Great classical literature reads to pick up now

Looking for a great classic to read now? When not choose one of these handpicked by the Craveread review team.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

This is the story of the Buendia family and its seven generations of family members, and of the town of Macondo, which they built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and miracles. This book is a microcosm of Columbian life, with its hidden secrets and mysteries which only Aureliano Buendia can fathom.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state formerly known as the US. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford, to serve just one function which is to breed. If she refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged to death. This is a story about repression, persecution and Offred’s future which makes it a must read.

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The best classical films to watch now

Looking to sit down with a good movie to take your mind off things? Then choose one of these great American films, selected by the Craveread review team, and get your popcorn popping!

Greed by Erich von Stroheim

The existing print isn’t quite von Stroheim’s full vision, but it is extraordinary nonetheless. In this silent drama, the great Zasu Pitts wins the lottery and the greed that follows her windfall ruins the lives of three people. The final scene in Death Valley is an absolute stunner.

Fargo by Joel (and Ethan) Coen

A deeply black — but hilarious — comedy about a sheriff (Frances McDormand) investigating a series of murders in small-town Minnesota. The murderers are not encumbered by competence, while the townspeople would likely call the sheriff “sharp as a tack.”

Some Like it Hot by Billy Wilder

Some call this a perfect comedy. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and spend the rest of the movie on the run from mobsters by dressing in drag and playing in an all-woman band with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, in her best role.

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Classic American films to watch now

If you are looking for a great American classic film to watch tonight, why not choose one of these selected by the Craveread review team?

It Happened One Night. Frank Capra, 1934.

This iconic work was the first (and still one of only three) to win all of the major Oscars for the year. Put runaway heiress Claudette Colbert and newspaper reporter Clark Gable on a bus, and magic happens.

Do the Right Thing. Spike Lee, 1989.

Spike Lee is a true student and lover of film. In this breakout picture, he re-creates the simmering social tensions on a hot, hot day that eventually explode into a cathartic and violent eruption.

The Gold Rush. Charlie Chaplin, 1925.

Chaplin manages to create a seemingly endless series of hilarious gags out of deprivation in the frozen north. The hunger-based jokes alone are enough to make this movie one of the best.

King Kong. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933.

You know the story, but if you haven’t seen it lately you may forget how effective this version still is. The King goes ape over Fay Wray, and eventually sacrifices his furry self for her.

The Adventures of Robin Hood. Michael Curtiz, 1938.

This is the pinnacle of all swashbuckling flicks, with Errol Flynn at his most dashing, Basil Rathbone at his most deliciously loathsome and Olivia de Havilland at her most charming. It’s just a flat-out romp.

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Quotes From Literature That Will Actually Change Your Life

Fans of classical literature will love these dramatic quotes which will make you stop and think, curated by the Craveread review team.

1. “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

2. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” —Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

3. “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” —J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

4. “I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities.” —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

5. “You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” —David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

6. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” —Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

7. “Forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else. It’s something you do for yourself. It’s saying, ‘You’re not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.’ It’s saying, ‘You don’t get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.'” —Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller

8. “Adversity is like a strong wind. It…tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.” —Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

9. “Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.” —J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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Great quotes from classical literature

If you are looking for some great classic reads, and in particular, take in some very powerful words, then get your hands on these classical literature novels curated by the Craveread review team.

Frankenstein

Author: Mary Shelley

Year: 1818

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

Valis

Author: Philip K. Dick

Year: 1981

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”

The Witches

Author: Roald Dahl

Year: 1983

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.”

Birdsong

Author: Sebastian Faulks

Year: 1993

“I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.”

Stardust

Author: Neil Gaiman

Year: 1999

“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.”

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Classic Novels Your Kids Will Love

These books all come highly recommended by the Craveread review team. Grab them for your young readers today.

Magic Treehouse

The first Magic Tree House was published in 1992 — introducing the world to Jack and Annie, a brother and sister who discover a magical tree house filled with books. In Dinosaurs Before Dark, the tree house takes them on their first journey, an adventure in prehistoric times.

Stuart Little

Stuart Little is a mouse born to human parents in New York City. Stuart’s family helps him adapt to his diminutive size in a house made for human-sized inhabitants. Stuart rises before the rest of the family and confronts the issue of washing himself.

The Mouse & The Motorcycle

“Pb-pb-b-b-b. Pb-pb-b-b-b.” Ralph, the mouse, revs up a dream come true with these magic vocables–his very own motorcycle. Living in a knothole in a hotel room, young Ralph has seen plenty of families come and go, some more generous with their crumbs than others. But when young Keith and his parents check in to the hotel, Ralph gets his first chance to check out. He has always fantasized about venturing beyond the second floor, maybe even outside. Curiosity overcomes caution, and Ralph must have a go at Keith’s toy motorcycle. Soon, the headstrong mouse finds himself in a pickle when all he wanted was to ride a motorcycle.

