What about “Remembrance of things past”? Was it too long for you to want to read. you’ll probably hate it if you hate the excessive descriptions of Faulkner and the slowness of Ulysses.
That may be, though I had an interesting experience only a couple years ago, I randomly picked up a random old late-career Kerouac book, which was really just a sloppy rant about nonsense, but the charisma absolutely jumped off the page, I was really surprised
Dharma Bums is wonderful, Alan Ginsberg as Alvah Goldbook is a phenomenal character.... it is a very honest book, you sense his struggle with the spiritual (dharama) and the earthly (drugs and booze) and dharma wins!
Having just read and LOVED The Master and Margarita I almost fell off my chair when I saw it ranked at no.2 in ‘Bad Classics’. This makes no sense to me and pretty much invalidates the entire post but hey, I know, lists like these are subjective and just a bit of fun.
Yeah is one of my all time favourites, I read it twice and got a tattoo of my first impressions (I waited the whole book to find the bit where the devil would drink margaritas but alas...)
I appreciated M/M, perhaps not as well as one might if they also totally enjoyed it. It was a difficult book. I read Goethe’s Faust concurrently which enhanced my experience. Loved the Pontius Pilate fan fiction.
I enjoy books that I feel more than those that I just understand, or find some joy in the technical elements. M/M had some funny moments, for example the whole “second freshness” bit for sure. It never made me want to cry, and it definitely felt like it took a long time to finish.
"I read Goethe's Faust concurrently which enhanced my experience." What a preposterous and pretentious statement!
First of all, I have never come across A.N.Y.O.N.E. (at PhD level) who is willing to cloud their experience of reading and of fully appreciating Goethe's masterpiece by reading a different and very challenging work concurrently with the express purpose of "enhancing" their experience of either (unless it is for comparative purposes and not for aesthetic appreciation).
Also: context matters! Faust and The Master and Margarita were written in radically different eras—Romantic Germany vs. Stalinist USSR—each deeply embedded in its time. Goethe and Bulgakov weren’t writing just abstract philosophical tales; they were responding to their worlds, their constraints, their audiences.
To read them "concurrently," as if they were interchangeable metaphysical parables, risks flattening that richness. It can reduce Faust to just a template and M&M to a riff on it, rather than allowing each to speak fully in its own idiom and urgency. There's also a kind of arrogance in assuming the reader can juggle both without compromising either—especially on a first or unstudied read.
Saying one "enhanced" the other might be less about genuine insight and more about signaling cultural capital—like saying, "I paired my Bordeaux with Kafka and it brought out the tannins in the existential dread." 😂
Nope, it just means I read them both at the same time. I didn’t know about the rule against this but I’ll keep it in mind going forward! Thanks for letting me know; it won’t happen again.
Picture of Dorian Gray being on the “bad” list is just unbearable for me. I wrote my undergrad thesis on it, and on Wilde himself. In my opinion it is a great book, but ultimately a matter of taste, I suppose. Historical context—and the life of Wilde—give it a lot more color.
I looooooved it when I read it at age 18 but I was a kid from a comp rejected by Oxbridge, so it probably fed into my right on feeling of oppression. I’ll try it again. It’s been a long time.
Funny. Just the other day sent this message to a friend:
"I have realized that when I savor reading a good book, I slow down a lot when I am almost through with it. At this point, It has become a dear fiend, a companionship that I don't want to let go."
Pretty good, though I'd take the asterisk off Crime and Punishment and Fight Club. They're just classic classics. Did you miss Jane Eyre? I also feel vindicated, re: The Master and Margarita. If we're doing modern classics, I feel like this list could use some Coetzee, Ferrante, Kingsolver, Robinson, July, Saunders, and Heti.
At a guess, because he hasn't read it? He's pretty up front about not having read every single enormously long novel that has ever been considered good.
I'd much prefer someone make a list of stuff they've actually read, with inevitable omissions, rather than including things they saw in other people's lists but haven't read themselves, in order to sound clever.
I’m surprised to see the red and the black at the top of the shit list. I really liked it. But much of your list does resonate - war and peace is the best novel ever written and everybody should read it.
I adored the Red and the Black, and my grown children did also. Hint: it’s not about the plot. It helps also to have some background in French history. Better still if you can read French
In the last week, I gave my unread copy of Anna Karenina to a second-hand store and separately acquired War and Peace. This time maybe I'd better work up to reading it instead of casting it off. I think I only finished one book in the last 2 years though (The Body Keeps the Score) so the first step will be to get off my phone and go tend my vegetables in the garden.
You could listen to War and Peace on audio book and tend your vege garden at the same time, that's what I did after starting to read the book and giving up for the third time. (It's just too huge a tome to read in bed)
I read it in Russian for the first time ever recently. I understand why it appeals to many but I found it to be gobbledygook but did appreciate a lot of the Soviet era descriptions of life.
