Mostly Book Depository, Bookshop.org, & Amazon ☺️If folks are interested in finding the Penguin Clothbound Classics, I have some affiliated links with most of them: Here's my affiliated Penguin Clothbound Classics shop at Bookshop.org: bookshop.org/lists/penguin-clothbound-classics-7ecf8706-5180-477b-9005-660667869a8e Or if you want to go through Amazon, my affiliated link is here: amzn.to/32hC969
Had a long hiatus on reading and tried reading a classic. It was Dorian Gray. I was amazed at Oscar Wilde's style of prose. It's not to complicated and not too simple. It just sits in between making it a good page turner. I loved the premise and the story in general. Too sad that his work was not generally accepted by the society during his time (victorian era) because it's too gay and too unvictorian for them. :(
I think Frankenstein is a good beginners classic. It’s relatively short and the language isn’t too difficult. Also for doorstoppers, I always recommend Les Mis to people who love the musical. It adds so much depth to the story and the characters.
Woah frankenstein has been my first classic! I loved it, moved on to pride and prejudice and now onto little women. I was always intimidated by the thought of the wordiness but so far so good😊
Dracula, Frankenstein, Carmilla, Dorian Grey, the short horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, or the heroic fantasy tales of Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith are usually my recommendations when it comes to the classics!
I'm reading "murder on the orient express" in search of improving my English skill.🙂 I'm enjoying myself watching your video with English subtitle! thank you from Japan.
Hi,🤗 I really love Japan because I grew up watching animes like Pokemon and all. How are things going on in Japan, like How is the pandemic situation there?
Yes, if you don't mind spoilers, I *highly* recommend watching the movie versions before reading them, but I am a dyslexic scholar and have a tendency to get swept up in the story when I mean to study XD Following the story is definitely much easier if you've seen the movie before reading it (not to mention how much easier it is to know the characters)
The way I got through Shakespeare: they sell editions that have little footnotes or side notes about confusing parts. Made it so much easier and helped me get used to reading his works. By the end, I didn’t even read the notes. I felt MUCH smarter haha.
@@valpaz5802 Personally, I like the Folger editions of Shakespeare, they tend to have a lot of notes and Folger is really well known for their scholarship. Also good are the Norton editions and sometimes the Signet Classic editions.
I read your comment last night and was going to ask you where you purchased yours. Then when I went to the thrift store today, I found a copy of Merchant of Venice exactly as you described! Meant to be!
If someone is TOTALLY intimidated by classics, I always recommend some childrens' classics first. Such as Lewis Carroll - everyone knows the story of Alice and it just eases them into the language gently. Also E. Nesbit is good. I also think Henry James is a great introduction. The themes in What Maisie Knew could have been written today. The Turn of the Screw is a great horror read. And I agree with you on Wilkie Collins - love him!
Henry James is extremely demanding. Points of view, crawl behind the narrator’s eyes and don’t trust the narrator. I recommend Turn of the Screw!! Talk about in our DNA.
A tip for reading classics: if there is a movie about the book watch it first and then read it that way you know what’s going on if you get confused with the language and it has helped me so much
I dont know if you classify this as a classic, but John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men will forever hold a special place in my heart. If you haven’t read it, please do!
There's me think she meant classics as in The Odyssey, The Illiad, Dante's Inferno (which I think I see at the top right of your bookshelf) or any classical plays like Medea or Oedipus. STILL A GOOD VIDEO ❤️❤️
For those wanting to get into Russian literature, I recommend starting with something light that sets the tone for Russian culture. A collection of short stories by Pushkin is good
I would reccomend Fathers and Sons, it's very short and easy to read, even if Turgenev is a Westernizer as compared to the much more famous slavophiles Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Also, if someone were into satire I would reccomend Dead Souls by Gogol.
Since even before I learned to read, I've loved books! After learning to read, there was no stopping me! I owned several of the little "Golden Books" from the time I was about five. But I began a serious collecting quest about age eight, and now have about 5,000 books (age 67) in my personal library. I won't say they've all been read cover to cover; perhaps 70-75% of them -- many of them are reference & textual type books. When our first child finished first grade, we decided to home educate her and our other children. She delighted in our reading to her, even into her mid-teens, but did not have the same "passion" I had for reading on her own, though she didn't mind doing so. One day, she pulled a classic from my bookshelves in the den and began reading it on a whim. And it changed her life and perspective on books / reading forever! From then to now, she has been an insatiable reader of not only fiction but science and history as well. The book she chose that day was Baroness Emma Orczy's classic novel of the French Revolution, "The Scarlet Pimpernel." Wherever you are, thank you, Baroness Orczy!
