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Thoughts What Modern Classics Would You Recommend For Someone Who Usually Hates Classics?

neversickanymore said:
@ChemicallyEnhanced

About Clockwork.. your from the UK.. good lord being an American because severe dialect differences in English and English slang it was pretty much written in a foreign language. I would need notation similar to Shakespeare to truly digest that work.
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It wasn't UK slang either, the author made it up for the book so I had just as much difficulty. There's online somewhere like a dictionary/glossary thing that lets you know what all the words mean. Don't think I could have read it without it.
 
F.U.B.A.R. said:
Everything by Iain M Banks.


And Terry Pratchett.


Two fantastic authors who selfishly died before writing more books...
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By including the "M", I take it you're referring to his sci-fi novels*?
I haven't read any of those but I loved The Wasp Factory and Complicity. I've also read and enjoyed (not loved like the previous, but definitely really enjoyed) The Bridge, Canal Dreams and Walking on Glass. It's been a few years, actually. Gotta pick up something else of his. I have a copy of The Quarry; anyone read it? How does it compare to his other works?


*as a help to his readers, he published all his sci-fi novels under "Iain M Banks" and his other novels - mostly contemporary fiction - under "Iain Banks".
 
F.U.B.A.R. said:
Two fantastic authors who selfishly died before writing more books...
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Paha. I feel EXACTLY the same way about Richard Laymon*. He died really young in 2001. He published two novels a year, so I'd have 42 more of his novels to read if he were still with us (and he'd be 75 now so it's not unrealistic he'd still be writing; Dean Koontz is 76 and Stephen King is 74, for example, and both publish twice a year).


*Don't worry if you've never read him or even heard of him. Despite being an American writer, he was SEVERELY underappreciated in the U.S., but he has always been very popular in the UK and picked up a lot of popularity in Australia posthumously. He wrote 43 novels and well as fastbacks, short story collections etc, but he died at young at 54.
 
F.U.B.A.R. said:
Everything by Iain M Banks.


And Terry Pratchett.


Two fantastic authors who selfishly died before writing more books...
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Agree on both authors (like I previously mentioned, not read any of the stuff Banks published under M Banks).

Pratchett is another one I need to get back into. Haven't read anything by him in maybe a decade, but I read the first sixteen Discworld books in my teens.
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
What would you guys recommend of modern classics for someone who hates classics? lol

No Dickens, please! Worst author I have ever read (yes, I know, you're "supposed" to think he's great...but, just no)
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Okay, Dickens is not my favorite writer but he's not anywhere near as bad as these alleged "classic must-read authors"....

Herman Melville
James Fenimore Cooper

In fact there are some hilariously accurate criticisms of the above two by Mark Twain, one of my personal heroes.
 
unodelacosa said:
  • PiHKAL and TiHKAL by Alexander and Ann Shulgin
  • Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
  • A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
  • The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller
  • Junkie by William S. Burroughs
  • Howl a poem by Allen Ginsberg
  • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
  • Neuromancer by William Gibson
  • Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
  • Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
  • The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson (his 2nd finest work next to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas)
  • After Dark by Murakami, Haruki
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Would you put The Rum Diary on the same level as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
Definitely gonna check out Rant. Love me some Palahniuk!
Loved Junky as well as it's sequel Queer. I've got Naked Lunch, but haven't read it yet. How is it (anyone)? I'm a little put off that it seems to be just lots of random vignettes rather than any narrative story :/
 
Kellsee said:
Everybody needs to read How to Hug a Porcupine


Facts
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Thought you were joking but amazon'd it anyway and it actually sounds interesting? I'm more likely to just yeet "difficult" people right out of my life, but of course some are family and I love them regardless, so I think I will read it 👍

That title reminds me of a classic I'd 100% recommend: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (and it's pseudo-sequels). To anyone.
 
jasperkent said:
Okay, Dickens is not my favorite writer but he's not anywhere near as bad as these alleged "classic must-read authors"....

Herman Melville
James Fenimore Cooper

In fact there are some hilariously accurate criticisms of the above two by Mark Twain, one of my personal heroes.
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Oh yeah, I've read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer! Can't remember too much as I read them so long ago (as a pre-teen), but I liked them, I remember that. Would you recommend anything else by Twain?
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
Oh yeah, I've read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer! Can't remember too much as I read them so long ago (as a pre-teen), but I liked them, I remember that. Would you recommend anything else by Twain?
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Oh hell, yeah! ANY of his short stories (he wrote many) and his essays on current events and other writers are excellent. He had a very sharp wit and amazing skills at satire. Look up Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses


Edit: Look for his speech in Paris, 1879, about masturbation
 
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ChemicallyEnhanced said:
Would you put The Rum Diary on the same level as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
Definitely gonna check out Rant. Love me some Palahniuk!
Loved Junky as well as it's sequel Queer. I've got Naked Lunch, but haven't read it yet. How is it (anyone)? I'm a little put off that it seems to be just lots of random vignettes rather than any narrative story :/
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Rum Diary is very different than Fear and Loathing, so they can't really be compared.

Another good easy classic is Bukowski's Post Office
 
Mysterier said:
The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my all-time favorites. I'll be back with recommendations. My brain is waning.
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Just bought it. Holy shit, I had no idea it was so huge! I think it may rival Stephen King's It for word count. I take it you think it's worth it, though?
 
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