Your top 3 Classics

[Bender]

I'm also ashamed to admit I don't remember the name of a book of a kid/young man caught in fight between Redcoats and Jacobites. Aaargh!

[Teto10]

For me, it'd be
1. The Iliad
2. The Lord of the Rings
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[JMack]

1. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
2. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
3. Short Stories of William Faulkner

Hasn’t changed.
Though if I expanded to five...

4. Lord of the Rings
5. Complete Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

[David A. Werling]

For me, it'd be
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude was the best book I was ever forced to read... senior year of high school, World Lit. It made me regret not studying Spanish harder. I wish I could read it in its native language. That being said, I didn't like Love in the Time of Cholera.

[David A. Werling]

5. Complete Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

God's Grandeur is in my opinion the best poem ever penned.

[David A. Werling]

Keeping strictly to fiction...

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. A toss up between The Tenants by Bernard Malamud and Brave New World by Huxley
3. A toss up between A Christmas Carole and The Hobbit.

(I know, I cheated.)

[ScarletBea]

I'm afraid that calling a book a "classic" just makes me think it might be boring... or I had to study it school, which turned the best books into horrid bores, hehe

[S. K. Inkslinger]

The only classics I'd ever actually read and liked were works by Edgar Allan Poe. I randomly flipped onto his work during one of my english class, The Telltale Heart, and oh boy I was instantly hooked. I went to the school library and got to read other stories too, like The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of Red Death, The Imp of the Perverse, The Raven, etc.

[ScarletBea]

The only classics I'd ever actually read and liked were works by Edgar Allan Poe. I randomly flipped onto his work during one of my english class, The Telltale Heart, and oh boy I was instantly hooked. I went to the school library and got to read other stories too, like The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of Red Death, The Imp of the Perverse, The Raven, etc.

Oh I read those too, during my 'goth phase' in my 20s
But only because they weren't associated with "classics" in my brain

(and by the way, what was his obssession with being buried alive? )

[David A. Werling]

I'm afraid that calling a book a "classic" just makes me think it might be boring... or I had to study it school, which turned the best books into horrid bores, hehe

Some of the best books I've read I was forced to read for school: Dracula, Pride and Prejudice, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Metamorphosis, several by Dumas, etc...

But come to think of it... the worst books I've read I was forced to read for school: The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, The Cassocks...

So I guess you have a point.

[cupiscent]

One of the other grade 8 English classes got to study A Wizard of Earthsea. I was so annoyed (we were reading... I can't even remember, but I think something I'd read years earlier, I was precocious) that I made my father buy me the complete Earthsea quartet so I could read it for myself.

[Elfy]

I can’t do just 3. I can limit it to 5 and even that’s hard, but here goes. This is in no particular order.
1. Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland By Lewis Carroll
3. The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5. The Once and Future King by T. H. White.
In some ways it does depend on how you define ‘classic’, and I think we all have our own definition of what makes a book classic to us.

[Lady Ty]

I'm also ashamed to admit I don't remember the name of a book of a kid/young man caught in fight between Redcoats and Jacobites. Aaargh!

Only a year late, but just read your post, Bender.  Might this be Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson?
Full on old style action adventure

[David A. Werling]

1. Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen

This seems to be a recurring theme here. I'm actually kind of surprised, and happy. Feels like I'm in good company. I still have a crush on Elizabeth. I have never watched a film adaptation, and I never will, because I don't want to lose the Elizabeth that's in my mind.

[Elfy]

1. Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen

This seems to be a recurring theme here. I'm actually kind of surprised, and happy. Feels like I'm in good company. I still have a crush on Elizabeth. I have never watched a film adaptation, and I never will, because I don't want to lose the Elizabeth that's in my mind.

Some years ago they did a top 100 books of Australia and P&P came top 3.