Summer tends to take my relationship with reading one of two ways. Either I use the longer days, the languishing on the beach and the hours spent in Stansted’s departure lounge to succumb to quick fixes – novels that are trashy and/or easy to read, big on plot and heavy on thrills – or decide there are, finally, no excuses to read everything that’s been on my list for… oh, about 20 years.
There is always plenty of inspiration for the former category – endless new publications flaunted sexily in bookshops, with bright, tempting covers and easily relatable modern stories. Yet in trying to look a little deeper, we are so often drawn to the best-known classics – those that we really should have another go at, since we were forced to read them for A-level too long ago, or that appear on “books you really should have read by now” lists.
So here’s a list of classics that are not Great Expectations or Pride and Prejudice, that you shouldn’t necessarily have read by now, but which you might find new joy in anyway. They’re as good for the beach as they are for the sofa; as riveting as a Richard Osman; and sure to get you through any number of hours in airport security.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1949)
Narrated by 17-year-old Cassandra, who is set on documenting everything around her in her journal, Dodie Smith’s postwar novel I Capture the Castle is a feast of young love and curiosity. When widower James Mortmain whisks his family away to a dilapidated castle, hoping it would help with his writer’s block, his two daughters become embroiled with their two landlords – a handsome pair of American brothers. Their efforts to find love are wrapped up in their desire to save their family from poverty – and Smith, best known for her later book The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956), is as enchanting a writer as she is keenly observant.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)
Summer is the perfect time to dive into this rural tale from Stella Gibbons, who was underappreciated in her time. Orphaned young woman Flora Poste decides to spend the summer in Sussex with her relatives on Cold Comfort Farm – a chaotic and floundering place full of strange characters, from haggard Aunt Doom to the evangelic uncle, Amos Starkadder. Flora, like a well-to-do management consultant, tries to solve their problems using her urbane logic – to mixed results.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)
A staple on any good summer reading list, and with good reason. Waugh’s heady tale of Charles and Sebastian, two Oxford undergraduates from very different backgrounds, has inspired many modern reimaginings (including the 2023 film Saltburn). There’s plenty of upper-class whimsy but mainly Brideshead is a nuanced portrait of a queer almost-romance, as well as an exploration of the pain that lurks beneath the surface of even the most gilded of families.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)
Jean Rhys’s moody, tropical prequel to Jane Eyre is as much of a must-read as Bronte’s original. A feminist addition to that most famous of gothic novels, it imagines the backstory of the wife whom Mr Rochester was keeping in the attic. Antoinette Cosway, who grows up in Jamaica with her widowed mother, is later set up with the elusive Rochester in an arranged marriage. As Eyre readers will know, he renames her Bertha – a symptom of his determination to strip her of her identity. Wide Sargasso Sea flips between perspectives, and keeps you on your toes until the very end – it’s gripping, moving and, with its colonial themes, highly political.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
In 2024, reading any kind of dystopian fiction can feel terrifying – but Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic, often compared to George Orwell’s 1984, is worth the horrors. Set in 2540, society is run by the World State, which artificially produces human beings who are, as embryos, divided into groups and classes, fed hormones and chemicals to make them mentally and physically befitting of their class. As Huxley’s characters bridge the divides between their allotted groups, they become increasingly disillusioned with the system. Its themes of rapidly growing technology and out of control production remain thoroughly relatable.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)
A week on the beach can, counterintuitively, be the best time to get stuck into something dark and heavy – and Crime and Punishment is certainly that. But once you get past its overwhelming Russianness, its large cast of characters and philosophical undertone, it’s a page turner – one that yields profound lessons and an astonishing portrait of the human condition. Crime and Punishment opens with a murder – and unravels into a complex examination of morality, guilt, and the nature of suffering.
The Iliad by Homer (750 BC)
Homer’s 800-page epic may not feel like the breeziest of summer reads – but last year’s translation by Emily Wilson has been described by critics as “clear and brisk”, breathing new life into this endlessly fascinating book about destiny, grief, love and friendship. Even if you prefer something a little less intimidating, you might as well dip in before the end of August, when a slightly sacrilegious-looking “contemporary reimagining” of Greek mythology, Kaos, comes to Netflix.
Another Country by James Baldwin (1962)
One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, James Baldwin celebrates his 100th birthday this August, so there is no better time than to get stuck into his 1962 masterpiece Another Country. It’s a tragedy of intensely human proportions, documenting the life of Rufus Scott, a jazz drummer who, following the break-up of his relationship with a white woman, Leona, kills himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. Baldwin weaves the book from the perspectives of Rufus’s friends and relatives – along the way shedding stark light on race relations, family and grief.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (1860)
The Mill on the Floss is an intimidating tome to rival Eliot’s more famous book, Middlemarch – but, being the most autobiographical of all her work, is worth the heft. A densely woven story of a family, with a brother-sister relationship at its heart, the novel centres on Maggie (from age nine), a sensitive, emotional child who finds herself containing her own feelings for the good of others. Her relationship with her brother Tom is explored in detail, as is Maggie’s later romance with a friend, Philip, on whom she takes pity. It’s a rich exploration of the human condition as well as 19th century English society.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
If you live in London, you may have been lucky enough to catch The Secret Garden at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre this year, in which case you may have already turned (again) to this beloved children’s classic – but even if you missed it, there is always joy to be found in Hodgson Burnett’s tale of childhood discovery and the magic of nature. Just like its titular paradise, The Secret Garden is a haven of a book, truly immersive and full of sprouting green joy – and you can read it to your kids.
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch (1978)
This is an intensely internal novel that plunges you into the worries, qualms and neuroses of Charles Arrowby, the luvvie theatre director who moves into an abandoned house by the sea for a summer. Obsessed with his childhood love Mary Fitch and preoccupied with the other women who have come and gone from his life, it’s a propulsive yet reflective novel that glitters with darkly funny observation and irony. You’ll be so caught up in Charles’s world that you might start craving his bizarre meals – or believing in sea monsters. For audiobook lovers, Richard E Grant gives a brilliant rendition.
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (1878)
If you’ve ever felt that, as the composer Aaron Copland did about Vaughan Williams, reading a Thomas Hardy novel is like “staring at a cow for forty-five minutes”, the thrilling mystery of The Return of the Native is sure to set the record straight. Though it’s thoroughly rural, set on Egdon Heath in Hardy’s fictional Wessex, it centres on a love triangle between a local young woman, Thomasin Yeobright, her beau Damon Wildeve, and outsider Eustacia Vye, of whom the locals are suspicious. Also made into a great film in 1994 starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Clive Owen, The Return of the Native is atmospheric and brooding, with astute insights into the functioning of rural Victorian England.