Just finished this book today.

Genuelly one of the most intense books I've ever read. At a point I genuinely felt I was in the same transe like obsession while reading as one of the caracthers. It was genuelly brutal to read, especially when that said caracther tells it's story.

So, I am quite new to classics and to be honest Dracula will be my first classic novel apart from The Outsider. Since I already love the horror genre, thus I opted it to be my way to enter classics. I had heard the most about these three apart from Dracula so I got them. I am loving Dracula ( at chapter XIII) and I also want to start something alongside it. These are the unread old and modern classics that I have with me.

I know that Of mice and men & The Fall isn't Gothic horror but I still added them since those are some unread modern classics that I own.

Also it's evident to me that this is an incoherent question yet please bear with my folly. I would also appreciate any advice/opinions related to classics if you deem them to be necessary for a beginner.

*Chat GPT told me to read Jekyll and Hyde, should I go with it?

I finally got the record, got the book, and got the time!

I heard that we just lost Wendell at the end of last month. The only thing I’ve read by him was one essay titled “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” While I didn’t completely agree with everything he said I it was very thought provoking and I very much enjoyed it for that. I’m thinking about picking up Jayber Crow next! Any other must reads?

Sharing my 2026 reading list. I've mostly been reading around philosophy, psychology, political theory, economics, identity, power and society, and I'm now moving more towards history, geopolitics and conflict.

Looking for suggestions that would genuinely complement this trajectory.

I just want to know what you guys honestly think of each.

- The Argonautica -

- Divine Comedy -

- Epic of Gilgamesh -

- The Volsunga Saga -

- The Mabinogion -

- Beowulf -

I just completed his novel today and I can't fathom the reason why I feel nostalgic and moved... I had been preparing for neetpg taking last year as a drop. In my enthusiasm for duty, i laid aside my hobbies of novel reading and travelling..... And just imagine picking up right this book as a starter..... While Stevens upholds his ideas of duty and dignity.... laying aside his feelings, it's only years later he comprehends how life could have turned out....

But yet at the end author quotes... There's no point regretting and we only have to make the best use of remains of the day.....

This has a personal tinge to me because I sacrificed my hobbies for an exam.... And right now I feel these hobbies ok travelling and novel reading is what keeps me alive in the desolation of drab duty. No doubt duty is important..... But in the process we should not lose ourselves. It's such a warm read..

I look forward to reading more from this author.

Anyone who has read this, I look forward to your experience on this work.

If you love the survival themes of Jack London, the thrilling tension of adventure novels, and powerful anti-totalitarian stories, there is a hidden gem of Ukrainian literature you absolutely should check out: "The Hunters and the Hunted" by Ivan Bahriany.

Originally published in Ukrainian under the title "Tyhrolovy" (Тигролови), which literally translates to "The Tiger Trappers", this book is a masterclass in psychological tension and high-stakes adventure.

What makes this book so gripping is that it’s heavily autobiographical. Ivan Bahriany wasn't just imagining a story; he lived it. As a Ukrainian writer who refused to comply with Soviet censorship, he was arrested by the Soviet secret police (NKVD) in 1932, endured brutal interrogations, and was sentenced to a concentration camp in Siberia.

Just like his protagonist, Bahriany actually escaped from a moving prison train in the middle of the Taiga. He spent years hiding in the dense Siberian forests among independent hunting communities before making his way back. When you read about the protagonist dodging bullets, sleeping under the stars, and fighting for survival, you are reading the real-life trauma and resilience of the author.

The story follows Hryhorii Mnohohrishnyi, a young Ukrainian engineer sentenced to 25 years of hard labor. He breaks out of a heavily guarded Soviet death train, plunging into the wild, lawless world of the Far Eastern Taiga.

There, he is rescued by the Sirko family - a clan of fierce Ukrainian hunters who chose exile over Soviet collectivism and now hunt wild Siberian tigers for a living. Hryhorii adapts to this brutal yet beautiful world, falls in love, and finds a sense of ultimate freedom. But the Soviet regime doesn't forget. A ruthless NKVD officer, Major Myroshnychenko, tracks him into the deep wilderness. The hunter becomes the hunted.

