Do you think you know what makes a classic novel… er… classic? The Washington Post thinks maybe we should think again.
WaPo recently asked readers of their Book Club newsletter “which classic books are overrated and which unsung novels should be considered top-tier, we didn’t predict the level of enthusiasm that would accompany the responses”.
Among those that some readers thought should get the toss were iconic books like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and basically anything at all by Earnest Hemingway. “
He attempts to dig for emotional depth,” complained one reader, “and gives up after half an inch. I do not get the unending praise for his work.”
Some of the books readers felt should be added to the list of icons are already there.
A number of the novels that readers recommended are already considered classics, including George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn feels on the cusp, if it’s not already there, but Kimberley Laws makes such an excellent case for the novel, we had to include it: “In a world in which little girls long to be princesses, wear flouncy gowns and inhabit dreamy castles, this book offers a much-needed dose of reality.
Others in the add-them-to-the-icons pile include the 2016 bestseller A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; Kindred by Octavia E. Butler; The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin and a few more.
You can read the whole piece here.
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