When your kid(s) are old enough read it with them. It about the only book that i managed to engage a 6 yo, 8yo and 10 yo with simultaneously.
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Wolf Hall was excellent too. Looked forward to picking it up every evening.
This happens to me regularly.
I haven’t read At Swim Two Birds since I was 19 or 20 but vast tracts of it are still lodged in my memory. Ditto the Catcher in the Rye, Lord Jim, the World According to Garp. Must be the optimum age to read and retain content.
As an aside/follow up to this I think the Leaving Cert English course as it was in my day was a great way to foster an interest in reading for anyone who had an aptitude for it. The modern novels seem to have been chosen with that in mind.
The Irish course was the polar opposite - it almost seemed designed to put fellas off the language and of course the teachers that were attracted to teaching Irish tended to be a mix of zealots and psychopaths.
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I couldn’t get my head around wolf hall at all. Slogged through about 300 pages of it and gave it up, hated it.
The Count of Monte Cristo
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Have you read Blood Meridian? I’d say you’d like it. Monster of a book, stays with you a long time. I’d love to be able to figure out the ending of it. Developing a film of it at the moment.
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Of mice and men & A kestrel for a knave were two good ones from the school days.
That’d definitely be in my top 3 too.
A brilliant story that is so quick & easy to read despite being quite long. I don’t know whether it’s because of modern translations or what but it reads like a modern novel. Probably the easiest read of any ‘classic’ novel pre-20th century that I’ve read. Not than an easy read alone makes it good, it’s a fantastic story too.
I haven’t… Since i finished my thesis around 2016 i haven’t been able to read books. I pretended to read some Irish dystopian book about refugees recently, to be edgy, but i haven’t been able to read fiction in particular in a few years now.
I’ll have to get back on the saddle as the nan says
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The classics really do depend on the edition you read. I had to give the brothers karamazov three different goes before getting the right edition.
I did the Leaving just over 10 years ago and, personally, I don’t like how they go about teaching English.
In my opinion, there is nothing more likely to turn someone against reading by forcing them to learn quotes and dream up tenuous thematic links between various works.
I read a lot, even more when I was in school, but Lies of Silence by Brian Moore was the one book we had to read for the Leaving Cert and I thought it was a load of shit tbh.
Same with Shakespeare’s plays; plays are not meant to be read in classrooms, they are meant to be watched.
I just think we should be encouraging people to read and write, to broaden their critical thinking, the exam comes naturally at that point if you are able to write.
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Emma by Jane Austen was a great book on Leaving Cert curriculum.
Lads here picking their favourite novel with ease. I’d struggle. I rarely re-read anything. Fatherland by Robert Harris was my favourite page turner that I can think of now. I enjoyed the writing/prose in Night Boat to Tangier a lot.
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Very true that. The novels I read for school were Huckleberry Finn (inter). Wuthering Heights, Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby iirc.
Meanwhile we had Stair Litriocht na Gaeilge and Peig Sayers on the other side. And Bullai Mhartain.
Toraoicht Diarmuid agus Grainne and Peig Sayers for ffs.
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That’s right! forgot about that one. Brutal.
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Cannery Row by John Steinbeck is a great book and one of my favourites. . Clare Keegan’s Small Things like these is tremendous but not sure if it counts as a novel. I dont think i ever enjoyed a novel as much as The Green Mile by Stephen King.
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