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Ask HN: What are your favorite classic books?

by pyzhianov on 8/13/24, 3:33 PM with 46 comments

• by __rito__ on 8/13/24, 7:10 PM

  Does it have to be old to be a "classic"?

  If not, by far, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez is my favorite novel by a Nobel winner. It's great, epic, and lovely to read.

  If you include epics, Mahabharata is actually a grand, epic book with war, friendship, love, sex, politics, realpolitik, strategy, and has a reach story line with scores of great side-stories.

  I also genuinely enjoyed Iliad and Aenied.

  I was also surprised at how good Candide by Voltaire was to read. Had a ton of fun reading it.

• by benpbenp on 8/13/24, 11:04 PM

  I just finished the sublime Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset, in the Tiina Nunnally translation. If you have any interest in the medieval period or specifically medieval rural Norway, it really brings that setting to life and this is reason enough to give it a try. Much more than that though, it deals with so many profound themes -- mostly related to family and faith -- in a very natural and poignant way. I feel like reading it gave me one big long meditation running parallel to my life, to which my mind would dip in and out throughout all sorts of other goings on (it took me almost a year to finish). I would say the cumulative effect was transformative.

• by nataliste on 8/13/24, 11:41 PM

  The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Written in 523 while he was imprisoned and awaiting execution by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, it is often described as the last great Western work of the Classical Period.

• by wrp on 8/13/24, 10:29 PM

  What do you want to get out of reading "classics"? I can think of three types of book that are called classic. First, there are things that are simply old. Second are things that made substantial contribution to our intellectual heritage. Third, there are books that are exceptionally enjoyable to read because of the quality of writing. What are you after?

  Things that were interesting to me for representing older times -- The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Battle of Maldon. Books that I didn't enjoy but I'm glad to know their contents -- all that old Greek and Latin stuff. Books that I enjoy rereading just for their quality -- things by Tolkien, Eco, Wodehouse, Chandler...

• by constantinum on 8/14/24, 3:23 AM

  There is a bookshelf called The Harvard Classics.

  The collection of literary works, philosophical texts, and scientific writings was initially titled "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf." It was assembled by Charles W. Eliot, who served as Harvard University's president.

  Almost all the books can be read for free in Gutenberg.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics

  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/40

  My favourite will always be the plays of William Shakespeare. It has it all.

• by aitooltrek-com on 8/14/24, 2:23 AM

  I personally recommend this book: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. It was an old book but it is really classic. I think Naval's philosophy in this book has inspired me a lot and change my mindset in daily life.

• by cafard on 8/14/24, 1:02 AM

  NYRB had the wonderful idea of taking the first and last few chapters of Henry Adams's history of the US 1801-1817, and printing them in a form you can slide into a windbreaker's pocket. Look for The Jeffersonian Transformation. For that matter NYRB's War and the Iliad is excellent brief reading, though I say less for Simone Weil's famous essay that for Rachel Bespaloff's "On the Iliad" and Herman Broch's "The Style of the Mythical Age".

• by pyzhianov on 8/14/24, 10:10 AM

  Wow, so many great responses, thank you all for that! I'm going to throw in my personal favorite: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Somehow it touches me in a way that no other book does. It's also quite short, I think I've read it at least 3 times in the last few years and found something new and insightful each time

• by ZeroGravitas on 8/13/24, 8:25 PM

  The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character by Thomas Hardy (1886)

  https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-hardy/the-mayor-of-...

  I notice from that link it was on a top 100 Great British novels list.

• by warrenm on 8/13/24, 3:58 PM

  Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin

  Regardless of whether you are Protestant or not (or religious or not) - understanding the theological philosophy of one of the great thinkers of the Protestant Reformation is a wonderful addition to your own mental maps fo the world at large

• by tra3 on 8/13/24, 7:20 PM

  East of Eden by Steinbeck is great. I found it very approachable, and the characters very familiar.

• by kbknight on 8/13/24, 8:30 PM

  I end up re-reading "Brideshead, Revisited" about once a year. It's the rare Christian book where every single character (regardless of their relationship with Christianity) is basically screwed up.

• by FerretFred on 8/13/24, 3:59 PM

  "Confessions of an English Eater" by Thomas De Quincey. An autobiographical work in which the author details his unfortunate descent into Laudanum addiction. It all started well, but ended badly...

• by warrenm on 8/13/24, 3:39 PM

  Flatland by Edwin Abbott

• by warrenm on 8/13/24, 4:00 PM

  The Travels of Marco Polo (I prefer the Modern Library edition translated by Manuel Komroff (it was published in 1931, but the source dates to the 13th-14th centuries))

• by markus_zhang on 8/13/24, 5:40 PM

  Anything by Dostoevsky, but specifically "Notes from Underground" and "The Brothers Karamazov".

  "Jean-Christophe" by Romain Rolland.

• by phaser on 8/13/24, 7:05 PM

  Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

• by abrookewood on 8/13/24, 8:09 PM

  I really enjoyed both The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London.

• by nicbou on 8/13/24, 7:56 PM

  The Count of Monte Cristo. Everyone loves it. It aged marvelously!

• by edtech_dev on 8/13/24, 9:29 PM

  I recently read Stoner by John Williams. Would recommend.

• by warrenm on 8/13/24, 10:52 PM

  Pascal's Pensees

• by fabianholzer on 8/13/24, 8:18 PM

  Senecas "De brevitate vitae"

• by sickofparadox on 8/13/24, 7:58 PM

  Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

• by vismit2000 on 8/14/24, 3:02 AM

  SICP

• by bikenaga on 8/13/24, 11:14 PM

  Someone else mentioned Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbirdge". It's the one of his 5 major novels I haven't read. "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Return of the Native" are okay, but the two that really are magnificent are:

  "Jude the Obscure" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/153

  "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/110

  You can sense his fury at the society he was depicting. You might not want to read either of these, particularly "Tess", if you're prone to depression.

  Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Frontier in American History" (1921) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22994

  This collection leads off with Turner's essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893). It's considered by some the most influential historical essay about America ever written. Historians went back and forth on his claims for decades, and people pointed out many issues with them. It seems like the critics predominate now. But it's still worth reading, particularly since (right or wrong) his ideas influenced the way we think of ourselves. Turner was a very good writer - he was a noted orator, and his essays have an oratorical quality - and the other essays in the collection are pretty good, too.

  Owen Wister, "The Virginian" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1298

  Zane Grey, "Riders of the Purple Sage" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1300

  And the sequel: "The Rainbow Trail" - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5067

  "The Virginian" (1902) and "Riders" (1912) established many of the themes and tropes for the "standard" western, and they're still fun to read. But the genre comprises many other kinds of writing - e.g. A. B. Guthrie, Elmer Kelton, and the next writer.

  Willa Cather's novels:

  The "plains trilogy" (the stories are set in Nebraska and Colorado, but otherwise unrelated):

  "O Pioneers!" (1913) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24

  "The Song of the Lark" (1915) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44

  "My Ántonia" (1918) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19810

  And not quite a hundred years ago, but a wonderful novel:

  "Death Comes for the Archbishop" (1927) - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69730

  A few brief mentions: James Joyce's "Ulysses", though I had a tough time getting through it; some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories (e.g. "The Minister's Black Veil"); "Njal's Saga" (I liked the Penguin edition with the translation by Magnusson and Pallson); the great works of classic fantasy (Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, William Morris, Arthur Machen); the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

• by purple-leafy on 8/14/24, 6:50 AM

  The old man and the sea

• by veeblevee on 8/14/24, 3:26 AM

  The Odyssey.

• by danielfink on 8/13/24, 9:45 PM

  By I D.