So many things. He's such a masterful storyteller. He weaves together multiple characters and threads in a way that draws you in. It's a complex narrative structure — kind of concentric circles — but beautifully executed. The characters are all flawed, inseparable from their time and place, but also somehow very individual and strange. He writes with a depth and specificity you only see in great writers.
Of course, it's dark — a classic Southern gothic. He doesn't shrink from ugliness, but there's also something very compassionate about the way he tells the story.
I don't know if I'm doing it justice! I've convinced myself that I want to read it again though.
I’ve seen better taste at a Kid Rock concert.
Better taste in a can of Old Milwaukee
OK, I will raise you with a warm can of Old Milwaukee I found in the barn by the sparrows nest.
stop..😆
Read your review of Orbital. Good arguments there, but think you overestimate Kid Rock. Cowboy…then what?
The whole list is great until you get to the bad classics; it then becomes completely insane.
A picture of Dorian grey being bad?? Absolutely not
Exactly.
My thoughts exactly.
Completely agree with you on The Red and The Black. I don’t understand the French obsession with it.
Perhaps a little weirdly, I absolutely loved a Farewell to Arms as an O level set book
What about “Remembrance of things past”? Was it too long for you to want to read. you’ll probably hate it if you hate the excessive descriptions of Faulkner and the slowness of Ulysses.
The cruelest thing you can do to Jack Kerouac is reread him at 38
That may be, though I had an interesting experience only a couple years ago, I randomly picked up a random old late-career Kerouac book, which was really just a sloppy rant about nonsense, but the charisma absolutely jumped off the page, I was really surprised
Interesting. I actually haven't re-read since college! But Dharma Bums has been on my list lately
Dharma Bums is wonderful, Alan Ginsberg as Alvah Goldbook is a phenomenal character.... it is a very honest book, you sense his struggle with the spiritual (dharama) and the earthly (drugs and booze) and dharma wins!
He writes extraordinarily well about childhood. Don’t give up on him without reading Doctor Sax and Maggie Cassidy.
Having just read and LOVED The Master and Margarita I almost fell off my chair when I saw it ranked at no.2 in ‘Bad Classics’. This makes no sense to me and pretty much invalidates the entire post but hey, I know, lists like these are subjective and just a bit of fun.
Master and Margarita is one of the great novels of the 20th century. It gets better with each reading.
Yeah is one of my all time favourites, I read it twice and got a tattoo of my first impressions (I waited the whole book to find the bit where the devil would drink margaritas but alas...)
I appreciated M/M, perhaps not as well as one might if they also totally enjoyed it. It was a difficult book. I read Goethe’s Faust concurrently which enhanced my experience. Loved the Pontius Pilate fan fiction.
I enjoy books that I feel more than those that I just understand, or find some joy in the technical elements. M/M had some funny moments, for example the whole “second freshness” bit for sure. It never made me want to cry, and it definitely felt like it took a long time to finish.
"I read Goethe's Faust concurrently which enhanced my experience." What a preposterous and pretentious statement!
First of all, I have never come across A.N.Y.O.N.E. (at PhD level) who is willing to cloud their experience of reading and of fully appreciating Goethe's masterpiece by reading a different and very challenging work concurrently with the express purpose of "enhancing" their experience of either (unless it is for comparative purposes and not for aesthetic appreciation).
Also: context matters! Faust and The Master and Margarita were written in radically different eras—Romantic Germany vs. Stalinist USSR—each deeply embedded in its time. Goethe and Bulgakov weren’t writing just abstract philosophical tales; they were responding to their worlds, their constraints, their audiences.
To read them "concurrently," as if they were interchangeable metaphysical parables, risks flattening that richness. It can reduce Faust to just a template and M&M to a riff on it, rather than allowing each to speak fully in its own idiom and urgency. There's also a kind of arrogance in assuming the reader can juggle both without compromising either—especially on a first or unstudied read.
Saying one "enhanced" the other might be less about genuine insight and more about signaling cultural capital—like saying, "I paired my Bordeaux with Kafka and it brought out the tannins in the existential dread." 😂
Nope, it just means I read them both at the same time. I didn’t know about the rule against this but I’ll keep it in mind going forward! Thanks for letting me know; it won’t happen again.
Picture of Dorian Gray being on the “bad” list is just unbearable for me. I wrote my undergrad thesis on it, and on Wilde himself. In my opinion it is a great book, but ultimately a matter of taste, I suppose. Historical context—and the life of Wilde—give it a lot more color.
I really like Wilde actually! I think about him all the time. I just didn’t like that book
You are so right.
