What's All the Fuss About Classic Books?

I decided several years ago that classic books and I had been estranged for too long. What had I been missing out on since school? School, where I hated every minute of Chaucer and Shakespeare, but adored the modern stuff like Billy Liar, The Long and the Short and the Tall, and the slightly less modern Far From the Madding Crowd.

As I am unable to place them in order of preference, which is an impossible and meaningless task anyway, here’s an alphabetical list of where we are so far — perhaps the casual reader might be so good as to point me in the direction of others.

The Adventures of Mr Thake

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Animal Farm

Ashenden

Barnaby Rudge

The Big Sleep

Billy Liar

Brave New World

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (and other stories)

Brighton Rock

Burmese Days

The Canterville Ghost

Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm

Cold Comfort Farm

Coming up for Air

Decline and Fall

Diary of a Nobody

Dombey and Son

Dracula

Down and Out in Paris and London

Far From the Madding Crowd

Farewell My Lovely

A Farewell to Arms

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Frankenstein

Great Expectations

The Great Gatsby

A Handful of Dust

The House of Seven Gables

The Importance of Being Earnest

Jamaica Inn

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

A Kestrel for a Knave

Israel Rank

The Leopard

London Belongs to Me

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

The Maltese Falcon

The Master and Margarita 

Moby Dick

A Moveable Feast

Nicholas Nickelby

Night and the City

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Of Human Bondage

The Old Curiosity Shop

The Old Man and the Sea

On the Road

The Pickwick Papers

Pincher Martin

The Princess Bride

Put Out More Flags

Robinson Crusoe

Rogue Male

Scoop

Sense and Sensibility

A Tale of Two Cities

The Thin Man

The Third Policeman

Treasure Island

Vanity Fair

Vile Bodies

I have enjoyed almost all of these, and was going to write a brief note against each and every one as to what I liked or what it gave me, but you’ll be relieved to hear that I have binned that idea.

However, in brief summary:

• Truman Capote’s short stories are so masterful that I had to stop reading every now and again and kick myself for being such an idiot.

• Cold Comfort Farm is a joy, a surprise, and a wicked delight from beginning to end.

• I wonder at Hemingway and how he manages to say so much and yet so sparingly. And wish certain of my more verbose friends would take the hint.

• The Maltese Falcon is so beautifully written and plotted that when he made the film, John Huston had the good sense to leave it almost intact. Can you imagine Hollywood placing such trust in the author these days?

• The Master and Margarita is like nothing else on Earth. An absolute, stone-dead cert of a bloody masterpiece. Keeps you on your toes too.

• If for nothing else (and it’s got plenty of ‘else’), On the Road should be lauded for the way Kerouac writes about live music.

• I loved the Dickens' titles, but because they were so long I balked at each one before starting it. Was it because they were serialised and he was effectively being paid for prose-by-the-yard? The Old Curiosity Shop is panned for being overly sentimental – even on the back cover puff of my edition. But, having been tipped off, it wasn’t like drowning in syrup and the presence of the magnificent Grand Guignol villain Daniel Quilp saves it from an excess of “mawk”.

  
  

  

  The villainous Quilp

There was only one of these books that I didn’t like, in fact I really, really, really didn’t like it so much that, halfway through, I skipped to the end to read the much vaunted and rather obvious ‘twist’ and saved myself the bother of reading the second half. Can you guess which one it was?

Anyway, thanks for reading my observations on people far more talented than I (although you may just have skipped to the end of this piece, of course). Please drop me an email or slip a note and a sovereign to the London coachman with your recommendation of where I should be pitching my tent next on the old literary landscape.