Hagen95 said:

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Unless you really, really, really like whaling, I don't recommend reading Melville's Moby Dick.

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Disagree. Monby Dick started my love of nautical books, both non-fiction and Aubrey-Maturin

The sperm whale will stand no nonsense.


Moby dick was a tough one for me.

My favorite novel of all time is A Confederacy of Dunces. I have read it every ten years since college. Such a tragedy the author died before it was published and we lost out on what should have been many more classics.

The book will make you laugh out loud on almost every page and I have never seen a more colorful group of characters in a novel. The author really nails New Orleans in the early 60s.

Haven't seen Stoner mentioned, which is widely held as a favorite classic. It was a darling last year with most of the book influencers (not sure why it became popular with them) and often lauded as people's favorite books ever up there with Lonesome Dove. I read it last year and enjoyed it as a lazy read on the beach type thing. Far from favorite books ever ever. Yes, the prose are outstanding and the story is told clearly by an expert, but the story itself is about as basic as you can get. Maybe that is why it is so heralded, he wrote a story about nothing that you don't mind reading.

As someone above said, I try to squeeze in a classic every so often. Count of Monte Cristo is next for me. Son read Crime and Punishment recently and made me add to my tbr list. Otherwise I've read most of the others sometime in my longer than should be life.