I like a good book but I’ve pretty much only read biographies and memoirs since I left school. I think its time to broaden my horizons. But where to start? What are the must read classics/authors? Dostoevsky – any good? Catcher In The Rye? What about thrillers – I like films that have plot twists and surprises. I was scanning the Kindle store last night and decided enough was enough (almost bought the Graham Norton book) so let’s try and keep him on the backburner for a while.
TIA
If you want classics that are also thrillers, I suggest Graham Greene (try The Confidential Agent, The Ministry of Fear, Brighton Rock) and Eric Ambler (The Mask of Dimitrios, Journey into Fear, Passage of Arms).
I’ve never read Dostoevsky and Catcher in the Rye tried my patience, but if you’re talking traditional classics then Thomas Hardy takes some beating – Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Return of the Native, Mayor of Casterbridge etc. Or for a long read, Dickens’s Bleak House. I agree about Graham Greene above. A Gun for Sale, The Power and the Glory, The Human Factor and The Heart of the Matter are all good reads as well as the ones mentioned.
Wilkie Collins is a great alternative to Dickens. Start with the The Moonstone (one of the first detective novels) and then onto The Woman in White.
An excellent modern day classic written in the same style is The Quincunx by Charles Palliser.
@Charlie-Gordon
Another vote for Charles Palliser’s Quincunx – At 1,248 pages, it’s an absolute monster of a book to take on but a hugely enjoyable read that’s well worth persevering with
Anyone who likes Palliser and who hasn’t already read it would also find much to admire and enjoy in Iain Pears’ Instance of the Fingerpost
Sad how literary pastiches seem to have fallen out of fashion – remember being being impressed with John Barth’s The Sot Weed Factor for my American Studies Course. You rarely ever see Barth’s name mentioned nowadays
The ultimate example of a book written by an unreliable narrator, Nabokov’s Pale Fire was another example of the form
Forgot about Iain Pears. Superb book.
For crime I can highly recommend Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels..start with the Berlin noir trilogy. Also Adrian McKinty’s Duffy series set in Northern Ireland.
A very recent masterpiece is Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time.
Philip Kerr’s wonderful Bernie Gunther series…Aidan McGinty’s Sean Duffy books (shame they didn’t sell and he had to start writing airport potboilers)…You are a man after my own heart, @Charlie-Gordon!
While I’ve not read them for years, George McDonald Fraser’s Flashman books were also excellent
On a side note, it seems CP has recently published a new novel:
Yes might have to check that out.
Flashman novels were always great fun and incredibly well researched.
Other historical crime series I have loved have been CJ Sansom’s (RIP) Shardlake series and Caleb Carr’s The Alienist & The Angel of Darkness.
On a more literary note, I love Cormac McCarthy and have read Blood Meridian over and over again.
Yeah – Blood Meridian is a must for all fans of scalping!
An Instance of the Fingerpost – brilliant, and not just because he bigs up Quakers. Unreliable narrators? Absolutely!
The Quincunx I stuck with loyally through all its endless pages of Dickensian squalor, complexity and intrigue, only to get bamboozled on the final page by a revelation that didn’t make any sense in the careful following of the labyrinthine genealogical intertwinings I’d studiously adhered to while reading. I tried rereading but quickly gave up as I wasn’t sure it would make any more sense the second time.
A better book in that genre for me would be The Crimson Petal and The White.
They’ve been mentioned on here before but Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin historical novel series (that begin with Master and Commander) are probably the most enjoyable ‘literary’ books I’ve ever read. Wonderful storytelling, memorable characters (even when they appear fleetingly) with a keen and humane insight into the nature of friendship and duty. In case that all sounds a bit worthy, they’re genuinely funny at points too.
…..which reminds me, the most enjoyable modern day classic I’ve read in recent years was Stoner by John Williams. It’s the story of an American academic whose career and personal life are blighted by disappointment. It’s beautifully written and immensely readable.
A second vote for Stoner. Beautiful novel.