I just retired and am reading classics with my daughter. First:was The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Second: The Scarlett Pimpernel and now we are reading David Copperfield
my favorite classic of all time and one of my favorite books is the count of monte Cristo. it's easy to read and understand it's just long edit- oh hey you mentioned it! I'd love to re re re read it.
I asked my favorite English teacher a while back. What are some great ways to improve my grammar/sentence structure. He told me reading. At first I was thrown back because I already read books. But I realize I probably wasn’t reading the right books and thought.... Reading classics seems to be a good place to start. 🤞🤞🤞
My intro to classics was A Christmas Carol in third grade and I recall loving it. Skip to Freshman year when we read A Tale of Two Cities and started to really explore more classics. My school taught them fairly well to the point where I ended up asking what "new" classic we were going to read in English hahaha
A Tale of Two Cities has apparently sold 200 million copies, which makes it the best selling novel, ever. All I know is I'm in tears while reading the last 4 pages!
I honestly think that little women is great to it’s an easy read, and it just has a great plot. And altogether I loved the book, and when I say I loved the book I mean I lovvved the book
In 2020, I learned that Alexandre Dumas was a French black man. It blew my mind. I was a French literature major and I never once hear anyone talk about it in the late 2000s.
he was part black, AND there are many theories that suggest Pushkin is Alexander Dumas. They were both part black. Both spoke fluent Russian and French, AND this is creepily exciting, the person who killed Pushkin in a duel is Georges D'Anthes. Now, the Count of Monte Cristo is called DANTES, and its all about assuming a different character... lol just a super cool theory.
@@luiza7453 It is about a dystopian futurist (even though 1984 was long algo) society in which people are constantly controled. It mainly follows the life of Winston Smith, a man who works for the goverment until he starts realizing that something bad is going on, and that obviously produces loads of problems on his life. I highly recommend it, it's a great book.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a favorite along with The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask. Loved Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Happiest when I see a young person put down their phone and read.😄
Oh I started with The Picture of Dorian Gray literally last week and I loved it (and tbh the first couple of chapters especially I was just sitting there going this is so gay this is totally appropriate for pride month)
E. M. Forsters stuff is also really gay. One of his books wasn't published until after his death in the 1970's, but he has a lot of gay characters that are disguised with thinly veiled subtext, just like in Dorian Gray. Maurice, of course, gets rid of all the subtext.
This is my first time watching one of your videos and I had to stop 3 minutes in to write this comment because I immediately subscribed! You have such an engaging and beautiful way of speaking, and your passion for reading and classics really comes through. Thank you for being amazing 😊
I admire that you have so many beautifully covered editions. They're so aesthetically pleasing yet practical to carry with you. Many of my classics are well traveled paperbacks with a couple giant ostentatious b&n classics that barely leave the shelf.
A great video! If people like Jane austen or the bronte sisters, I would also suggest elizabeth gaskell. Cranford, and north and south are accessible reads with great characters.
I love Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. I’m a slow reader so the short stories are great, and also there aren’t huge sections of the books that just drag on which I find in some other classics (the one exception is a study in scarlet where there is a large section about Mormons? Still a good story though). Also the character of Sherlock Holmes (and Watson too actually) is so much more interesting and enjoyable in the original stories than in many adaptations so don’t be put off by whatever your current understanding of him is
Your list was great, particularly for European/Western culture classics. I would usually start with Frankenstein as the classic I would recommend because it is not too long, the language isn't too difficult, it has some themes that have aged very well, particularly with the sciences and questions on the ethics of certain branches of science, nature vs nurture, etc. Also, so many of the movies are only VERY loosely based on the novel, so it is fun to read the original and see the differences. I did like Dracula, but I think it is harder to get into for most people because a lot of it is written as an epistolary, or journal entries, which can be hard to get into and stay absorbed in the story. For short horror classics, I like Edgar Allen Poe, particularly The Cask of Amontillado or The Black Cat, among the other more well-known stories. If you are looking for more obscure Western classics that are decent to start with, I really liked Moll Flanders by Danel Defoe and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, both are some of the very first English novels, and I found them very entertaining. If you are looking to get into some more general World Literature, some of the easiest to start with are probably Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe or The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. Somewhat harder to get into, I would also recommend Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, which was written in 11th century Japan and may be the first recorded novel in the world. For short horror stories from Japan, I would recommend the works of Rynosuke Akutagawa, particularly Hell Screen or Rashomon. Gah, there are too many great classics to recommend! It is hard to know where to start without knowing someone's tastes! And this doesn't even really touch on the more modern classics (though House of the Spirits is fairly modern)...
