Recommend me a 'classic' book

[littlebabyjesus]

Whether or not a book needs to be in print is purely a matter for publishers. If loads of students need to buy it for their course in 20th century history then it'll be available in bookshops. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

See the bit I added to my last post - you are right, essentially.

 

[sojourner]

Do you know what percentage of books are still in print 100 years after they were first published? It is a small fraction of 1 per cent. That's as good a 'quality test' as any, I'd have thought.

Who decides if books remain in print? What measure is used to make the decision?

Why would it automatically then become a classic? What's the rationale?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Who decides if books remain in print? What measure is used to make the decision?

Why would it automatically then become a classic? What's the rationale?

Now we are talking merely of fiction, publishers decide whether it will remain in print based on the existence or not of a readership. Endurance over time is as close to an objective test of quality that there is.

Of course it is imperfect - Jane Austen is still in print
*ducks*

 

[Dr. Furface]

This thread needs some classic American novels...

The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Better than all that grim Russian and French shit that take 2 years to read

 

[sojourner]

Now we are talking merely of fiction, publishers decide whether it will remain in print based on the existence or not of a readership. Endurance over time is as close to an objective test of quality that there is.

Of course it is imperfect - Jane Austen is still in print
*ducks*

So presumably it's also the size of the readership that affects the decision?

Now that books are swapped on sites such as Amazon, how can the readership be measured?

What about books that are taken out of print for obscenity?

And I bloody hate Jane Austen, so no need to duck!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So presumably it's also the size of the readership that affects the decision?

Now that books are swapped on sites such as Amazon, how can the readership be measured?

What about books that are taken out of print for obscenity?

And I bloody hate Jane Austen, so no need to duck!

I agree that the rules are changing - being 'out of print' now that there is print-on-demand and downloading is becoming meaningless anyway. As for books taken out of print for obscenity - of course it is an imperfect rule since the very idea of a 'classic' is imperfect. The greatest book ever written may never have been published at all and sit lying in a trunk waiting to be discovered like Fernando Pesoa's Book of Disquiet

 

[Brainaddict]

What's wrong with Jane Austen you philistines?


'Classic' is obviously a subjective categorisation. My opinion on what is a classic is always right though, just for your info...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What's wrong with Jane Austen you philistines?

Mills and Boon for the intellectual classes.

As is Wuthering Heights, for that matter.

 

[sojourner]

I agree that the rules are changing - being 'out of print' now that there is print-on-demand and downloading is becoming meaningless anyway. As for books taken out of print for obscenity - of course it is an imperfect rule since the very idea of a 'classic' is imperfect. The greatest book ever written may never have been published at all and sit lying in a trunk waiting to be discovered like Fernando Pesoa's Book of Disquiet

So the whole premise of what makes a classic is crumbling, if it ever really existed at all outside of the minds and wallets of publishers, and earlier, governments?

 

[jugularvein]

i actually started 100 years of solitude last night which was published in 1967 so broke my own rules there. cracking start to it

it's not that long though so will be moving on to one of those in the thread here. i didn't want dostoevsky cos the last book i read in this ilk was brothers karamazov. thanks for the recommendations

i wanted a 'classic' (and i used the quotation marks as i know it's a dubious tag) because i was in the mood for one.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So the whole premise of what makes a classic is crumbling, if it ever really existed at all outside of the minds and wallets of publishers, and earlier, governments?

Yes.

*cries*

 

[Brainaddict]

Mills and Boon for the intellectual classes.

With an awful lot of piss-taking of 'the intellectual classes'

 

[littlebabyjesus]

With an awful lot of piss-taking of 'the intellectual classes'

So that they can smile knowingly.

 

[sojourner]

Yes.

*cries*

Good

 

[sojourner]

With an awful lot of piss-taking of 'the intellectual classes'

I can't get past the smug twattery of her writing - I find it infuriating

 

[scifisam]

Mills and Boon for the intellectual classes.

As is Wuthering Heights, for that matter.

Jane Austen isn't Mills and Boon - it's chick lit. I like chick lit and enjoy Jane Austen on pretty much the same level (or did when I read her books years ago).

A classic is anything that is published in Wordsworth classics or similar.

 

[bubba_jones]

Vanity Fair is to Charles Dickens's novels what the surrilous News of the World is to the po-faced Independent.

 

[Rollem]

Mills and Boon for the intellectual classes.

As is Wuthering Heights, for that matter.

you obviously haven't read it properly

 

[littlebabyjesus]

you obviously haven't read it properly

Which one?

I admit that I've only read snippets of Jane Austen. I find the overblown melodramatic style almost unreadable. I would rather read Mills and Boon...

As for Wuthering Heights, I read and enjoyed it, but I don't pretend it is anything but fluff.

 

[Mikey77]

I second Treasure Island. As for Thomas Hardy novels, it had to be "a Pair of Blue eyes".

 

[learydeary]

A tale of two cities, you could try war and peace but I have never been able to get more than halfway

 

[Maurice Picarda]

How about Arnold Bennet? Clayhanger, or The Old Wives Tale.

 

[felixthecat]

Thank god - a couple more anti-Austenites! I thought I was the only one.

Ahem - classics. Anything by THomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Ubervilles or Jude the Obscure for preference. Jane Eyre. Either of Wilkie Collins' two great novels. Frankenstein, so you can see how they bastardised it to make the films. Wuthering Heights..........

That'll do for starters.

 

[blueplume]

Nobody proposed poems; what about Beaudelaire's Flowers of Evil?

I'm also for Ana Karenine

 

[scifisam]

Nobody proposed poems; what about Beaudelaire's Flowers of Evil?

I'm also for Ana Karenine

Good point. Byron's Don Juan can be a good read, too (it's more like a book in verse form than what we usually think of as a poem these days).

 

[cuthbert]

3 Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome. Funniest book I've ever read
Orwell - 1984/ Down & Out
Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment. The orignal thriller
John Le Carre - any, they all read really well
Evely Waugh - Sword of Honour Trilogy. Fantastic wide ranging second world war epic, hilarious with brilliant characters and plot

 

[Urbanblues]

Anything by Steinbeck.