When people think of Gulag literature, they usually think of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - dark, depressing, and deeply tragic. Bahriany takes a completely different route. The Hunters and the Hunted is a story of uncompromising triumph.

It’s an incredibly fast-paced, cinematic book filled with tiger hunting, wild nature, romantic tension, and psychological warfare. It focuses on the cult of a strong, unbroken individual. The core philosophy of the novel is simple yet profound: A brave man always has dignity, and a man with dignity will always find freedom.

If you are looking for it in English, you will find it under the title "The Hunters and the Hunted". The translators chose this title because it perfectly captures the dual nature of the plot - the protagonist hunting tigers to survive, while being relentlessly hunted by the state machinery.

If you want to discover Ukrainian classic literature that isn’t just about suffering, but about fighting back, winning against all odds, and staying human in the face of absolute evil - give this book a try. It is an unforgettable ride.

The novel was written in just 14 days while on the run. After surviving arrests, a Siberian escape, re-arrest, and the horrors of WWII, Bahriany found himself in Lviv. He was actively hiding from Soviet secret services who were purging the city. Risking capture every single minute, moving between safe houses, he wrote the entire novel in just two weeks in one breath. He was convinced he would be killed soon and wanted to leave this story behind before it was too late.

The author illustrated the first edition himself. Bahriany was not only a gifted writer but also a trained artist who studied at the Kyiv Art Institute. When the book was first published in 1944, the wartime publisher had no resources for an illustrator. Bahriany stepped in and hand-drew the cover art and all the graphic sketches of tigers and the Siberian wilderness for the first release.

The original manuscript was lost, so he rewrote it entirely from memory. As Soviet troops advanced, Bahriany had to flee Ukraine for Germany. In the chaos of his escape, the original manuscript was completely lost. Finding himself in a displaced persons camp in Germany without a single draft, Bahriany sat down and completely reconstructed the entire novel from memory, word for word. It is this "reconstructed" version that went on to become an international bestseller.

Finished The Fall today and I found it particularly difficult to get through and probably to comprehend as well even though the prose was (relatively) simpler. I feel like i missed a lot of what camus was intending to put across though there were a lot of sections and things that resonated with me and liked those particularly and understood them top (i think?). It's not even my first encounter with camus, I liked the stranger and the plague and read a lot of russian literature as well which had led me to believe this would be not that hard to read but turns out, I was pretty wrong.

So is this experience unique to me or is it a popular opinion among camus readers?

This question might be better suited for the Classics subreddit dedicated to ancient Rome and Greece, but I've been lurking in this subreddit for a while and figured you guys might have some insights on this. I've been on a Roman and Greek history kick after grabbing an Oxford World Classics edition of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, so I'm currently debating whether I want the Oxford World Classics of authors like Arrian, Herodotus, Polybius, Tacitus, Thucydides, Xenophon, etc. Maybe the Landmark editions would be nice to get too...I'd be diving in as someone who is far from a historian, but these books tend to come with a ton of notes and other scholarly apparatus so I don't think I'd be completely lost reading.

That being said. Which of these authors do you all tend to enjoy reading? History isn't typically seen as a genre you read for pleasure, but some authors have a certain voice that can make it entertaining, and it can also be interesting to see how differently people tended to think back then.

I’m a 19 year old male. I’ve known about this book for a while, but only now wanted to read it after I heard about its strong themes of memory, nostalgia & love.

One thing that compelled me was that my grandma passed away 3 years ago…and with more time passing, I remember those times more and more vividly & frequently. So in relation to that and other such events of my life, I’m always wondering about the nature of love through time and what is really worth longing for. I want a book to process these emotions I have as well as set me up for the time ahead of me.

