Help, Armadillos! I need classics to download!

[invision]

Well, I've decided that, over the summer, I'll be reading classics in an effort to be more well-read. Pre-1920-something books are free on Project Gutenberg, so basically, anything from there will work.

I've read almost no classics, so just uh, give me things y'all have enjoyed. xD.

Except Moby Dick. Oh my gosh please no Moby Dick.

James

[Silva]

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
East of Eden- John Steinbeck
The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath
The Catcher in the Rye- J.D. Salinger
Slaughterhouse Five- Kurt Vonnegut
The Master and Margarita- Mikhail Bulgakov

Those are my favorite classics. It was pretty hard to narrow down but I managed it.

[Dodger Thirteen]

May 30, 2011 20:56:13 GMT -5 invision said:

Except Moby Dick. Oh my gosh please no Moby Dick.

I'm entertained by this statement.

Regardless, some you may want to look into:

• Walden by Thoreau
  
• Emerson's various writings
  
• Shakespeare. Of course.
  
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
  
• The Iliad
  
• The Odyssey
  
• The Aeneid
  
• The Divine Comedy
  
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  
• The Importance of Being Earnest
  
• Anything and everything by Edgar Allan Poe
  
• Faust
  
• Morte d'Arthur
  
• Sherlock Holmes, various stories
  

Also, here is a list of the books you "should have encountered" in your English career: www.sjsu.edu/english/undergraduate/guiltlist.html

[obstacle2]

I highly, highly suggest East of Eden. It's my favorite novel, and it's an easy read. The novel is well-written, the plot is amazing, and all the characters are interesting. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

[boringrocks]

You definitely want to read some Shakespeare, if you haven't read much of it.

Anything by Oscar Wilde is highly recommended; I see someone suggested The Picture of Dorian Gray already, but the Importance of Being Earnest is a lot funnier (not necessarily better, but funnier).

I'd also say giving Paradise Lost a try is useful if you want to be well-read. It's not really light though.

For fun, I downloaded the original The Adventures of Pinocchio from Gutenberg last week, and it's a wonderfully ridiculous, although easy, read.

[krista]

I would definitely recommend adding Catch 22 to your list. It starts off very confusing but if you push through it, the ending is your reward!