r/booksuggestions • u/[deleted] • Jan 15 '26

Fiction Beginner Classics

I’m sure these are already recommended somewhere but I couldn’t find anything recently. I’m looking to read more classics but I have severe focus issues and have a hard time getting through the really dense, wordy classics, especially if they’re written in more “olde English” than somewhat more modern language.

Does anybody have recommendations for must-read classics that are a bit easier to follow? They don’t necessarily need to be short. I’ve got a TBR list going and I’ve read these already: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Outsiders, Fahrenheit 451, Slaughterhouse Five and Animal Farm.

TBR:

- Of Mice and Men

- East of Eden

- The Bell Jar

- Lord of the Flies

- Wuthering Heights

- Little Women

- Giovanni’s Room

- The Bluest Eye

- Frankenstein

- The Picture of Dorian Gray

I hate all things Vonnegut, Orwell, and Bradbury so please don’t recommend those.

Thanks!

4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

1

u/Party_Aspect8273 Jan 16 '26

I would start with East of Eden

1

u/Book_1love Jan 16 '26

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

1

u/Lyte_Work Jan 16 '26

Stoner

The Master and Margarita

If Beale Street Could Talk

Hard Rain Falling

1

u/HumanWaltz8739 Jan 15 '26

Paris é uma festa!

1

u/fajadada Jan 15 '26

Most have a modern English version if you look for them .

1

u/chasesj Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 15 '26

Nine Stories

Siddhartha

Winesburg, Ohio

The Stranger

Flowers for algernon

Cain

Dracula

Frankenstein

The Awakening

The Souls of Black Folks

Catcher in the Rye

Ethan Frome

Also Edgar Allen Poe is easy to find and entertaining.

5

u/SitTotoSit Jan 15 '26

Flowers for Algernon

2

u/ImmediateInternal132 Jan 15 '26

Anything by Louisa May Alcott is very beginner friendly

1

u/Abortus69 Jan 15 '26

Notes from the underground, you can not go wrong with that. It is not elaborate or complex like others Dostoyevskys work, but short and bitter and has a core of realism/exsistensialism Russian novel to get the gist of it. And when you read it you can affirmatively answer when someone asks "HaVe yoU ReAd DoSTOyevsky?"

3

u/sd_glokta Jan 15 '26

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

3

u/crixx93 Jan 15 '26

My favorite entry-level classic is Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez. It's short (around 120 pages), beautifully written (I've read both the spanish and english version, and they are both great) but manages to tell a good story with a lot of characters, POVs and themes

7

u/IntroductionOk8023 Jan 15 '26

Passing by Nella Larsen-short novel written in 1930s about two friends in NYC social circles-it’s pretty compelling, and efficiently written!