A friend recently gave me Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, but I’m not at all enthused. “Hamnet woke up to find the house empty.” Those 8 words could have been the opening line, instead Hamnet’s waking and finding the house empty is stretched out over the first six pages or so. I was going to continue yesterday but instead I noticed Truman Capote’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s on the shelf and picked that up instead as I haven’t read it for decades and was glad I did as it’s a much more immediately entertaining read.
Hi @Gary – I was just scrolling down to recommend Hamnet. Yes, it’s long drawn-out but very engaging and heart-breaking, even though you know what’s going to happen. I would also recommend ‘Star Of The Sea’ by Joseph O’Connor – a good whodunnit and historical novel rolled into one. Most of his books are very good. Can I also give a shout out to a perennial favourite of mine – ‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson – a facinating book. Her Jackson Brodie detective novels are well worth checking out as well…
..and also the follow-up to Life After Life, A God in Ruins
One Good Turn, the first Jackson Brodie, is a rare example of a literary novel that is also hysterically funny, and a brilliant whodunnit with an original plot. I’ve read it three times, unusually for me. I didn’t like the subsequent ones as much, but they are all worth reading.
Star of the Sea is indeed excellent.
Maggie O’Farrell’s early novels are wonderfully sensitive explorations of relationships. There was a time when I would devour anything she produced. But then, in my eyes, she became a serious AUTHOR (read boring), and I kind of trailed off.
John Lawton is another author well worth checking out, particularly his Inspector Troy novels. If you want a modern classic, ‘Absolute Beginners’ by Colin MacInnes is a good bet.
Another vote for Kate Atkinson here. Both her “serious” novels and the Jackson Brodie series. Excellent.
A more modern read, I recommend Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan. Very “now”.
I frequently visit my secondhand-books shop and buy any novels published by Vintage Classics (easily spotted as they have a crimson spine, with the word Vintage at the bottom). The print is very legible and the range of novels and authors is huge . For example: Stoner is mentioned above. It is available under Vintage, as is Butcher’s Crossing, another book by John Williams which, in my opinion, is more enjoyable. I’m currently reading Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love (Vintage has the whole range of Bond books) but am stumbling a bit with the overt sexism – a product of the 1950s, when the book was written – and other cliches of the time, often involving Turks and gypsies. I may then move on to Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil.
One of the things I most miss about the UK is a good second hand bookshop. One of life’s great pleasures. I have so many orange and green Penguins as a result of so many hours spent in them back in the day. Though when I go back there are far fewer shops than I remember 20 years ago sadly.
I really enjoyed the Flemings but they do have to be read a little bit as period pieces (the sexism,as you mention). But it’s also very funny the kind of thing that made Bond a sophisticate in 50s Britain – a banana, an avocado, filter coffee. They’re also much nastier than the films of course, but undeniably good reads.
Yes, the Bond books are a fascinating time capsule. In From Russia with Love, when Bond flies from London Airport to Istanbul he travels on a four-propeller Viscount with BEA via Rome and Athens, where all 13 passengers are routinely obliged to disembark for half an hour or so. He flies at a height of 20,000 feet through the clouds, with corresponding turbulence and lightning, rather than at twice that height, as now. On reflection, I would prefer today’s cramped, crowded but direct Wizz Air flights from Luton to those of 70 years ago.
The book is also a reminder that – apart from the Gorbachev, Yeltsin and early Putin years – the West has always had an uneasy relationship with Russia. As Fleming writes in his Author’s Note: “Not that it matters, but a great deal of the background to this story is accurate. SMERSH … exists and remains today the most secret department in the Soviet government.” The killers of Litvinenko and those in Salisbury (despite the latter being pretty inept) were the latest in a long line of state-sponsored assassins.
Two that I recently revisited (after originally reading them in my later teens) that I enjoyed again on re-reading were Milan Kundera’s “Unbearable Lightness of Being” (not sure if its strictly a classic though) and W. Somerset Maughan’s “Of Human Bondage”.
