tier ranking all the classics i've read

To me no other book ever raises so many twisted and complicated moral questions as Brave New World. The way it tackles happiness in society is really deep and it kind of made me rethink and revalue the functioning and structure of our society.

So glad you put 'Wuthering Heights' at God tier. I completely agree and with 'Frankenstein' being there as well. I recommend checking out George Eliot, especially Middlemarch. BTW, did you know that Charlotte is believed to have based the main character in 'Shirley' on her sister Emily? I agreed with (or at least I could understand) a lot of your views except about Jane Eyre

just watched this and i have loved Jane Eyre actually, so it's really interesting to see how you felt about it haha. however, i have had Emma (paperback) for a while so i want to get into it soon :)

I found I have very similar opinions! I'm British and never truly loved Great Gatsby, but War and Peace, Frankenstein, Animal Farm and To Kill a Mockingbird would all make my God Tier
Just need to read some more to have read as many classics as you! xx

I have diametrically opposite preferences on the Brontes' novels, i.e. Jane Eyre is my favourite and Wuthering Heights my least preferred. I'm thus very interested to hear how your reread of JE goes.
On translated classics...phew, so much choice! I'll restrain myself to just a few suggestions:
Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (well...duh)
Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma"
Giuseppe Di Lampedusa's "The Leopard"
Not in the classic/literary sphere, but Boris Akunin's Fandorin series (late 19th century Russia mystery/thrillers, but Akunin plays with a lot of genres) is great fun, commencing with "The Winter Queen".

You are the first reviewer that I’ve seen mention The Machine Stops by E M Forster. Besides the Internet. this novella was published in 1909 (six years after the first flight) and contemplates air travel as obsolete. Just imagining yourself at a time when cars were scarce and electricity was new, reading this would seem way too fantastic. Thanks!

Excellent presentation!!! I enjoyed both your commentary as well as the categorization of the books into tiers. I feel entirely justified and happy to give this video a "thumbs up".

As a french hearing "la crème de la crème" like that is so funny.
Good ranking btw

Villette is a favorite. I've read it several times. Also loved Agnes Grey and Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Disliked Wuthering Heights.

Fun video! Thank you. For translated fiction try Jon Fosse, who won the Nobel Prize this year. I discovered him through the Booker International Prize (his plays are unknown here in the US). It took me a while to learn how to read him, but now I love his style and his characters. For starters, begin with Alisa at the Fire, which comes in at 125 pages. Septology, him magnum opus, at 850 pages, has to be one of the greatest, the God tier, or our time.

Loved this list - quite possibly because a number of my favourite classics were also on your "a good time" and "god tier" 😄
I suppose it's slightly embarrassing that I yet to read any Bronte or Austen novel, but they're on my reading list for 2023. 🙂
I can never decide on just the one novel that would be my all-time favourite, but I think it's fair to say "Swann's way" and "Anna Karenina" are among the contenders every time...which is mightily impressive considering I can't read them in their original French and Russian - god knows how much nuance is lost in that respect alone...

I ran across your You Tube tonight and I just so happen to be half way through “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and I’m in total agreement! I got through half of “Jane Eyre” and that’s all I could stand. “Ulysses” should be included with the dry paint thing or ‘I’d rather be stuck in a traffic jam’ than subjected to this totally confusing dribble.

I thought the Great Gatsby was dreadful, I’ll have to try it again sometime. I heard Hunter S Thompson loved it so much he would type it out over and over and that he used his writing style for Hell’s Angels, a book I absolutely love. Dorian Grey is most definitely God Tier, just recently read it and was blown away at how incredible it is. 1984 sears in your mind, that book fucked me up, truly did. War and Peace is a work of art like the Mona Lisa, and a very approachable book. Tolstoy is a genius, a once in a lifetime author. Might I add a book to the God Tier? Crime and Punishment. I’ve only read one other Dostoyevsky book, but C&P delivers a boom with the message he communicates through it.

Nice to see you mention Agatha Christie. She was often too formulaic (she joked that she was "a sausage factory"!!), and sometimes wrote too fast, but she had some great strengths, such as her dialogue, her character insights, her moral decency. I think "Five Little Pigs", "Sad Cypress" and "Crooked House" are marvellous. But I would hesitate to put her up there amongst great classics.
I love your honesty and forthrightness by the way. So refreshing to see you say some books are over rated amongst the classics, and some are under rated. You're incredibly well read for a young woman!!
Nice to hear Le Carre get a mention.

It's so interesting how other people think about books, I agree on the most bronte novels but would switch wuthering heights with jane eyre 😅 I adore the tenant of wildfell hall...missed Thomas Hardy on that list though....

I enjoyed watching your video 😉
Not sure all your selections are classics though but that is the thing with the classic tag. There is no definitive definition

Agree with most of the god tier novels, I find war parts in War and peace a little too detailed though (sadly my attention span is not what it once was)

I've read many of the books you've listed, and I agree with most of what you've said about them. I did like Jane Eyre more than you seemed to, though. : ) There is one I would add to "I'd rather watch paint dry" and that would be David Copperfield by Dickens. I forced myself to finish it, and honestly I don't know why I did that. I've found that a lot of people loved it but I just couldn't get into it. In "God Tier" I would put The Iliad by Homer and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Both of those books are fabulous. The Iliad is my personal favourite piece of literature. If you like Sci-Fi you may want to try Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I'm reading it now and I've been having a great time with it.