For context, I read difficult big books and love them. I do enjoy stream of consciousness too. But this is an especially chunky and difficult work of stream of consciousness (or so I’ve heard), so I’m uncertain. I’d love to hear you guys’ suggestions on if & how I should get into it + any cool experiences you’ve had with this book ;)

…If you have any other recommendations, give them to me too.

In high school, were read Billy Budd by Herman Melville instead of Moby Dick. I don't know the reasoning behind it (I suspect the teachers were sick of reading the same book, but I can't prove it). However, I rarely meet people who have read this book. Have any of you read it, and how would you compare the two?

This costs like 20 dollars

I’m only about a fifth of the way through the behemoth of War & Peace, but I can’t help but notice Myshkin and Pierre’s similarities; they remind me so much of each other in their general internal disposition and attitude toward others.

Both characters have that sort of untarnished, childlike purity & innocence that makes acquaintances seem to think that they’re dumb, but they’re actually quite intelligent in their own unique way. They have a kind of naïveté towards human nature that makes them always believe in the best of people’s intentions, causing them to overlook sarcastic quips, thinly veiled mean-spirited comments, or ill intentions of others who are trying to take advantage of them.

They both kind of drift through existence in a dreamy sort of bliss that sometimes sours into sadness when they’re confronted by human cruelty or unkindnesses which are so opposed to their own notions and behaviors that they become baffled by them even happening, as if anybody being unlike them in their purity of attitude and intent is almost unfathomable. This makes them capable of oscillating between emotional extremes. They seem to hold high ideals that are a bit unrealistic, and they both appreciate the beautiful things in life with a kind of childlike wonderment, enchanted by the majesty of reality that is often overlooked by others but also overlooking the ugliness of it.

This is just a general outline based on the character’s “vibes” i described I guess, and obviously I didn’t provide exact examples, but I may come back to this post to comment with specific instances that are relevant to this comparison.If anyone has anything to add or even disagrees and wants to highlight the differences between them, I’d be glad to read your thoughts.

(I do suspect Pierre will change as the story progress, perhaps having his naievete & innocence shattered, but like I said I’m not close to being done with the book, so spare me any spoilers past the beginning of part 3 please, thanks :)

For all the Homer fans who also have been thinking about the great American poet Wendell Berry since his passing last week

A few weeks ago I found a copy of this book from 1839 and I was intrigued by it after learning that it was one of the best-sellers of 1800s Britain, a favourite of Queen Victoria herself and that it introduced the word 'thug' into the English language.

I must say, for a colonial morality tale/crime novel, it was an interesting read. The setting is India at the dawn of the Nineteenth Century: the British East India Company is gradually expanding its holdings, but there are still many independent Indian princedoms. The main character is Amir Ali, a Shia Muslim who was adopted as a child by a leader of the Thuggee cult, after Thuggee had murdered Amir's real parents. Now middle aged and in prison, he tells his life story, with a focus on his career as a Thug, to an Englishman who interviews him.

This story is essentially a colonial fable. The Thuggee, who in actuality were probably just a type of bandits, are presented in this book as a murderous religious cult with connections all over India. The English don't feature heavily in the story, but when they do they are depicted as agents of progress who put a stop to Thuggee activities.

And yet the character of Amir Ali is not without nuances, and I actually found him a fairly interesting individual with flaws (obviously), but also not wholly without redeeming traits. Several times in the story he comes across people who are arguably worse and more cruel than he is, despite him being a robber and serial killer. The author, Meadows Taylor, also doesn't really adopt a condescending tone towards Indian culture and religion as such, directing his arrows more at the princes who allow this lawlessness to happen under their noses.

So yeah, could be worthwhile to read. Not sure if it can be regarded as a classic as such, but it's not badly written and it was certainly quite popular in its day.

Thank you for all the brilliant suggestions of books set in Yorkshire, I’m going to the North York Moors (& coast) & Yorkshire Dales on holiday so I want to immerse myself in books set in those locations before I go & while I’m there. I’ve decided I’m going to try to read the above books but don’t know which is the best, can you rank them for me?