I feel like Jude the Obscure is aching and relatable but then again I’m an English person from a bad neighbourhood who went to Oxbridge 😅😭
also the unbearable lightness of being on the bad list to me is crazy lmaoo
oh..i felt that. If I were left on a desert island with the books from one author to read for the rest of my life, it would be his.
I looooooved it when I read it at age 18 but I was a kid from a comp rejected by Oxbridge, so it probably fed into my right on feeling of oppression. I’ll try it again. It’s been a long time.
Any list of great lit that doesn't include The Portrait of A Lady or Magic Mountain is just hog swill.
These are the only two books I can remember deliberately slowing my reading so as to avoid coming to the end in my life as a voracious reader.
And Jude the Obscure is wonderful. Shallow middle-class poseurs need not apply.
Funny. Just the other day sent this message to a friend:
"I have realized that when I savor reading a good book, I slow down a lot when I am almost through with it. At this point, It has become a dear fiend, a companionship that I don't want to let go."
Yes! Yes! Happens to me most of the time. When I finally finish, I hold the book against my chest and just breathe for awhile.
Elizabeth, for this it is impossible that you should not be my friend.
Excellent!
Pretty good, though I'd take the asterisk off Crime and Punishment and Fight Club. They're just classic classics. Did you miss Jane Eyre? I also feel vindicated, re: The Master and Margarita. If we're doing modern classics, I feel like this list could use some Coetzee, Ferrante, Kingsolver, Robinson, July, Saunders, and Heti.
Fair. I tried not to put anything on from the last couple decades, but aside from that my inclusion of modern classics was almost entirely random
Have you read Richard Powers? I love every book, every minute. This man is brilliant.
The first rule of classics lists is: you talk about reordering the classics lists.
The second rule of classics lists is:...
OK, I came here just to make that lame joke. Thanks for the list though.
Agree with a majority of this except for the Great Gatsby which should be way down the line.
Yes, along with Mrs. Dalloway. #hottake
The extent to which I disagree with this ranking is palpable but my most important question is why is Moby Dick not here at all!
At a guess, because he hasn't read it? He's pretty up front about not having read every single enormously long novel that has ever been considered good.
I'd much prefer someone make a list of stuff they've actually read, with inevitable omissions, rather than including things they saw in other people's lists but haven't read themselves, in order to sound clever.
Spot on!
I’m surprised to see the red and the black at the top of the shit list. I really liked it. But much of your list does resonate - war and peace is the best novel ever written and everybody should read it.
I adored the Red and the Black, and my grown children did also. Hint: it’s not about the plot. It helps also to have some background in French history. Better still if you can read French
In the last week, I gave my unread copy of Anna Karenina to a second-hand store and separately acquired War and Peace. This time maybe I'd better work up to reading it instead of casting it off. I think I only finished one book in the last 2 years though (The Body Keeps the Score) so the first step will be to get off my phone and go tend my vegetables in the garden.
You could listen to War and Peace on audio book and tend your vege garden at the same time, that's what I did after starting to read the book and giving up for the third time. (It's just too huge a tome to read in bed)
👍
I would add “As I Lay Dying” as one of the worst books I’ve ever read - classic or not. Great list though
Agreed
Thanks for the tip. I had it on my TBR for 2025.
I've replaced it with The Count of Monte Cristo
Here's another tip: As I Lay Dying is an amazing book.
Agreed!
I feel vindicated seeing The Master and Margarita in the bad section. Must be better in Russian
Them’s fighting words. The Master and Margarita is a brilliant novel.
I read it in Russian for the first time ever recently. I understand why it appeals to many but I found it to be gobbledygook but did appreciate a lot of the Soviet era descriptions of life.
The bad classics list is, uhhh, objectionable, at least in part. Kundera?! Bellow?! Koestler?!
(With Bellow I’m tempted to ask what else you’ve read. Dangling Man and The Victim are both very good imo.)
Agree. Bellow is fantastic. Not for everyone but damn powerful writer. https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/writers-versus-the-world
Faulkner? Light in August is one of my all time favorite books (read and reread).
I have not read Faulkner but have wanted to. What is it about this book that you treasure?
So many things. He's such a masterful storyteller. He weaves together multiple characters and threads in a way that draws you in. It's a complex narrative structure — kind of concentric circles — but beautifully executed. The characters are all flawed, inseparable from their time and place, but also somehow very individual and strange. He writes with a depth and specificity you only see in great writers.
Of course, it's dark — a classic Southern gothic. He doesn't shrink from ugliness, but there's also something very compassionate about the way he tells the story.
I don't know if I'm doing it justice! I've convinced myself that I want to read it again though.
These lists usually make me angry. I love yours.
- A snobby English major