I’m trying to get a copy of this, The Lone Rider of Santa Fe by Holly Martins, but I can only find this cheap knockoff. They can’t even get the title right.
Bernard Lee and Wilfrid Hyde White stole that movie with just one of their lines apiece.
‘Goodness, how awkward’
‘Sounds anti-British, sir’
More AI generated nonsense.
It was an attempt at humour, though admittedly it is from a classic film.
Oh, sorry! I missed the point (as I often do.)
I’m just surprised no-one has written it.
no hay problema
The most recent “literary” book I read and enjoyed was Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Mind you, I also liked Hamnet.
Not sure if I should suggest (given the elevated nature of the examples above) – but the Sherlock Holmes novels might fit the bill? Would m’learned colleagues above class Holmes stories as “literary classics”? I certainly would…
Another vote here for John Williams’ ‘Butchers Crossing’
And one for ‘Uncommon Danger’ by Eric Ambler.
Read ‘Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky’. A three novel anthology by Patrick Hamilton. All three (in fact all of his novels) were written during the 1930’s and all paint pictures of loneliness, missed chances and disappointment. But beautifully done.
As alluded, no nob gags however.
Some pub quiz tastic Patrick Hamilton triv. Which everyone here will know.
Anyway…
He wrote the play/movie ‘Gaslight’ in which the baddie convinces the nice lass she’s done loads wrong. Hence the term ‘gaslighting’
He wrote the play ‘Rope’ which Hitchcock famously filmed in one take. Even though he didn’t, though the two edits are concealed very well.
There are no edits as such in Rope – just a series of 10 uninterrupted shots that lasted for as long as the reel of film in the camera. Hitchcock concealed the reel changes by ending/starting each shot by match-dissolving in and out something black – (e.g. someone’s jacket or the inside of a trunk, etc).
If you like Rope, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pembrton do a very
funny (one) take-off of it S1 of Psychoville
You’re bang on the money about PH
I’m taking full advantage of this impromptu “hidden edits” sub-thread extravaganza to say I had a spate of rewatching war films recently and although I remembered 2022’s All Quiet On The Western Front as being my favourite, the one I liked most second time round was 1917. The whole hidden edit thing worked really well with the momentum of the story (and of course Roger Deakins is Roger Deakins). Dunkirk was a lot rubbisher than I remembered.
That makes much more sense
I really, really disliked 1917, an unbelievable clichéd storyline, wooden acting and as for the the gimmick of the hidden edit – pah!
I’ll give it another go one of these decades .
Erm. What is a hidden edit? An what was it in 1917?
Patrick Hamilton is a wonderful call. Hangover Square (good title no?) plus the Gorse trilogy are so good.
And referring back to my second hand bookshop comment above I found Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky in a second hand bookshop in Hay-on-Wye back in the days before the Internet and it was such a good moment. It’s probably a Penguin classic now (and deservedly so) but it wasn’t then.
Recent ‘literary’ reads I have enjoyed –
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
News Of The Dead- James Robertson
Lessons – Ian McEwan
Demon Copperfield- Barbara Kingsolver
Prophet Song – Paul Lynch
Our Fathers – Andrew O Hagan
I have just finished Prophet’s Song after being given it by a friend.
A very powerful read that has really stuck with me.
I also loved Lola in the Mirror by Trent Dalton. Completely different but also powerful and important, I felt.
I also really liked Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane.
Things like 1984, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man (Wells) are very readable classics and great. Also Sherlock Holmes as mentioned above. Gogol, Dead Souls.
More modern would be Murakami – Kafka On The Shore, Don Delillo – White Noise, Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections, John Updike – Rabbit Run, Julian Barnes – Arthur and George, William Boyd – Any Human Heart, Italo Calvino If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche – Americans, David Mitchell – The Bone Clocks, Margaret Atwood, – The Blind Assasin, John Banville – The Untouchable, Graham Greene – End Of The Affair, Kurt Vonnegut – Sirens Of Titan.
