The Count of Monte Cristo

Sherlock Holmes

Dune

I did like a series of books, The Magician

I’ll second Dune as a classic sci fi novel. I’ve also enjoy Enders game & the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.

In terms of literary classics I found Dante’s Inferno really interesting.

Franny and Zooey. ok its not a classic in the classic sense. but i just love the 1950s writers. The bathtub scene in Zooey. You have to shine your shoes for the fat woman. i had a high school lit teacher who was an incredible teacher he just just loved Salinger. He gave me my love for that period of writing.

When my kids were young we went through the Red Wall series many times over. My wife would read aloud and we would gather round and listen. She could do all the voices for the different woodland characters. Those were good days.

Dune, the book is so much better than the movie. It's like night and day. It's a pretty heavy read though.

A topical idea for right now is The Stand by Stephen King. Less topical but good would be Christine. Once again, completely disregard the movie if you read this one as the book is a million times better.

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass are simple but unusual reads due to the language used and pacing.

If you're open to Comic books, 2 lines that I really enjoyed that lean into classic literature:
- Fables - Features fables type characters (Snow White, Big Bad Wolf, Tales of Arabian nights, pretty much any public domain character (human or otherwise) you could imagine) and puts them in modern times/conflict. Nothing like the TV series that sounds similar.
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Similar concept to the movie, but much better done in written form, as well as a little disturbing

Enjoy.

A Confederacy Of Dunces. Hysterical and one of a kind.

If you like Dickens, try the non Holmes work of Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote some great mystery/supernatural short stories.

M. R James - best Gothic ghost stories.

Ian Fleming - not sure if it's classical, but his Bond works need to be read.

If you enjoy classic fantasy (i.e. Lovecraft), try Clark Ashton Smith - no one ever else put down to paper what he did.

DC comics "Kingdom Come" a future story

Moby Dick is my favorite book and sometimes called the greatest novel ever. Interesting it was a flop when first released and was rediscovered after the authors death.

“Melville died in 1891, largely forgotten by the literary world. By the 1920s, scholars had rediscovered his work, particularly Moby-Dick.”

Much easier read than Moby Dick another favorite of mine is The Catcher in the Rye.

I've read a lot of books. Good and bad.

The one I always enjoy on a rainy cold Fall day is a book with a collection of Edgar Allen Poe's works.

LTG : )
Disclaimer : My lottery win would be that, in a small den with a fireplace and sipping a hot buttered rum.

"A Night to Remember" is a 1955 non-fiction book by Walter Lord that depicts the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912. The book was hugely successful, and is still considered a definitive resource about the Titanic. Lord interviewed 63 survivors of the disaster as well as drawing on books, memoirs, and articles that they had written.
A movie was made with the same title 3 years later in 1958.

Watership Down, I read this when I was younger but it was a book that stood out to me at the time.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Lord of the Rings plus The Hobbit (I’ve read it several times.)

Anyone ever read brotherhood of the rose and fraternity of the stone, by David Morrell? Great books, he was author of first blood

I just finished Moby Dick about a week ago - i was determined to slug it out and finish it no matter what. I didn't care for it at all. At all.

Dipping into some Charles Dickens since I've read everything else in the house - finishing up David Copperfield tonight or tomorrow and just knocked off Oliver Twist before Moby Dick.

"Animal Farm" and "Of Mice and Men" -

Now my favorite medium is graphic novels

Can't read anything like mystery or fantasy or even bio's but love science and physiological studies.

Really enjoy

Neil D. Tyson - Astro Physics for people in a hurry
Carl Jung - Aion
Stephen Hawking - A brief History of time
Christopher Hitches - God is Not great and Hitch 22
Richard Dawkins - The God delusion.
There's so many more but these are the ones that really stayed with me.

I loved it.

Read it twice already and like to start a third time.