Just come across this video. Nicely done, and interesting…….have subscribed 😊

Yes the great Gatsby is totally over hyped! Lol I reread this this year from school and was like....that was it???

I agree with you 💯% I feel like I have found my person. I subbed.

I do so agree with you about The Great Gatsby. I just don’t see it. Yuk.

We are the polar opposites regarding Lord of the Rings and The Great Gatsby. I'm neither British nor American just for the record and love love love Fantasy. I've red both in my teens for the first time. And while I appreciate the love of detail and care (inventing a language) of Tolkien I tended and still tend to skipp to the good parts.
Did I miss Douglas Adams, Victor Hugo, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle? I'd add the Neverending Story by Michael Ende which reads and hits as Adult just diffrent.

H. E. Bate's novel "Love for Lydia" set in the 1920s is in my God tier!!! It's the best love story I've ever read; better than even Austen's "Emma" or "Jane Eyre", which I do like. He was an absolute master of the short story and I am in awe of his art. His descriptions of nature, of flowers is outstanding, better than great poets like Pushkin or Wordsworth. Up there with Shakespeare and Milton. Can't believe he never gets mentioned.

My God Tier would have to include Larry McMurty's "Lonesome Dove." I would put "The Catcher In the Rye" at the top of the Overhyped tier.

Great but ,... nothing of Victor Hugo, not even Les Miserables, Blalzac, Zola , Flaubert? Dostoevski?

Eccentric collection, but fun to watch.

Constantine Levin 100%

I prefer “We” by Zamyatin over Brave New World.

Oliver Twist is taught because it’s relatively short. It’s not first rate Dickens.

" A book by Leo Tolstoy: one of the greatest in all the languages of the world, War and Peace. Not only the greatest but also the most voluminous...thousands of pages. I don’t know that anybody reads such books except myself. They are so big, so vast, they make you afraid.
But Tolstoy’s book has to be vast, it is not his fault. War and Peace is the whole history of human consciousness - the whole history; it cannot be written on a few pages. Yes, it is difficult to read thousands of pages, but if one can one will be transported to another world. One will know the taste of something classic. Yes, it is a classic.
Nobody is more worthy of a Nobel Prize than Leo Tolstoy. His creativity is immense, he was unsurpassed by anyone. He was nominated, but refused by the committee because of his unorthodox stories on Christianity. The Prize committee opens its records every fifty years. When records were opened in 1950, researchers rushed to see whose names were nominated and cancelled and for what reason. Leo Tolstoy was nominated, but never given the prize as he is not an orthodox Christian. Leo Tolstoy is one of Russia’s wisest men of the 20th century and his ideas on non-violence deeply influenced Mahatma Gandhi’s ideology. Mahatma Gandhi declared three persons his master. The first was Leo Tolstoy, the second was Henry Thoreau, and the third was Emerson.
Once Leo Tolstoy was asked - How many experiences did you have of divine ecstasy in your life? Tolstoy started crying. He replied - Not more than 7 in my life of 70 years, but I am grateful for those 7 moments and miserable too. In those moments it was evident that is could have been the flavor of my whole life but that didn’t happen. Those moments came and went on their own. But I am still grateful to God that even without any conscious effort on my part, once in a while He has been knocking at my doors.

Anna Karenina is one of my most loved books. How many times I have read it I can’t remember. I mean the number of times - I remember the book perfectly well, I can relate the entire book.
If I was drowning in the ocean and had to choose just one novel out of all the millions of novels in the world, I would choose Anna Karenina. It would be beautiful to be with that beautiful book. It has to be read and read again; only then you can feel it, smell it, and taste the flavor. It is no ordinary book.
Leo Tolstoy failed as a saint, just as Mahatma Gandhi failed as a saint, but Leo Tolstoy was a great novelist. Mahatma Gandhi succeeded as - and will remain forever - a pinnacle of sincerity. I don’t know of any other man in this century who was so sincere. When he wrote to people ‘sincerely yours’ he was really sincere. When you write ‘sincerely yours’, you know, and everybody else knows, and the person to whom you are writing also knows, that it is all bullshit. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to really be ‘sincerely yours’. That’s what makes a person religious - sincerity
.Leo Tolstoy wanted to be religious but could not be. He tried hard. I feel great sympathy with his effort, but he was not a religious person. He has to wait at least a few more lives. In a way it is good that he was not a religious man, otherwise we would have missed Resurrection, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and dozens more beautiful, immensely beautiful books. "

Can u suggest me some books to gift my female team leader ?

Garbage List:
1. The Great Gatsby
2. To Kill A Mockingbird
3. Anything by Toni Morrison -- except Beloved
4. Anything by James Joyce

i saw miniature of this video and I thought "if 1984 isn't in god tire there is no hope for the humanity"
but it is, great taste

And then there were none is great... until the ending. The ending ruins the book for me.
Jane Eyre sucks from beginning to end. The negative events that happen to the character are just SO over the top.