This website is worth a browse. It lists all secondhand bookshops in the UK and Ireland, with details of the kind of books each of them stocks.
https://www.thebookguide.info/
Surprisingly easy “classic” reads :
The Fall, Albert Camus
The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic, Solzhenitsyn
(spoiler alert)
Crime and Punishment is a little harder to follow because Dostoevsky likes to have the same character suddenly called different nicknames by different people – but it’s a great read. In the TV series Columbo, we know whodunnit early on and they appear to be in the clear. The Detective weasels the truth out of the perp through seemingly unrelated mundane observations. In Crime and Punishment, this process is much more subtle. I loved it.
Ooh! One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich.
If you like that I implore all of you too seek out a long out of print second hand copy of ‘Dolgun’
It’s the entirely gripping and true story of one Alexander Dolgun, and American diplomat abducted by the NKVD (soon to be KGB) in Moscow in 1948. He was interrogated in the Lubyanka for two years before being sent to the Siberian gulag for 11 years.
Completely enthralling if rather harrowing story. Quick wits, resilience, youth and luck we’re the only things that kept him alive.
Solzh himself consulted him for ‘One Day…’
Thanks – I will!
The recent series The Tattooist reminded me of it.
There seems to one available for about £3.50 on Amazon
Few mentions of Barbara Kingsolver’s Daemon Copperhead. Her earlier Poisonwood Bible is even better im(ns)ho
Another enthusiastic vote for Demon Copperhead. It’s a long but very satisfying read, She doesn’t pull any punches about the horrific opioid crisis in the USA, notably the Appalachians.
An Instance of the Fingerpost. Kate Atkinson, So many excellent books have been mentioned.
The question of literary vs popular novels reminded me of this recent piece from the Guardian. Two very successful commercial authors, Lee Child and Richard Osman, talking about their work. They have some interesting things to say, even if I don’t always agree with them.
This distinction between literary and commercial fiction irks me a little. I’m sure Barbara Kingsover, for example, did not set out to write a literary novel. She had a powerful story to tell.
“3,000 intellectuals in Notting Hill.” ! Or why not 4,000 intellectuals on the Afterword??
“LC My writing had to be commercial because it was a reaction to losing my job [at Granada TV], and so it was a way of making a living. But that’s where I find the fascination. I’m not interested in writing for 3,000 intellectuals in Notting Hill: I would rather have 3 million regular people around the world, because the stakes are higher. If you are a literary reader, I think two things. First of all, you don’t expect to be 100% satisfied by any book. If it gets to kind of 85%, you’re very pleased. If you pick up a book and it’s not very good, you just put it down and you pick up the next one. But at the fringes of readership, the sort of people who buy my books or yours, they buy them to go on holiday, they buy them at the airport.
RO My default is to write commercial fiction, because that’s just how my brain is. I want to do something that the maximum amount of people love; I want to write something that’s good and then sits right in the heart of popular culture. You want the sort of book where, if you’re on a long-haul flight and you open the first page, it takes you through that entire flight – that sounds trite, but it’s not, because how do you keep someone through an entire flight? You keep them with story, and you keep them with character, and you keep them with wit and with a personality that people want to spend time with. I love literary fiction, but there are ways and means of getting away with a mediocre literary fiction book where there isn’t a way of getting away with a mediocre mainstream book.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/14/i-wanted-to-write-a-suburban-reacher-richard-osman-talks-to-lee-child-about-class-success-and-the-secret-to-great-writing
Couldn’t finish DC – just too depressing
It was indeed a journey into hell, Lodestone, but there’s a cautious optimism at the end.
I used to devour John Steinbeck books, not sure I could any more.
I certainly couldn’t manage a whole one…
I might be able to squeeze in a short story…
Grapes are generally nice, but those of wrath can be indigestible.
I could eat one can perhaps, but not a whole row
Are you men or mice?
“Surely Mr Creosote might just find space for one wahfer-theen slice of Mice and Mint?
Haven’t read one for years but I loved them when I did. “Cannery Row” is a good start point.
