A great book can change your life, and that’s no exaggeration. It allows your imagination to flourish, which can sometimes birth new ideas that are worth exploring.
With more than 129 million titles in existence, finding a good title would be like looking for a diamond in the rough. So, to help narrow down that lengthy list, users from Mumsnet gave their book suggestions you can check out.
You will find many classics on this list that you’ve likely already read, but you may also come across a few that may pique your interest. And if you’re not an avid reader, this may just turn you into one.
#1
I’m halfway through The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas & loving it.
Mary Barton by Mrs Gaskell has vivid characters and is a real page turner.
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#2
George Orwells novels are good, particularly 1984 and Animal Farm, but I really enjoyed Down and Out in London and Paris, describing his early life working in Parisienne restaurant kitchens, then coming back to live with the poorest in society in London.
I also enjoy Thomas Hardy books. Tess if the D'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure all set in one of my favourite parts of the UK.
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#3
Because reading is so subjective, I can go out on a limb.
Wuthering Heights is in my opinion the most self indulgent pile of pitiful wank ever written. There. I've said it. (Although it does have a redeeming feature in that it gave rise to one of the most brilliant songs ever.)
Dickens is tricky because he's so long winded. Great romping stories though, and the more popular ones are referenced frequently.
Balzac was a great writer, often churning out books practically overnight to pay off his debts. Daphne du Maurier and John Wyndham were also superb for both storytelling and writing style and Jane Eyre is and will always be wonderful. For modern classics, anything by Penelope Lively is worth a read. Oh and Brave New World.
Great thread. Always lovely to have an excuse to talk books instead of do work...
#4
The Iliad and the Odyssey.
All of human desires, foibles, pains, joys, cruelties and kindnesses are contained therein.
They will change your life.
Read The Odyssey first as it's easier to get into than the Iliad.
Use the new Emily Wilson translations.
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#5
The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver (I know it doesn’t always get listed on the more traditional great literature lists).
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
#6
Agree with a lot of the comments above.
I recently read Gulliver's Travels (for the first time( and really enjoyed it. Well written, very entertaining, and contains some surprisingly pertinent observations.
Also add Bulgakov's Master and Margarita as a great read.
Interested to see several people mention John Wyndham - I really like his novels and short stories but are they really 'great books' or 'classics'? Not sure I think of them in that way.
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#7
Pride and Prejudice is also my comfort book
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#8
Frankenstein - I love that book and Jane Eyre
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#9
Lessons in chemistry is one of my all time Favourites.
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#10
Jane Eyre
The Mill on the Floss
Anne of Green Gables
A Christmas Carol
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#11
Flowers for Algernon
The Reader
#12
I love Moby Dick. It manages to be both about nineteenth century whaling - you can almost taste the salty air - and the human condition. I’m usually quite severe on books with no female characters but this is so absorbing and all-encompassing that it doesn’t seem to matter.
I know this is quite a niche view! - and I wonder if people who don’t like it are expecting a rollicking yarn and are disappointed to find it’s more meditative and descriptive.
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#13
Little women - I love it, and any TV/film adaptation
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#14
Machiavelli the prince
#15
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rebecca
1984
Lord of the Flies
The only "classics" I have ever enjoyed. Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion bored me to tears.
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#16
Middlemarch
North and South
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#17
War and Peace!
Honestly, if you enjoyed Anna Karenina you will enjoy W&P. It is long but it is really enjoyable and has unforgettable characters.
If it helps, there is a Substack called Footnotes and Tangents that does a read along and is full of notes.
Actually, how could I forget, there was also a Mumsnet read along thread that you can still access!
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#18
Vanity Fair - my all-time favourite book
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#19
Crime and Punishment is an absolute banger. Love it.
#20
Dracula
dr Jekyll and mr Hyde
the Scarlet letter
H.G Wells- the invisible man, the war of the worlds, the Time Machine
enjoyable in their own right, but also all of the above have had an enormous impact on horror/sci fi in all forms across the world.
#21
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is almost perfect. Or as close to perfect as any book I’ve ever read.
Anything by Camus is wonderful but the First Man, his unfinished novel is just sublime.
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#22
Donna Tartt is right up there too imho. See The Secret History and Goldfinch.
yy to these lists. They didn’t get to be classics because they’re rubbish.
Virginia Wolf, Jane Austen & George Elliott are my comfort reads.
There’s loads of humour in Middlemarch. It’s a brilliant piece of work.
