" as meaning engaging comfort reading where you want to read in a sitting. My idea of comfort may not be everyone's as I'd say all of Elmore Leonard is a pretty good starting place and will take a while.
Most of the older classics listed are classics for a reason: lots of people read them and are still doing so, so on some level they're readable. Sherlock Holmes probably top comfort read.
Anyway, to do a bit of dissing...
The pratchett stuff I can see being a comfort read - but is the fact every book has the same plot and characters meant to be part of the appeal?
100 years of solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Seriously? Dense magical realism may be some folks' cup of tea including members of the nobel committee, but it's a stinker as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately the mark of quality meant I made the effort to read more - Love in the time of cholera - intelligent talking parrot companion on endless boat trip. Nope nope and thrice nope, never really got the point and I speak as someone who made it through Roberto Bolagno's 2666 which may as well refer to the number of pages. Whatever, not an easy read.
The book I go back to, for some reason, is Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, a classic comic novel is not an easy thing but this holds up. Though I'm wondering if, like a lot of Anthony Burgess, this may be becoming a lost classic?
I’ve not tried that, wassit like?
At least it's short...
Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim
I know you probably shouldn't let your feelings toward an author colour your views on their work, but Amis is such a entitled privileged prick, I could never bring myself to ever pick it up.
Not great then 🙂 Someone once gave me a library of Kindle books, so many classics in there.
Candide by Voltaire is pretty easy reading
Also a good read in a similar vein - Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson.
A few more suggestions...
Frankenstein
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
And personally I didn't find Lolita terribly easy reading.
Hunt for Red October.
Easy to read but by no measure is it a classic book!
But Sean Connery's in it!
Don’t get me wrong, I like Harry Potter but Le Guin could write.
Harry Potter was deliberately written for kids (at least initially). Earthsea was very much not, and is much darker and more complex. And, as you say LeGuin was a good, possibly great, writer, but I'd add that JLK is distinctly average.
and I enjoyed The Count Of Monte Cristo
Dumas is brilliant. Surprisingly modern in places, very witty, and there's loads of his writing to discover. Even the Musketeer series is several books long.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Damn, forgot about that one. Great read that one too
but Amis is such a entitled privileged prick,
Can't argue with that. He probably got more entitled as he became more privileged, which LJ predates. But like Larkin, on whom the central character is at least partly based, he was probably always pretty awful behind the scenes. But then so are lots of us and he was at least reasonably honest.
I've not reread Lucky Jim since reading his son's Inside Story (good read, for the likes of me who have any engagement with this sort of stuff), which shows just how brutal it was to Larkin's girlfriend Monica Jones, Margaret in LJ. How much any of this should matter to the reader I don't know. (As more has emerged about Larkin's horrible in-private racism, I can fully understand how that would change readings of his poems for many people. But not quite me yet, though I've avoided learning too many details of the horrible stuff. Having had a nazi dad's not an excuse.) On which note: description of a hangover:
He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.
Does Irvine Welsh pay hommage to the subsequent bedsheet scene in trainspotting? (Actually another really good classic easy read now I think of it.) Is Irvine a nice guy? I have no idea.
but is the fact every book has the same plot and characters meant to be part of the appeal?
Little harsh. There are atleast four sub sets. He was also pretty critical of his early work but definitely got better.
He probably got more entitled as he became more privileged, which LJ predates
Wasn't there a picture of Amis asleep on the beach, on his back his long suffering wife/gf? had scrawled:
" 1. Fat Englishman - will **** anything"
after she'd found out about yet another woman he'd been screwing on the side?
All those supposedly great post-war British authors seem to turn out to be a collection of massive shits TBH, Larkin, Amis, Hughes...all of them as bad as each other.
” 1. Fat Englishman – will **** anything”
Sounds likely given he used this as a title of a book: 
Anyway, Lucky Jim, free full text pdf still reads pretty well.
On which note: description of a hangover:
That's a brilliant description!
Of no interest to anyone else.......... I've never read Kingsley Amis, despite his early stuff being written while he lived here in Swansea. Out of curiosity, I've just been reading about where he lived - it's all in the same part of the city I live in and in fact I'll pass his last house as I ride home this evening. (Only a few hundred yards from Dylan Thomas's birthplace.) We also seemed to frequent the same pubs, albeit decades apart - not that I frequent pubs much these days! He was a regular in the Uplands Hotel, now the Uplands Tavern, which is the last pub I visited a few weeks ago.