Couple of easy reads. Treasure Island is a great book. Three Men in a Boat is beautiful and everyone should read it.
On listening to a podcast earlier, an interview with John Boyne, he spoke about John Irving, who I haven’t read in many years. I would recommend A Prayer For Owen Meaney but The Cider House Rules and The World According To Garp and both excellent as well. On the subject of John Boyne, his big success was the very good Boy In The Striped Pyjamas but his best book in my opinion is The Heart’s Invisible Furies – an epic tale of Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first as seen through the eyes of a gay man. A kind of homosexual Forrest Gump if you will. A lovely read. His new quadrilogy of short novellas based on the four elements is off to a good start. ‘ Water ‘ and ‘Earth ‘ were released earlier this year with ‘Fire’ to come soon…
Read the HIF – very, very good.
Have you ever read James Plunkett’s Strumpet City, J? Superb retelling of the Dublin Lock Out of – IIRC – IIRC – 1912 – made into a terrific RTE series in the early 80s wit Peter O’Toole as union leader, Jim Larkin
https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=strumpet+city+full+episodes
Yes, J, I read it many years ago and the DVD of Strumpet City is in my collection – a great TV adaptation for it’s time – adapted by the great Hugh Leonard. David Kelly’s Rashers Tierney will live forever…
Yes, the ending when the priest wouldn’t let him be buried with his dog
was horrible
Thanks, Jaygee. I don’t need to read it now.
Apologies for that, T, but I still think you might find much to enjoy in SC were you to read the book or watch the series.
While what the priest does to RT is awful, they’re only two of the 10 or so characters whose social rises and moral falls plunkett covers.
It’s ultimately the circumstances that change each character’s
fate along the way that makes the book such a good read.
I was almost in that series. The producers came around our school looking for urchin material and selected me and a few others evidently on the basis that we were 15 year olds who looked about 10. I remember having to get written permission from our parents to have our hair cropped. Unfortunately the opportunity never materialised for whatever reason. We heard no more about.
It was then that I realised that I would never play the Dane.
It’s a very good series but my recollection is that it was relentlessly grim. I have the DVD still in its cellophane wrapping.
Somewhere in an alternate universe, Bamber, you are playing the Dane and Kenneth Branagh is posting to The Afterword.
Bamber would have made a great Dane
@Bamber it must have been a most devastating moment in a young man’s life.
A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions
Thanks for the support lads. A minor role in Fiddler on the Roof in which I struggled to remember my two lines of dialogue suggest it was social work’s gain rather than acting’s loss. I blame the fact that my full beard and moustache were glued on with Bostik when the theatrical glue proved ineffective. Ah the sweet smell of trichloroethane!
Now you’ve reminded me of the smell of cow gum.
où sont les odeurs d’antan ?
In my opinion, nothing beats To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s a thriller and a whodunnit.
One of the banned books.
I agree. Except The Great Gatsby perhaps.
During the last decade I have noticed that more and more classics ends up in the librairy’s bins,(banned books !) those copies are clean and the pages dont fly away when try to read them in a parc (unless that one by Hunter S. Thomson who tried to escape order one last time pretty much like the characters he described, great book anyway, Hell’s Angels), so, I found Cold Comfort Farm which is a great classic in the parody genre which counts “les déliquescences d’Adoré Floupette” in its ranks what makes this Book a classic is the fact that you can relate to those characters or nearly use them as adjective, I’ve met a Flora Poste wannabe last month for example and that tells you everything you want to know about her.
One book I always recommend is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Written in something like his fourth language, it’s a vividly brilliant novella (i.e. not Mill on the Floss, which is a bonus).
I love a French classic – Bel Ami is my top tip assuming not already suggested. Also La Bete Humaine (or The beast within because we’re not supposed to be using French anymore) and Therese Raquin.
There are two modern novels I always recommend – Someone to watch over me by Paul Wilson and Ring Road by Ian Sansom. You might have to root around in second hand shops for the former but it’ll be worth it. It seems a slight novel about doing good and changing lives for the better, but just absolutely wonderful. No literary tricks and mercifully short. It came out in 2001 and as far as I know, he has never written anything since. Ring Road is just v funny, a Northern Irish take on what Garrison Keiller did. If you take to this, you’ll love his Mobile Library and County guides series. He has a brilliant turn of phrase and never fails to make me laugh and bring me joy.
Two more.
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth and Jennifer Johnston’s How Many miles to Babylon. Jeremy Paxman was always banging on about The Radetzky March and he’s right, can be summed up as a family saga in the last days of the Austro Hungarian empire up to WW1. Sounds heavy, it isn’t at all. Jennifer Johnston is one of Ireland’s greatest writers and she had a run of quite brilliant novels with Babylon being her masterpiece – a WW1 tale – and all her novels were perfectly pitched. She could convey emotion in a few words and phrases. None of her novels were more than 200 pages but they all lived long in my memory.
William Trevor also very much counts as classic; two novels – Fools of Fortune and The Silence in the Garden and his collection of short stories.
His fellow Irishman – Brian Moore – also worth checking out. He had a hell of a range; wrote about women v well – try The Doctor’s Wife, historical novels – Black Robe – and thrillers – Lies of Silence is excellent.
I’m intrigued: why are we not supposed to be using French anymore?
Just having a pointless pop at Penguin classics for republishing La Bete as The beast within. Feel free to carry on using French, much like Eric Olthwaite’s dad did in Ripping Yarns, to avoid having to speak to his son.
BM’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne is also very good, as was Catholics; both later turned into movies. John McGahern whose That We May Face The Rising Sun recently got made into a fiillum was another wonderful Irish writer
Have you read Irene Nemerovsky’s Suite Francaise, @Dodger-Lane? It was if not the best, then the most high profile of the various pre-WW2 books that got rediscovered a few years back. Can’t remember the authors or the titles, but there were two others that were equally good – one about a family which printed and displayed anti-Nazi posters during the rise of National Socialism; and the other about a Jewish businessman condemned to ride train after train to avoid getting sent to the camps
Good choices there @Jaygee. Whilst we’re here – Amongst Women as well.
Yep, Suite Francaise is an extraordinary book. I think the ones you mention are Hans Fallada – Alone in Berlin – which I found a bit underwhelming. The Passenger is the other one you mentioned which is great.
If we’re talking “classics” here that means 19th century or earlier to me. My favorites are;
– Vanity Fair by William Thackery (It’s literally War and Peace with jokes and Becky Sharpe is the greatest female character in all literature).
– Any Jane Austen, but just start with Pride and Prejudice (Short chapters, funny as hell, pretty cruel as well)
– Treasure Island, Jekyll and Hyde or Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. (They are classics for a reason)
– Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (If you’ve watched Apocalypse Now then you just need to read where it came from. You won’t regret it)
– Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (It’s a perfect book, it just is)
– The Picture Of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde (short and funny are major criteria for me, and it was his only novel)
– Any half decent collection of Chekhov stories is worth your time. Especially if it has The Lady With The Dog and The Kiss in it.
– Bartleby or Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville (you’d think either was written in the twentieth century. So ahead of their time)
– Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. (Real hidden depths to these.)
– Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (utterly batshit mad in a good way)
That’ll do for starters. I find Dostoevsky awfully hard work. I much prefer Tolstoy. Gogol is another Russian I’m fond of, although he’s really from Ukraine.
I forgot Gullivers Travels! Fucking hell, how could I do that?
An oversight of truly Brobdingnagian proportions on your part, @ganglesprocket
As well as his well known works, I really liked Coming up for Air and Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell.
On the understanding that a “classic” has to predate the birth of Christ, how about The Odyssey? Full of great adventure and remarkable scenes, and the fairly recent translation by Emily Wilson zips along.
Much appreciated as ever.
I’ve purchased Stoner based on multiple recommendations here. I will return to this thread once it’s finished.