Which classic should I read first?

[Mount Suribachi]

So I picked up the above 5 classics for a fiver at the weekend. Whaddya reckon?

[Alrowan]

Gullivers travels :p

[Mount Suribachi]

Read it. All he did was talk about making a toilet on every other page http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

[Brutal DLX]

I can recommend war and peace and crime and punishment. The latter is shorter and is more of a character study, the former also includes historical events.

[Voigtkampf]

I know what I will not recommend to anyone; War and peace. I have no problem with big books, I have read countless of them, big and small, and if it's good, I'll end up reading until 3.00 AM. War and peace is a fabulous example of a too long, too depressive and too boring book, with the exception of smaller parts with descriptions of military engagements. Furthermore, it should be the example of how NOT to handle the development of your characters, and if some wonder why it is so popular, then I would suggest to do some research on the background of the source of affection from western writers towards Tolstoy.

[frogbeastegg]

David Copperfield, not only is it good it is also the only one of those books I have read http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif It's nothing like the obnoxiously happy dramatisations they keep putting on TV each Christmas. Not Dickens at his grimest but still not exactly cheerful stuff.

note to self: read the others sometime, my local library may have then...after all the book inventory is limited to things 20+ years old that most people never want to read.

[Alrowan]

the canterbry tales is also a great read, chaucer does wonders

a nice play is Congreve's Way of the World a nice bit of 18th C satire

and an interesting Gothic period classic would be The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (yes, son of the famous politician)

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Fictions

Borjes

What else would you read?

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-book2.gif

[DemonArchangel]

War And Peace
It's only 800 something pages

[PrinceBrobex]

War and Peace isn't depressing; it's beautiful. The trick is to get past the party scene in the beginning; then it flows. You might get bored with Tolstoy's theory of history - which occupies a chapter or two in the middle -, but the characters are incredible and the man's powers of desrciption are amazing.
Hell, read them all, they're all good. Gatsby's shortest

[Voigtkampf]

Quote[/b] (DemonArchangel @ Feb. 03 2004,10:29)]War And Peace
It's only 800 something pages
Is that the Director's Cut? Mine example is 1500 pages long, small font, hard cover.


Quote[/b] ]War and Peace isn't depressing; it's beautiful. The trick is to get past the party scene in the beginning; then it flows.

Well, I passed that part at believe yet to be a little… Constipated…

[Brutal DLX]

Not everybody has the same taste. And that's a good thing http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif