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A great book can change your life, and that’s no exaggeration. It allows your imagination to flourish, which can sometimes birth new ideas that are worth exploring.
With more than 129 million titles in existence, finding a good title would be like looking for a diamond in the rough. So, to help narrow down that lengthy list, users from Mumsnet gave their book suggestions you can check out.
You will find many classics on this list that you’ve likely already read, but you may also come across a few that may pique your interest. And if you’re not an avid reader, this may just turn you into one.
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#1
I’m halfway through The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas & loving it.
Mary Barton by Mrs Gaskell has vivid characters and is a real page turner.
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#2
George Orwells novels are good, particularly 1984 and Animal Farm, but I really enjoyed Down and Out in London and Paris, describing his early life working in Parisienne restaurant kitchens, then coming back to live with the poorest in society in London.
I also enjoy Thomas Hardy books. Tess if the D'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure all set in one of my favourite parts of the UK.
#3
Pride and Prejudice is also my comfort book
Huddo's sister 6 months ago
I can't decide whether I like Pride & Prejudice or Emma best, and I love all her other novels (except maybe Persuasion) too
#4
The Iliad and the Odyssey.
All of human desires, foibles, pains, joys, cruelties and kindnesses are contained therein.
They will change your life.
Read The Odyssey first as it's easier to get into than the Iliad.
Use the new Emily Wilson translations.
#5
Little women - I love it, and any TV/film adaptation
Huddo's sister 6 months ago
Agree! I also read Little Men and Jo's Boys which were almost as good.
#6
Jane Eyre
The Mill on the Floss
Anne of Green Gables
A Christmas Carol
Huddo's sister 6 months ago
Jane Eyre and Anne of Green Gables are two of my favourites, though I think I will be saying that about a lot of this list!
#7
Frankenstein - I love that book and Jane Eyre
#8
Because reading is so subjective, I can go out on a limb.
Wuthering Heights is in my opinion the most self indulgent pile of pitiful wank ever written. There. I've said it. (Although it does have a redeeming feature in that it gave rise to one of the most brilliant songs ever.)
Dickens is tricky because he's so long winded. Great romping stories though, and the more popular ones are referenced frequently.
Balzac was a great writer, often churning out books practically overnight to pay off his debts. Daphne du Maurier and John Wyndham were also superb for both storytelling and writing style and Jane Eyre is and will always be wonderful. For modern classics, anything by Penelope Lively is worth a read. Oh and Brave New World.
Great thread. Always lovely to have an excuse to talk books instead of do work...
Huddo's sister 6 months ago
I totally agree about Wuthering Heights! I also found it very boring and not 'romantic' as many claim.
#9
Flowers for Algernon
The Reader
#10
Agree with a lot of the comments above.
I recently read Gulliver's Travels (for the first time( and really enjoyed it. Well written, very entertaining, and contains some surprisingly pertinent observations.
Also add Bulgakov's Master and Margarita as a great read.
Interested to see several people mention John Wyndham - I really like his novels and short stories but are they really 'great books' or 'classics'? Not sure I think of them in that way.
#11
To Kill a Mockingbird
Rebecca
1984
Lord of the Flies
The only "classics" I have ever enjoyed. Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion bored me to tears.
#12
Middlemarch
North and South
#13
The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver (I know it doesn’t always get listed on the more traditional great literature lists).
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
#14
I love Moby Dick. It manages to be both about nineteenth century whaling - you can almost taste the salty air - and the human condition. I’m usually quite severe on books with no female characters but this is so absorbing and all-encompassing that it doesn’t seem to matter.
I know this is quite a niche view! - and I wonder if people who don’t like it are expecting a rollicking yarn and are disappointed to find it’s more meditative and descriptive.
Colin Matthews 6 months ago (edited)
Personally I did not care for it, although the opening sentence is great.
#15
War and Peace!
Honestly, if you enjoyed Anna Karenina you will enjoy W&P. It is long but it is really enjoyable and has unforgettable characters.
If it helps, there is a Substack called Footnotes and Tangents that does a read along and is full of notes.
Actually, how could I forget, there was also a Mumsnet read along thread that you can still access!
Bamamom2boys 6 months ago
I was surprised how much I enjoyed War and Peace. It was a really good read
#16
Dracula
dr Jekyll and mr Hyde
the Scarlet letter
H.G Wells- the invisible man, the war of the worlds, the Time Machine
enjoyable in their own right, but also all of the above have had an enormous impact on horror/sci fi in all forms across the world.
Huddo's sister 6 months ago
I tried reading the Scarlet Letter but couldn't get into it. I did keep it with hopes of trying again. I wasn't really a fan of The Time Machine either.
#18
Machiavelli the prince
#19
Great Expectations has wonderful characterisation and some excellent set pieces.
Persuasion is truly romantic.
Candide is very funny.
Lolita is a fabulous piece of characterisation through voice. So clever (“Picnic, lightning.”).
Northanger Abbey is a cracking p**stake.
Cold Comfort Farm is hilarious satire.
Middlemarch is very dense and involving.
Sally Moen 6 months ago
Every time I've described Candide to others, they look at me like I'm crazy. But it's a fantastic, wierd, sad, funny story, one of those journeys that make a great story, but what happens next is very trippy. I'm still not exactly sure if Candide is happy at the end of the story, in the garden, or depressed by how life has gone. Candide was a life-changing book for me. Of all the different genres and types of books I've read, this one impacted me the most
#20
Crime and Punishment is an absolute banger. Love it.
Edgar Rops 6 months ago
One of the very few "school classics" I enjoyed while actually at school (most others I reread as an adult to fully appreciate). Read it in a night.
#21
Vanity Fair - my all-time favourite book
Sally Moen 6 months ago
I still don't know what is meant by vanity. It's a word in some versions of the Bible in Eccliciasties. It's like being vain, caring too much about yourself, but I don't understand the context of Becky Sharpe as having vanity. She seems more of a survivor, manipulating men to survive
#22
Donna Tartt is right up there too imho. See The Secret History and Goldfinch.
yy to these lists. They didn’t get to be classics because they’re rubbish.
Virginia Wolf, Jane Austen & George Elliott are my comfort reads.
There’s loads of humour in Middlemarch. It’s a brilliant piece of work.
#23
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is almost perfect. Or as close to perfect as any book I’ve ever read.
Anything by Camus is wonderful but the First Man, his unfinished novel is just sublime.
Colin Matthews 6 months ago
Weird. I've tried to read TGG several times but always give it up. Just don't like it.
#24
Anthony Trollope is very readable for a 19th century novelist, The Palliser novels, Barchester Chronicles, and also The Way We Live Now and He Knew He Was Right.
Also Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence is great.
#25
Opinions all my own - feel free to disagree!!
Steinbeck - East of Eden is brilliant, The Grapes of Wrath is even better - if you struggle with it, the chapters alternate between the story of the Joads and broader more philosophic/political so if you just want the narrative it is possible to halve the length of the book!
Flaubert - Madame Bovary is very readable, but unfortunately my copy is in a very small font so I found it difficult.
George Eliot - particularly Silas Marner
I liked Gaskell's North and South, but shockingly can't get on with Dickens (Three failed attempts at Great Expectations!)
Bram Stoker - Dracula is genuinely scary
D.H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover is dull, and mostly about religion
EM Forster - A Passage to India and A Room with a View are very readable
Jane Austin - Emma is my favourite
Thomas Hardy - Read The Mayor of Casterbridge because I had to, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles because I wanted to then didn't feel any desire to read more.
More modern
Catch 22 - cannot get past page 52
Wild Swans was compelling, but back in the 90s I was the only person I knew who got through it!
Wolf Hall - took effort to get into Mantell's style but was worth it
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell took two goes because its long and complicated and you need to read it consistently - don't put it down and expect to pick it up a month later - but I loved it.
Colin Matthews 6 months ago
Try reading Catch 22 by opening the book at random chapters and reading each one like a separate story. Then go back and re read it.
#27
I enjoy a lot of classic novels, but I often think ones that were considered a bit trashy/risque in their day can be more fun for a modern reader:
The Monk
Dangerous Liaisons
Lady Audley's Secret
Fanny Hill
Dracula
OF more modern classics, I love Stefan Zweig (Chess, Impatience of the Heart), Nabokov (especially Pale Fire), Orwell (perhaps avoid A Clergyman's Daughter), and one of my favourite novels ever is The Name of the Rose.
Colin Matthews 6 months ago
Dracula. If there is a better opening to a novel I have yet to find it.
#30
Bleak House, Dickens
The Gree Mile, Stephen King
A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
The Quincunx, Charles Palliser
LakotaWolf (she/her) 6 months ago
"The Green Mile" is an excellent book AND movie. One rare time (especially for a SK book) that the adaptation is as brilliant as the book. And the same goes for "Shawshank Redemption" - though the original is a short story ("Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption") and not a novel. A lot of people dismiss Stephen King as a "thrills and chills" horror/gore writer, but he's not. His (later) stories are full of deep, rich, relatable characters, personal interactions that we can relate to, and *sometimes* there's some supernatural sh!t going down as well XD His "Mr. Mercedes" series is also excellent in this regard.
#31
Oh, mustn’t forget G K Chesterton, Father Brown.
Michael Largey 6 months ago
The current BBC program has forgotten him and his creation entirely. I think of the show as "Father Burnt Umber".
#32
I’m going to add Barbara Pym, since she’s been called a modern Austen.
The Enchanted April is my comfort book.
Auntriarch 6 months ago
I'm inclined to try Barbara Pym in this person's recommendation then. Also Enchanted April is a favourite of mine.
#33
I sometimes think when reading 19th-century literature that the author really needed a good editor who would take their blue pencil to whole pages, if not chapter! Dickens, Tolstoy...
Having said that, "A Tale of Two Cities" is gripping once they actually get to France (the first third is a bit slow and turgid).
A great alternative to Dickens, and much underrated in my opinion, is "The Odd Women" by George Gissing.
Huddo's sister 6 months ago
When I was in year 7 our French teacher started reading A Tale Of Two Cities out loud at the end of our first lesson. He then never managed to read anymore of it to us!
#34
A Suitable Boy by Virkram Seth
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
In the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
#37
Ulysses - a truly life changing read. I'm obsessed.
Cuppa tea? 6 months ago
Tried to read it three times, never managed to get past the half. The issue is, once the stream of consciousness starts, it goes on for 20-30 pages and its hard to put it down and then pick up in day or two. Someone advised me to do binge reading.
#38
Someone else mentioned it earlier. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It's very long but completely immerses you. I didn't enjoy the TV adaptation but the book was (imo) brilliant.
#39
The Age of Innocence
Please don't stop there with Edith Wharton. The House of Mirth is also wonderful. And Ethan Frome, although extremely bleak, is one of my favourite novels (although it probably only really qualifies as a novella).
Speaking of American female novelists, Carson McCullers is also very much worth reading, especially The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
I am fond of sagas of families in decline. I haven't got around to Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, but I would particularly recommend (all translations from German/Italian):
Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann
Radetzky March - Joseph Roth
The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
What do you think ?
LakotaWolf (she/her) 6 months ago
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein. Dune, by Frank Herbert. Almost anything by Isaac Asimov (but most especially his Robots novels such as The Caves Of Steel.) I find that science fiction written in the 40s/50s/60s is actually STILL applicable today (especially if it's focused on humanity/human interaction like all the aforementioned works) - and in some cases, their concepts and points are even more terrifyingly applicable now than ever. Neal Stephenson is also an excellent author ("Anathem" is one of my favorite books), but buckle up - he writes "hard" sci-fi/speculative fiction that is dense on the actual science.
Scott Rackley 6 months ago (edited)
I love Heinlein, even though he was a perv. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is probably my favorite, and I named my cat after Pixel. Judging from your likes, you would love my book collection. I have all of the Dune series in hardback, same for "most" of Asimov. I'm lacking some of the robot series, they're hella expensive.
Load More Replies...
Phobrek 6 months ago
BP: would love to see more content on books! Especially if they involve reasons why they're liked or even just info about them. The posts just listing off titles aren't that interesting
Caroline Nagel 6 months ago (edited)
John Irving: The World according to Garp, The Ciderhouse Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude - did my best to read Love in Times of Cholera, but I couldn't get through the first few chapters
LakotaWolf (she/her) 6 months ago
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein. Dune, by Frank Herbert. Almost anything by Isaac Asimov (but most especially his Robots novels such as The Caves Of Steel.) I find that science fiction written in the 40s/50s/60s is actually STILL applicable today (especially if it's focused on humanity/human interaction like all the aforementioned works) - and in some cases, their concepts and points are even more terrifyingly applicable now than ever. Neal Stephenson is also an excellent author ("Anathem" is one of my favorite books), but buckle up - he writes "hard" sci-fi/speculative fiction that is dense on the actual science.
Scott Rackley 6 months ago (edited)
I love Heinlein, even though he was a perv. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is probably my favorite, and I named my cat after Pixel. Judging from your likes, you would love my book collection. I have all of the Dune series in hardback, same for "most" of Asimov. I'm lacking some of the robot series, they're hella expensive.
Load More Replies... Phobrek 6 months ago
BP: would love to see more content on books! Especially if they involve reasons why they're liked or even just info about them. The posts just listing off titles aren't that interesting
Caroline Nagel 6 months ago (edited)
John Irving: The World according to Garp, The Ciderhouse Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude - did my best to read Love in Times of Cholera, but I couldn't get through the first few chapters
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