Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by “The Broke and the Bookish.” This week’s topic:
Top Ten Classics
Okay, that’s not the full topic. There were two directions they were going. One was your top ten favorite classic novels of all time. The other was the top ten classic novels you wish you had read. I decided to split these up and give you five of each.
My Favorite Classic Novels
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – This one may surprise folks, since the title sure doesn’t sound like a good time, but I love this book. I read this first in my senior year of high school and was instantly drawn in to the character of Raskolnikov. Full of suspense and deeply personal moral questions, this is a book everyone should read.
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – Another one from senior year. I had such a good English teacher that year of school! I love this book so much. I love the character of Jane, how spunky she is, and how determined she is to live her life by her own rules.
- 1984 by George Orwell – The granddaddy of the dystopian genre, this book is excellent, both at creating a story world that is absolutely terrifying and showing how that world can completely break down the individuals who live within it. I loved this book so much, I used it for my final project in the one graduate level class I actually completed.
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – While I love do love Tom Sawyer, I have to say that Huck Finn is my favorite of the Twain novels. Huck is such an interesting character, fun to hang around with, but that doesn’t mean that he’s just a simpleton. I love the relationship that develops between him and Jim, the runaway slave he is trying to help, something that was completely taboo at the time.
- The Tempest by William Shakespeare – I know, I know. Technically not a novel. But the English major in me can’t complete a list like this without including a little Shakespeare! The Tempest is my favorite of his plays, although A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a very close second.
The Classic Novels I Want To Read
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – Yeah. I know. It’s enormous. I have a copy of it on my shelf, bought from a library book sale. This book is on my bucket list of books to read, just because it’s considered to be such a monster. Y’all know I love a good challenge.
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – This one just sounds like fun.
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau – This is another one that I want to read just to say that I did it. I think I read snippets when I was in college, but that was a while ago and we didn’t read very much.
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas – I’ve always loved the various film versions of this story (my most favorite being the Disney one from several years ago, with Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Oliver Platt), but I’ve never read the original novel. I’m sure that it’s quite different, but I’ll bet it’s still pretty good.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo – Another classic tale that many people think they are familiar with, where I’m sure the book is very different.
A few honorable mentions. I love The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde as well as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’d also like to add Les Miserables by Victor Hugo t0 the list, not because I haven’t read it, but because it’s been so long, I barely remember it. I’m such a big fan of the stage musical, I need to give the novel another read through.
So there’s my list! Please leave your TTT posts in comments!
Categories: Top Ten Tuesdays
Life With No Plot 
I’ve always started reading Jane Eyre, but have never finished it. I sadly didn’t like 1984. My english teacher at the time didn’t help either.
Sometimes the teacher makes all the difference. I’ve had books that I absolutely hated because of the way they were taught in school, but when I went back and reread them for fun, it was a completely different experience. Yet another reason teachers are so important. 🙂