Two years after marriage, I was reading John Dracula (he's got Dyslexia). I said, "It's1:00 am. Can we stop and get to bed? He said, "You can't stop now!! It's the most exciting part!"
I am SO happy to see the copy of Don Quixote. It is so often neglected amongst the classics despite being the father of the modern novel. I love this video!!!!
There are a lot of videos here about book recommendations and they're all good, but there's something about you that convinces me to read all of yours immediately. I am really grateful for all these. Keep it up!
For those who want cheap versions of classics, I totally recommend the Wordsworth Classic editions. Here in England you can find them on Amazon UK for £2.25 -£2.50 for almost all of the novels they sell in that version. I recommend them for people who aren’t too sure if they’ll enjoy a classic as you can always go and buy a pretty copy (such as the clothbounds) when you know you’re in love with it!
I don’t read very often anymore but I recently read the Count of Monte Cristo and loved it! I really like how the Count is this very intelligent, mysterious figure who’s one step ahead; but he is also flawed, has emotions and makes mistakes. There are characters that are hateful but also ones to root for. The ending was also very satisfying and showed growth.
I'm literally thirteen years old, but I absolutely love classics. I love Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. I always think that the teens my age don't usually read these types of books, and people don't know how to tell me where to start, so you really helped me in these. Thank you so much❣
This is a fantastic video! Some spot-on recommendations here. Way back when I was a child/young teen I had the great good fortune to accidentally stumble upon some of the more accessible classics: Oliver Twist, all of Holmes, Dracula, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights among others. First Shakespeare was Macbeth, right up my alley with the fantasy witchy elements and spooky dream scenes. And yes, Emma! She doesn’t get enough love. These Where to Start videos are both useful and entertaining. Please keep up the good work.
Very, very good books to start with! :) When my nephew was a teenager, these are the books I sent him: To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, The Outsiders, That Was Then, This is now.
I’m so happy that you mentioned Middlemarch because I’m actually on Chapter 4 as I’m watching this. So far, very readable and has kept my attention well!
Tried out on the first attempt to read the classics “War and Peace”, couldn’t finished. Trying Dickens and Dostoyevsky now, later go back and try Tolstoy with Ana Karenina. It was like I tried running a marathon on my first outing.
Wow i literally just wanted to start reading classics by War and Peace first, now this makes me afraid haha, let alone when english isn't my first language and i cant find the book version in my language :(
Hi if you didn't have appreciate war dnd peace i would strongly discourage Dostoevsky's nooks...they are more eccentric...would suggest Anna Karenina as its a tragic love story....check out my videos on Russian classics if u want more details elee let me know...oug of Dostoevsky's books if you want to pick take crime and punishment
Just with Tolstoy. The books are actually translated anyway. So if you are starting to read them and English isn't your first language, it's actually quite likely that a translated might be available in your native language.
I loved this, Mara! I agree with you on Wilkie Collins. He’s completely underrated. The Woman in White might be my favorite classic. I also appreciate your love for Merchant of Venice! It truly has aged well.
I remembered after reading Frankenstein (it was good tho) I used to get little annoyed that some people think Frankenstein is a monster but actually that's a Doctor
We studied great expectations in school but I only read the first part. Finally, 15 years later, I read it fully over the summer and now I can't get it out of my head now.
Great content and Channel! I will definitely share this will my daughters who are currently 8 and 10 years old. We started a book reading channel to improve their English reading and comprehension skills. Plus, I wasn't much of a book reader growing up and now having the opportunity to read with them and share it with the world. Thank You and looking forward to your future videos!
