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What classic literature adventure novel is the easiest to read and is the most “pageturner”?
Looking for what you think is the classic literature adventure story that is the easiest to read and is a major pageturner. Preferably swords and travels and a good unexpected story. But mostly easy to read and a pageturner.
Thank you.
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The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas was my first serious foray into "classic lit" and nothing really compares. It's one of the most enjoyable books I've read, period.
His Three Musketeers is a good entry point too. I read it in 7th grade and I remember being blown away. It fit in nicely with all the other sword and sorcery junk I was reading back then.
Oh no. This is such a boring book
It can bog a lot of people down with the political intrigue.
Agreed. When you are page 300 where his yet taking revenge on victim number 24 it gets boring.
Came here to say this! The Count got me into classic lot at 10-11. That’s how fun it was to read.
Came here to say this. Count is the answer
I agree so long as it's the Abridged version. I read the unabridged and it was a slog.
Never, never read the abridged version of anything. It is not reading the book.
What’s wrong with it?
Someone other than the author has left out bits of the story and changed (often simplified) the language. They are like a less extreme form of cliff notes.
Absolutely. I just read this for the first time and it was incredible.
Yes!. I read TCMC as a young adult and still remember how much I liked it.
Starts great, ends great. Force of will through the middle, IMO.
The Count of Monte Cristo and Treasure Island were my top picks, too, but here are a few people don't seem to have mentioned yet:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. Just about anything by Verne, in fact: Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island, From the Earth to the Moon, Master of the World, The Lighthouse at the End of the World, and many more.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Scaramouche and its sequel by Rafael Sabatini. Also Captain Blood and its sequels.
Maybe not so many swords, until those last couple, but lots of adventure and travel.
People always leave out Tom Sawyer.
I remember reading Robinson Crusoe with my dad when I was a kid.
Sooo basically all of them.
And that’s why they’re classics
The Scarlet Pimpernel was my JAM in middle school. Loved it so much! If you haven't seen it, I also recommend the 1982(ish) movie with Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour, and Sir Ian McKellen. Great adaptation!
Jack London books like Call of the Wild and Alexandre Dumas who wrote The 3 Musketeers.
Jack London’s short stories are wonderful. To Build a Fire is harrowing.
You should check out books by H. Rider Haggard. He basically was the father of Indiana Jones with his character of Allen Quartermain. His most famous is King Solomon's Mines.
Too far down
Treasure Island is a good choice.
I zoomed through Dracula (Bram Stoker) and East of Eden (John Steinbeck). Agatha Christie's novels are great too.
I was surprised how well Dracula still reads. Its Victorian attitudes actually add a certain charm and atmosphere.
Unrelated to the post, but this is how I felt about Bel Ami when I read it. That same aforementioned charm and atmosphere really aided in the book’s grip.
Felt the same about east of Eden but the opposite about Dracula. For some reason, it felt like I was having a stroke while reading it.
I cant stop reading Death on the Nile. It’s great.
Dracula was the first I thought of.
Are Christies classics now? Yay. :)
Dracula! it’s really a genuinely good book with very lovable characters!
Just finished Rebecca and recommend
Candide by Voltaire is really short, funny and in the category of "literature".
I had a philosophy of SF and fantasy class where we compared Candide with The Physician In Spite of Himself by Moliere
I came here to suggest this and was beginning to think nobody had suggested it until I got to your comment. What a fun little read.
👌👍
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Time Machine by HG Wells
They were both free through Apple Books, along with other classics. I read those for some quick time fillers, but wound up really enjoying them.
Treasure Island. Fairly short, and for a Victorian novel not particularly dense. There's also some fairly deep psychological subtext about trauma in the antagonist's narrative arc.
Lord of the Flies, it’s quick and a page turner
Well with that list of Expectations...
Treasure Island.
Black Stallion
Don Quixote
A Christmas Carol
Invisible Man
Invisible Man- there are two classics by that name. The adventure story is the one by HG Wells, not the one by Ralph Ellison.
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Lots of adventure in this one?
Also is the prose easy to read?
Oh my god this is one of my favorite books. Very easy read, and yes very much a high seas swashbuckling adventure. The characters are so vivid and the story is so sweeping. It’s just pure fun
The Scarlet Pimpernel!
Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier. Love, adventure, intrigue!! The Long Ships by Bengtsson -
Frankenstein was my first classic novel and it’s not super long but the story is well paced and easy to read imo.
I'll recommend one of my favorite stories of all time: The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. I thought it was a thrilling page-turner, but it does get increasingly philosophical near the end.
Treasure Island
The Swiss Family Robinson
I only really ready modern sci-fi and adventure but I enjoyed Robinson Crusoe.
Frenchman’s Creek, Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers ⚔️
Jules Verne (20000 leagues is my rec) and Charles Dickens are both easy to read but Verne is more exciting!
The Horatio Hornblower books
Not a direct answer just a thought experience. If War and Peace was 400 pages long, it would be a fitting answer to your question.
Yes! Once you know the characters, it is a pageturner. (Except for some technical war-parts)
Treasure Island
Monte Cristo
Just finished The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham. I’d say it’s a page-turner.
The Hobbit.
The Hobbit!
It is a matter of opinion, but I would say Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne would be my go-to here.
the picture of dorian gray
Great Expectations, for me.
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Phantom tollbooth
Too Few For Drums. R F Delderfield.
If your Spanish isn't up to snuff then these might not be the best choices, but I really enjoy the Captain Alatriste novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte as well as the original Zorro stories by Johnston McCulley!
I loved the first Captain Alatriste book, zoomed through it (props for the introduction of a very young Duke of Buckingham in it), started the second one immediately. A bullfight in the first chapter, the Inquisition in the second, and I didn't bother with anything further.
I'm doing a reread of the first one right now, actually; I barely remember anything of the second one aside from the bullfight and the fact that it's a lot heavier tonally than the first.
I’d have to say either Alice in Wonderland or Treasure Island. Alice in Wonderland is just a good, light pageturner. It’s fun for the weirdness of it all and I just quite enjoy the energy of it. While Treasure Island sounds more up your alley. There’s a lot of adventure, murder, and sword/ gun fights via pirates. One of the few reads I got through in about a day.
The Old Man and the Sea.
King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard.
Would the Wheel of Time be considered kind of classic now?
Nope
East of Eden
1984 and animal farm were both really good and exciting to read while learning about politics and history
For me it was Robinson Crusoe by I don't know whether it is considered as a classic literature.
I really loved Hunger by Knut Hamson but it's not adventurous and or page turner but yes classic definitely.
I remember liking Ivanhoe as well. We read it in high school and were only supposed to read 1, sometimes 2 chapters a week. Pop quizzes on the specific chapters don’t usually go as planned when you read the whole book in the first 3 days. That’s like telling someone not to breathe!
Fighting Prince of Donegal was my favorite as a kid.
The Prisoner of Zenda held up much better than I thought it would. It's pretty tropey, but it's old enough to be the source or codifier of a lot of those tropes rather than ripping them off of other works.
The Illiad
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome.
I don't know if it counts as an adventure book, in the classical sense, but it is still a really funny book about a gang of semi-hypochondriac friends going on a boat trip together, and it's an absolute comedic classic. I still laugh out loud when reading it. It is also a novella, if you want something shorter to get through quicker.
king solomons mine was a pretty easy read as a kid
You should definitively read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, sounds up your street.
Anything by Jules Verne or Robert Louis Stevenson should be right up your alley.
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Frankenstein are also good, but not really adventure. And I have to recommend you read The Great Gatsby, just because it's one of my favourite books and its really short