So many good books...
Here are a few off of the top of my head that have some resonance with our current predicament:

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I may not meet your definition of classic but here’s a list of books I’ve read that may work

Arthur c Clarke’s 2001, 2010, 2061 etc
Asimovs robot series
Crichton’s great train robbery
Seabiscuit by hillenbrand
Patricia highsmith ... talented mr Ripely series plus her short story collection
Ludlum
Tolkien
Mccullough”s books on the Panama canal and Brooklyn bridge
Twain’s Connecticut yankee in King Arthur’s court
Yeager - his autobiography
Iacocca - his autobiography

Netflix did a miniseries with voice cast James McAvoy, Ben Kingsley etc. but I was not sure if I liked it they much just watched part of it.

Anything Hunter S. Thompson is a good read.

I like biographies personally and geared towards sports. Open by Andre Agassi and Hitman by Bret Hart I found really well written and very revealing.

The entire Bounty Trilogy by Nordhoff and Hall. I just was telling my son about it and dig up a pdf online, and I’m sucked right back in to it.

Also The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay was really amazing. I never thought I would enjoy a novel about boxing and revenge!

Also, if you are able to slog through Dickens, the Idiot by Doestoyevski is really great...and if you can make it through all the classic Russian novelists, then I recommend my favorite novel of all time:

The Story of The Stone (Aka Dream of The Red Chamber) by Cao Xueqin (all 5 volumes)

It’s crazy difficult to read bc the cast of characters is immense and there is a lot of references to poetic rules that don’t translate particularly well, and it never was officially finished (another writer pieced together an ending after the author died) but it’s still beautiful and heartbreaking and funny and immense.

Not necessarily a classic, but Ready Player One is a great read, especially if you're into 80s nostalgia.

Red rising series

Mic Drop...

... pick mic back up

Bobiverse series

Enders game / Bean series

Mic drop

Mellive did some other work that is worth reading including a few short stories. I remember one called Barnabey something or other.

David Cooperfield is excellent, however I think Tale of Two Cities is garbage.

I’ve read every single one of Steinbeck’s novels. Probably my favorite author. I wish he had written more. Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men are some of the best. Winter of Our Discontent, In Dubious Battle are also really good.

In terms of more recent literature, I’ve been getting into Cormac McCarthy. The Road was the first book I read by him and loved his style. Blood Meridian is quite good but really dense and not a quick read. I’m 2/3 of the way through his Border trilogy, having read All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing. It helps if you know some Spanish for those as there’s a bunch of untranslated dialogue. Google translate was my friend.

Lots of good recommendations here. Not sure if they’re considered classics yet but Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author. The Road, No Country For Old Men, and Blood Meridian are all incredible books that were all traumatizing in their own way haha. Also, another vote for Confederacy of Dunces. Catch-22 is also a favorite of mine (and yours) and they’re very similar in many ridiculous ways.

Many of my favorites have been mentioned. A few unmentioned gems that I have always loved:

Job: a comedy of justice by heinlein

Taran Wanderer (book 4 black cauldron series)

Alvin Maker series

A soldier of the Great War - Mark Helprin

I'd also suggest William S. Boroughs. Naked Lunch is a great dive in

If it is to you then its a classic. What other people think is a classic means absolutely nothing, kinda like the Pinside top 100.

No Country for old men: very great. Explains more than the movie (also great tho).

Dune was great too. Lots of books I like to read again after I forget most of like 10 years later. Get a lot more on the second or third read through.

The Chronicles of Amber too classic Fantasy.

Lucifers Hammer post apocalyptic or Ringworld sci-fi

I know nothing about you other than you like classics and have never read a comic book. If you want to try something different but classic, you shoul read “Maus”.

First graphic novel to win a Pulitzer.

King's "The Stand" has been my favorite book since I read it when it first came out...

Started doing Audible a few years ago & this was my first listen - Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred-Lansing/dp/0465062881
Wow, just Wow. The reader was perfect, the story more than amazing.

I read power of one in about 4th grade....not sure if it was age appropriate at the time but thought it was good. Re-read it a few years ago and it definitely holds up!

just stick to the books that Frank Hebert wrote. the series was continued after his death but those books dont have the richness of tge originals

OP, when you get done with Dune, read Frank Herbert’s White Plague. It’s one of his last novels, and one of his best. It’s a stand alone, not part of a series. I found it chilling and compelling when I read it back in the 80s. I revisited it last year and it still stands up exceptionally well. It’s even more relevant during the current new reality.