I recently started wanting to get back to reading some classics-I own so many that I haven’t read yet! This was so helpful and really kind at helping people get into reading classics. Thank you! 💖
So pleased that Pride and Prejudice was your top choice as it was the first classic I read at 11 years old and to this day, after 5 re-reads, it has not been replaced as my favorite, although Jane Eyre really did come in as a close second
I remember using a notebook while reading Lord of the Rings and Count of Monte Cristo to keep track of all the characters and their relationships. Now I read everything on the Kindle app, which is great because I can just run a search on a forgotten name that hasn't been mentioned in 450 pages.
Thank you so much for this brilliant video. I am just about to start my journey into the Classics and after a few minutes of watching, I paused, went on-line and reserved a copy of Pride and Prejudice from my local library. Looking forward to getting it and making a start. Have subscribed to your channel.
I fell in love with classics from oliver twist and I'm telling you it worth it , though my all time favourite character of Dickens would have to be Miss Havisham.
My number one tip for getting into classics is to be open to reading more ‘modern’ classics - they count too! As someone who loves classic dystopia, a lot of my favourite classics are from the early-mid 20th century, or even later. Although these aren’t as old as other classics, they’re still super important books that paved the way for contemporary literature, and the added benefit is that they tend to be easier to read too!
km3 3 For classic dystopia, some of the super iconic ones like 1984 and Brave New World are great to start out with if you haven’t read them already 😊 my personal favourite is A Clockwork Orange, and whilst it’s not the easiest to read, I think it’s an absolutely phenomenal book if you can get through it ahaha
Hi Maura! I think many of the books on your bookshelves have gorgeous bindings. I am currently reading a movie-tie-in paperback edition of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens that I bought from the Barnes and Noble bargain bin for $2.00 USD; and yes: his plots are male ice cream sundae without the ice cream bonkers. I've read Wuthering Heights; while I loved the atmosphere and sense of place, I believe that the characters all deserved to undergo live autopsies.
The poet Gabriel Rossetti said the action of Wuthering Heights takes place in Hell, where all the characters mysteriously have English names... As for Charles Dickens, I agree with John Updike in that the reason academia looks down on him is that Dickens tries to move readers primarily through their emotions rather than intellect.
The first time I read war and peace , I was around 18 years; I left out all the parts about the war: I reread it a few years ago ; now with the war scenes. Another book I really enjoyed was Gone with the wind, great read about American history and nothing like the movie.
I have recently discovered your channel and I’m loving your content. What an incredibly helpful video. I was making notes throughout the whole thing, and can’t wait to make a new bookshelf on Goodreads with your recommendations. Off to binge watch a few more of your videos before bed.
I love classics too! Those are definite good starts especially my favorite genre in classics; horror. One of my favorite books which you could probably place under horror is The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (I hopefully spelled the last name correctly) If you have ever seen the musical or modern movie based on Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, the book is almost like that so in a sense it is familiar. If you want to stay in horror then might I suggest the entire works of Edgar Allen Poe, a big book, but worth it or watch the classic movies starring Vincent Price, he did a lot of Poe inspired movies like The Pit & the Pendulum, Fall of the House of Usher, Masque of the Red Death, etc. I started my love of classics with the horror genre and branched out. If there's ever a book you want to read aloud because of language like Shakespeare then Dante's Inferno is a good one, The Odyssey by Homer, although you may want to start with the Iliad first because it's before the Odyssey. Good books if you're obsessed with Greek mythology like I am. I don't know if these are considered modern classics, but they might be, would be To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee which I absolutely love the book and movie, there's also a sequel for this book. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier (again hopefully spelled the last name right) which is just an amazing mystery thriller book to me, it was such an unexpected read and I had to read this for school many, many years ago. She is also responsible for the short story (if I recall) The Birds which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a movie. I will have to disagree with you on one thing and this could have been due to my age back then, but I didn't like The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, in fact I DNFed it and I had to read that book for my senior year. I really didn't like it, but I may try at a later time and we'll see if I still hate it.
I’m slowly starting to get back into classics again and I ended up picking up Pride and Prejudice 😄 I’m going to read it again because it was my favorite Jane Austen book that I’ve read in my life and it was the first book that really drew me into classics during high school 😄 I also picked up sense and sensibility because I have been told that it I loved pride and prejudice I will also love that book too.
