I'm fourteen & I want to start reading some classic novels, any ideas?

Question

I was looking through some, but novels like Crime & Punishment & Don Quixote seem REALLY hard. I want some easier reads than that, but still with insight & knowledge. I'm looking for something worth reading :] Ideas please? Thanks!

Answer 1

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
White Fang by Jack London
The Call of The Wild by Jack London
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Some of my favourites:

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
1984 by George Orwell
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

You will probably be required to read all of the above, and many more, during your years in high school so it's important for you to enjoy reading. Start with something simple and not too long and work your way up to the more difficult and thicker volumes of the classics.

.....but, check out the site below, for a long list of books suitable for your age group. It is listed by category, then by author, to get you started.

Answer 2

Some classic novels I read at about that age:

1984 - Orwell
Huck Finn - Twain
Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
The Trial & Metamorphosis - Kafka
Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut
Light In August - Faulkner
Look Homeward, Angel - Wolfe

Dostoevsky is very hard - Cervantes less so, but certainly long and hard in some stretches. Faulkner is difficult, but Light in August is easier than most of his - to this day I haven't ever been able to read The Sound and the Fury. I didn't read Jane Austen until I was older, but I think Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice would be good choices.

Most great novelists are also great short story writers, and that would certainly apply to most I listed above. You might try reading short stories from some of these and other celebrated writers. The ones you find really appeal to you, you can go on and read full novels.

Answer 3

Phantom of the Opera was really intriguing for me. The story comes from mostly Raoul's point of view and reveals very different characters than the movie or play showed. For instance, the Phantom is more of a monster than a human in any way. Christine is more passive and more like a child than anything. There are many characters that they left out in the movie and play. The phantom has a close aquantance-that even though he sort of admires him, fears him so he helps Raoul take him down for good. I couldn't put it down. It's a very simple read and is very exciting-in many ways more so than the movie. It's by Gaston Leroux. I'm proud to say I own it :)

Answer 4

Mark Twain was a favorite of mine at that age, and if you enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies you should really read the Hobbit and the three Rings books. Pride and Prejudice is very insightful as to the culture and customs of that time, it helps us to understand how we got to where we are now to read about how people used to live and how they felt. HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote some fascinating old-school scifi. All of the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy M Montgomery. Charles Dickens is a little harder to understand but gives a very good snaphot of life at the time he was writing about - not generally a place and time we would like to live!

I guess my best suggestion is to go to a library and explain what you are looking for --- some of the nicest people in the world work in libraries, and they are always helpful. Most libraries are part of groups that share books so if one doesn't have what you want, they can usually borrow it from another library.

Answer 5

Crime and Punishment is not that hard, it's actually pretty easy to follow if you read a good translation.
Other than that, Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye are all really simple to read, you should start off with some like those. Plus they're short so you'll get the satisfaction of finishing the book without getting exhasperated.

Answer 6

Anything by Jane Austen is wonderful such as Pride & Prejudice, and Persuasian. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was one of my favorites durring school. Haper Lee's To Kill A Mocking Bird is the best! If you want to read a great play Arthor Millar's The Crucible is amazing, if you don't understand the play watch the movie with Daniel Day Lewis and Winonna Ryder matches the play almost exactly. Hope you like some of these!!
God Bless!!

Answer 7

I would start with The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer, if you have not read them already. After that I might suggest you try to read some books by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Willa Cather. All of these books are written in clear styles that would be easy for a 14 year old to understand.

Answer 8

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen! (also Emma and Sense and Sensibility)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Inferno by Dante Alighieri

for more contemporary classics, i suggest
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

I also love Peter Pan by JM Barrie and The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum. You need to read the classic children's books too! =)

Answer 9

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Stranger in a Strange Land tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, orphaned progeny of the first manned expedition to Mars, who has been raised by Martians and brought back to Earth by a second human expedition. Though he is a man in his twenties, Smith looks at absolutely everything on this new planet through the ignorant eyes of a baby, and faces the job of learning how to be a human being. If the world government of Earth will let him, that is, for Smith, through a legal fluke, not only has sole survivor rights to the space drive that his mother invented, but also to the surface of Mars. In a Byzantine maneuver that makes Watergate seem minor, the government holds Smith hostage while it tries to figure out how to seize his assets. Ben Caxton, a muckraking reporter, suspects the worst and attempts to rescue Smith. The problem is, if you can't fight City Hall, how can you even begin to fight a world government?
Enter Caxton's friend, Jubal Harshaw, attorney, physician, hack writer, bon vivant, curmudgeon, anarchist. He caches Smith in Freedom Hall, his Poconos enclave, and takes on the dual chore of fighting the world federation for Smith's liberty and of educating Smith in the ways of his biological race. The youth is an apt student, a strange admixture of human infant and Martian superman, and as time goes on, he manages to win more and more people over to his own alien viewpoint. He becomes a kind of messiah--with explosive results.

Answer 10

Here is a list of the Advanced Placement books to read for four years of high school in our school district.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Beloved by Toni Morrison
1984 by George Orwell
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Twelfth Night by Williams Shakespeare

I took a class in Tolstoy and Dostyevski in college. All we did was read all the classics of Tolstoy and Dostyevski. They wrote very well and perhaps you will enjoy their words later in life as you read and experience more in life.

Good Luck!