I admit, I’m unread in classic literary fiction. Which is odd, being that everything I have read of the classics I’ve mostly loved.

There hasn’t been many classics that I’ve disliked, and I do wish I had more time to enjoy them. If you had to narrow your list down to just a handful to recommend to others as must reads at least once in their lifetime what would you suggest? More importantly, what am I missing out on?

What I would recommend:

1) Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence, This is afterall my favorite book of all time. There is something elemental and raw about human emotion in this book.

2) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte, tortured characters all around, hell, what’s not to love

3) Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Choderlos de Laclos, this book reads very modern (pub’d 1782), and makes me laugh at it’s badassness

4) Frankenstein – Mary Shelley (one of the few books I remember fondly from high school). Though I did love Jekyll and Hyde and Heart of Darkness.

5) The Monk, Matthew Lewis, you like dark, twisted and pinch of odd humor, this is your book

I admit, there are a great many on my TBR list: North and South, Gaskell; Of Human Bondage, Maugham; A History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, Fielding; Madam Bovary, Flaubert, so on and so forth . . .

Come on in and discuss your favorite classics, or even who you think will be a classic read from our day and age into the next century!