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#23
Germinal by Emile Zola
I also thought like others East of Eden was phenomenal.
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#24
I liked The Catcher in the Rye
Wolf Hall was good but dense going.
#25
Anthony Trollope is very readable for a 19th century novelist, The Palliser novels, Barchester Chronicles, and also The Way We Live Now and He Knew He Was Right.
Also Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence is great.
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#26
Opinions all my own - feel free to disagree!!
Steinbeck - East of Eden is brilliant, The Grapes of Wrath is even better - if you struggle with it, the chapters alternate between the story of the Joads and broader more philosophic/political so if you just want the narrative it is possible to halve the length of the book!
Flaubert - Madame Bovary is very readable, but unfortunately my copy is in a very small font so I found it difficult.
George Eliot - particularly Silas Marner
I liked Gaskell's North and South, but shockingly can't get on with Dickens (Three failed attempts at Great Expectations!)
Bram Stoker - Dracula is genuinely scary
D.H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover is dull, and mostly about religion
EM Forster - A Passage to India and A Room with a View are very readable
Jane Austin - Emma is my favourite
Thomas Hardy - Read The Mayor of Casterbridge because I had to, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles because I wanted to then didn't feel any desire to read more.
More modern
Catch 22 - cannot get past page 52
Wild Swans was compelling, but back in the 90s I was the only person I knew who got through it!
Wolf Hall - took effort to get into Mantell's style but was worth it
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell took two goes because its long and complicated and you need to read it consistently - don't put it down and expect to pick it up a month later - but I loved it.
#27
I enjoy a lot of classic novels, but I often think ones that were considered a bit trashy/risque in their day can be more fun for a modern reader:
The Monk
Dangerous Liaisons
Lady Audley's Secret
Fanny Hill
Dracula
OF more modern classics, I love Stefan Zweig (Chess, Impatience of the Heart), Nabokov (especially Pale Fire), Orwell (perhaps avoid A Clergyman's Daughter), and one of my favourite novels ever is The Name of the Rose.
#28
I’m going to add Barbara Pym, since she’s been called a modern Austen.
The Enchanted April is my comfort book.
#29
All the Brontes and Austen. Dickens too, although he goes on a bit.
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#30
I sometimes think when reading 19th-century literature that the author really needed a good editor who would take their blue pencil to whole pages, if not chapter! Dickens, Tolstoy...
Having said that, "A Tale of Two Cities" is gripping once they actually get to France (the first third is a bit slow and turgid).
A great alternative to Dickens, and much underrated in my opinion, is "The Odd Women" by George Gissing.
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#31
Great Expectations has wonderful characterisation and some excellent set pieces.
Persuasion is truly romantic.
Candide is very funny.
Lolita is a fabulous piece of characterisation through voice. So clever (“Picnic, lightning.”).
Northanger Abbey is a cracking p**stake.
Cold Comfort Farm is hilarious satire.
Middlemarch is very dense and involving.
#32
Oh, mustn’t forget G K Chesterton, Father Brown.
#33
Bleak House, Dickens
The Gree Mile, Stephen King
A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
The Quincunx, Charles Palliser
#34
A Suitable Boy by Virkram Seth
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
In the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
#35
Someone else mentioned it earlier. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It's very long but completely immerses you. I didn't enjoy the TV adaptation but the book was (imo) brilliant.
#36
The Raj Quartet - Paul Scott.
#37
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Wuthering Heights
The Woman in White
Madame Bovary
#38
If they’re not worth reading, they’re not great, imo.
I love George Eliot and Mrs Gaskell, while loathing Thomas Hardy and Dickens.
#39
Ulysses - a truly life changing read. I'm obsessed.
#40
The Age of Innocence
Please don't stop there with Edith Wharton. The House of Mirth is also wonderful. And Ethan Frome, although extremely bleak, is one of my favourite novels (although it probably only really qualifies as a novella).
Speaking of American female novelists, Carson McCullers is also very much worth reading, especially The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
I am fond of sagas of families in decline. I haven't got around to Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, but I would particularly recommend (all translations from German/Italian):
Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann
Radetzky March - Joseph Roth
The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
#41
Lolita is uncomfortable as all hell but brilliant.
The Unbearable Lightning of Being and Crime and Punishment have stayed with me.
Pretty much anything Murakami.
#42
Oh, I forgot The Forsyte Saga! A cracking read.