Funny to think about the idea of starting with Wuthering Heights as an angsty teen. When I wanted to start reading it my mental health was at an all time low. Even though I had no idea what it was about, I guess I did choose to right novel for me.
@@LL-ub9tz The author is a religious fanatic who sets up the structure and narrative to demonstrate God, who rationaliists know is imaginary. Insecure people claim to love the book without reading it. I don't blame them. It is garbage.
I'm 15 years old and I just got into classics and reading more and I decided to go with pride and prejudice. Honestly it's really nice and the language is very beautiful. Sadly, english is not my first language and since I wanted to read the book in its original form, I'm having a little trouble understanding some parts. Reading out loud as you mentioned in shakespeare really help!
I wanted to start reading classics so I picked up Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and the language isn’t too difficult as it is a slightly more modern classic, written in 1948 (I think) and it’s a really entertaining story. I haven’t finished it yet but would recommend for people wanting to start classics!
Thank you for acknowledging how white, cis, Christian and straight most classics are. This is my first video of yours and as a black girl, I felt so alienated from the book recommendations at the beginning of the video, although I think that are good recs. I'm so happy we live in a time where people are more cognisant of how minority groups might feel about mainstream media. You just earned a subscriber!
I'm not a huge classics reader. But to go along with your suggestion of reading Shakespeare out loud, most of the time I find it easier to consume classics through audiobooks.
Oh man, you did such a great job on this! I've just finished The Canterbury Tales (Thanks a lot Steve Donaghue for plunging me into the Western Canon!) and in prep for that I found Dolores Cullen's, Chaucer's Pilgrims. Wow, now I've got to read Chaucer again! I love the classics! Did Shakespeare last year, but am looking forward to the 19th century.
I didn't know people like you existed anymore in our "I read the back of cereal box" culture. Almost all the books you talked about I've read and enjoyed. Back when I was 11 I would've quoted Mark Twain if I knew the saying "A classic: that's a book people praise without reading it." Then at the age of 12 in elementary school I was given Jane Eyre to read. By the time I finished it, it changed my life in so many ways. For one, I read a whole lotta classics: American, British, but also German, Russian, French, etc. I have an obsession with the Ancient Greeks and the Classical World, but that's another story .( My husband on my exposing him to Greek Tragedy: "Colleen! It's so passionate!") One Victorian book you left out would be "The Pickwick Papers." I didn't think I would like it, but I found myself laughing loudly on the bus while reading it. It's Dickens' funniest book, but a doorstopper. It's also Dickens' first novel, written at age 24, that made him famous. I read Harold Bloom would read The Pickwick Papers every year, because it was so hilarious. God Bless You!
Love this list! As far as a contemporary prose style, I can't explain why, but I had a much easier time reading Sense & Sensibility than P&P, which I thought could be longwinded at times. Thus, I love to recommend Sense & Sensibility to new-to-classics readers; plus, I like personally think the sisterly dynamic is more interesting between Elinor & Marianne than say Elizabeth and Jane.
Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, A Day in the Life of Ivan Donisovich, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Count of Monte Cristo, Huckleberry Finn, The Call of the Wild, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Bible, Profiles in Courage, The Grapes of Wrath, The Good Earth, Gulliver Travels, Jane Eyre, The Odyssey. All good reads, worth repeat readings. All are concerned with the human condition, and bring light to bear on this most fascinating subject, us.
The only one of these that I haven't read is Dorian Gray. And I'm a Christian so i love that a lot more Christian themes! The first one i read was an old copy of pride and Prejudice that my grandmother gave me!
My favorite thing about Emma is that Clueless is one of my all-time favorite movies and it's such a great modern adaptation. If you know the movie and know its an adaptation it makes the translation of the book to present day a lot easier! I would laugh out loud reading it at the gym.
I had this "game" on my Nintendo DS called 100 classic books. (Or 100 books that are so old we can put them in for free. ) It gave like half a page on two screens and was a nice precursor to an eReader! Read the picture of Dorian Grey on there. What a story, waayyyy gayer than I thought you could get away with in those days! And the karakter evolution was so interesting!
I had the best World Lit high school teacher who made me fall in love w Classic Literature. I am thankful to this day for him. He was my best English teacher.
Les Misérables would be my number One. I first read it when I was twelve and I loved it. The second time I read it was in my Junior year; it was required. So good. And thank you for your list, I will report to the library tomorrow.
