My Favorite Classic Novels (Top 10)

The other thing that I really love about A Tale of Two Cities is that the stakes felt higher. There's just an added heft to this book that isn't present, at least on this level as his other books.

I really enjoyed this allegory, and I loved how the animals represented different parts of society. And this is a book that it can just continue to build, and when it gets to that final chilling line, it's chilling indeed.

In many ways it does read like a soap opera, but there is so much depth here in the story. I also love just how structurally different this book is.

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the best plotted works of the 19th century. Of all the works on this list, this is probably the easiest one for me to recommend to just about any reader.

But Crime and Punishment feels modern. It is as good a thriller as you're going to read and just seeing this character go through this guilt is one of the best things I've ever read in my lifetime.

I loved the brother relationship here. I love the story of these two families in this very sprawling tale, and East of Eden has one of the finest villains in literature.

This is one of those books that I do enjoy and continue to enjoy, and it's perpetually on that reread list for me. Soon as I finish it, I put it right back at the bottom of that list to be read a few years later, and I look forward to my next reread of this one.

It almost feels when you're reading Jane Eyre that she took a considerable amount of time to craft every single sentence to make sure every single word was perfect.

Reading Les Misérables takes you on just this grand spiritual journey. Some of the characters are just so vividly portrayed.

Although critics of this novel say the novel tends to sermonize the points that she's making, I felt that there was a great degree of nuance, especially in terms of the character.