Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1860's, pt.2 (1865-1869)

I'd really like to vote for Hugo in one of these, but I can't go around The Idiot here.

Eck, I think it'll have to be Crime and Punishment, even if my main memory of it is reading it in a Thai toilet with a disgraceful case of the trots.

Asking for recommendations always feels trite, but where to start with Turgenev?

I haven't read Fathers and Sons, which might be better, but I started with Sketches from a Hunter's Album aka A Sportsman's Sketchbook and liked it quite a bit

I read Fathers & Sons and enjoyed it but my favourite Turgenev experience was a NT performance of Three Days In The Country

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Raskolnikov's Adventures in Wonderland

where to start with Turgenev?

First Love in the Isaiah Berlin translation. it's short and sweet.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of… the 1870's, pt.1 (1870-1874)

i feel confident claiming out mutual friend is dickens' finest even though i haven't read bleak house (or a whole bunch of lesser ones).

"First Love" is marvelous. I'll rep for On the Eve, oft overlooked.

The Last Chronicle of Barset would have got my vote if it'd been included. Trollope's best in my view and one of my favourite novels

Yeah, I don't really have a grasp of what Trollope's best/most highly rated work is and he put out like two books a year, so'z for omissions.

The Last Chronicle of Barset would have got my vote if it'd been included. Trollope's best in my view and one of my favourite novels

i'd probably have gone for this but 'best' seems like a stretch! i remember explaining the action of it--so it's about a clergyman who's genteel poor, and he may have stolen some money, but he's too depressed to remember, and it just follows him for a thousand pages--to a lot of people and getting quizzical looks and inquiries as to why i would read such a thing

The Way We Live Now is generally regarded as his best, but I'd go for The Last Chronicle of Barset (and I've read tons of Trollope). The 1000 page torturing of Josiah Crawley might not be everyone's cup of tea but I think it's the kind of thing Trollope does best (see also Louis Trevelyan). You try and explain a Kafka or Beckett novel to most people and you'd probably get quizzical looks too.

"Germinie Lacerteux by Edmund and Jules de Goncourt"

The Journals by them are a marvel.

Ah, I still need to read them! Proust's loving send-ups are glorious.

Cheers for the Turgenev recommendations. Ordered First Love.

there are lots at Project Gutenberg if anyone with an ereader wants to do similar (i have a couple on my todo list)

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/922

The Last Chronicle of Barset would have got my vote if it'd been included. Trollope's best in my view and one of my favourite novels

Not surprising given my username, but I totally agree. Mr. Crawley is such an amazing character, I can't think of another Victorian novel with such a realistic and sympathetic depiction of mental illness.

(Mr Dick in David Copperfield is the other one people usually suggest with, variably, schizophrenia or autism)

Yes, I can see that. But still, he's a minor character. With the Last Chronicle you have a whole Victorian epic, by a writer at the height of his powers, focusing on the intersection of poverty and mental illness, with a central character who suffers from severe clinical depression, who's not always rational, who's tremendously hard on himself and his family, and who you nonetheless sympathize with and root for and respect. I just can't think of anything else like that in Victorian literature.

i've not read any trollope, i will add it to my list (but am i going to have to read the previous 5 to get to the good one?)

No, you can start with it. There are some plot strands that continue from the previous book, which is also very good, so if you care about that sort of thing you could start with The Small House at Allington, but I don't think it's necessary.

The whole series is worth reading, though. I'd say the first three books, though good, are the weakest; after that it just keeps getting better.