Sarah Plain & Tall,

This beloved Newbery Medal-winning book, is the first of five books in Patricia MacLachlan’s chapter book series about the Witting family. Set in the late nineteenth century and told from young Anna’s point of view, Sarah, Plain and Tall, say to the story of how Sarah Elisabeth Wheaton comes from Maine to the prairie to answer Papa’s advertisement for a wife and mother. Before Sarah arrives, Anna and her younger brother Caleb wait and wonder.

For plenty more great classic reads and reviews, check out Craveread.

Spend Your Free Time Listening To Classic Audiobooks

No one can ignore the pleasure that audiobooks bring. Whenever you think of having a hands-free reading experience, you can’t think of anything other than classic audiobooks. Let’s look at some of the classic audiobooks that you should try listening to.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

Originally published on January 8, 1813, Pride and Prejudice is one of the world’s most popular classic audiobooks. The brilliant narrator offers a stunning performance that makes the audiobook even more interesting to listen to. Rosamund Pike is the protagonist, sister, and best friend to Jane Bennet. Pike’s understanding of the narrative and its characters is on another level.

Moby-Dick – Herman Melville

This is one of the most accomplished audiobook legends in history. Narrator Frank Muller gives an outstanding performance of Herman’s “Moby-Dick.” Melville strives to bring out the theme of epicness while emphasizing the narrator’s humble character. Moby-Dicks central metaphor seems to be growing more powerful compared to the tale itself.

Amnesty – Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga, a journalist and Indo-Australian writer, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. In this audiobook, he tells the story of an illegal Sri Lankan immigrant mixed up in a deadly crime. He has no option but to say to the police every relevant information that he knows. The narrator of this audiobook is Vikas Adam; he breathes life into Amnesty’s characters, bringing the listening experience to new heights.

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Enjoy these lines from the best classic books ever written

Spend a few moments enjoy these well-known lines from some of the greatest classics written.

Who then may trust the dice, at Fortune’s throw?

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

When, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark.

Jack London, The Call of the Wild

I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I assure you that the world is not so amusing as we imagined.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons

Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

I will wear him

In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London.

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at the bottom.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal—this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully-illuminated life.

George Eliot, Middlemarch

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The Best Pride and Prejudice Quotes

 

Pride and Prejudice is one of the world’s most popular romance novels and here are some of the best quotes from the book.

 

1. “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”― Pride and Prejudice

 

2. “A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

3. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

4. “I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

5. “Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

6. “Everything nourishes what is strong already” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

 

7. “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

8. “The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

9. “And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

10. “There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

11. “To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

12. “We are all fools in love” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

13. “Is not general incivility the very essence of love?” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

 

14. “A girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to think of” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

15. “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.-Mr. Darcy” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

16. “Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to play you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

17. “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.” ― Pride and Prejudice

 

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The Handmaid’s Tale Quotes About Womanhood and Suffering

Here is a great selection of quotes from The Handmaid’s Tale on womanhood, love and suffering.

1. “You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

2. “You can’t change anything about this. It’s going to end the same no matter what you do so there’s no point trying to be tough or brave. Brave isn’t any part of this. Everybody breaks.” – Nick (Max Minghella)

3. “Now I’m awake to the world. I was asleep before.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

4. “Please, God, I don’t want pain. I don’t want to be a doll, hung on the wall. I want to keep on living. I’ll do anything. Resign my body freely to the uses of others. I’ll sacrifice. I’ll repent. I’ll abdicate. I’ll renounce.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

5. “I don’t need oranges. I need to scream. I need to grab the nearest machine gun.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

6. “The most painful thing is not the betrayal of trust, June. Do you know what’s most painful? The most painful thing in this entire ugly incident is the ingratitude.” – Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd)

7. “I stretch out my arms to him, but he slips away. Like a ghost at daybreak. And I am left here.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

8. “I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire, pulled apart by force, but there is nothing I can do to change it. I’ve tried to put some of the good things in as well.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

9. “Who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow. Not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

10. “Only in suffering will we find grace.” – Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd)

11. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

12. “Is this it? Is this enough for you, this bullsh*t life? Is this what you want? – June (Elisabeth Moss)

13. “You will never be free of me. You will never be free of me until both of my children are safe.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

14. “I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

15. “They all deserve to suffer. It’s an acquired taste, seeing others in pain.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

16. “Every love story is a tragedy if you wait long enough.” – Fred (Joseph Fiennes)

17. “Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

18. “A rose is a rose, except here. Here it has to mean something. It’s beautiful.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

19. “Love isn’t real. It was never anything more than lust with a good marketing campaign.” – Fred (Joseph Fiennes)

20. “It’s okay to take a sliver of someone and hold on to that. Especially if it’s all you have.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

21. “The world can be quite an ugly place. But we cannot wish that ugliness away. We cannot hide from that ugliness.” – Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd)

22. “Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some.” – Fred (Joseph Fiennes)

23. “Even the righteous need a little show business.” – Serena (Yvonne Strahovski)

24. “I know this must feel so strange, but ordinary is just what you’re used to. This may not be ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. This will become ordinary.” – Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd)

25. “They should never have given us uniforms if they didn’t want us to be an army.” – June (Elisabeth Moss)

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