I wish to read a classic but found A Tale Of Two Cities beyond my scope. Can anyone suggest an alternative?

i'm finishing great expectations this week and i wish i could read it all over again. it's an easy read and very funny.

if you want small- of mice and men is not a long book.

Just knuckle down and read it. Heart of Darkness is virtually a pamphlet.. there'd only be about 3 chapters if it were to have them... lol, in fact, I wasnt sure about the validity of your statement so I just looked and it does have chapters... and, you know what, there are three of them! Shoots and scores. C'mon... 110 pages, you'll be through that in an afternoon.

Try Perfume by Patrick Suskind... a true modern classic. Beautiful and intriguing and horrifying at the same time... definitely worth reading. And I do believe it has chapters, too.

Ya, I tried A Tale of Two Cities, and was pretty lost as well. I would recommend anything by Jane Austen, although those are much more of the romance genre. Other classic books I enjoyed were

-Of Mice and Men

-The Old Man and the Sea

-Uncle Tom's Cabin

-To Kill a Mockingbird

All were very enjoyable to read and much easier to understand than a.t.o.t.c.

HG Wells - War of the Worlds, the Time Machine, Invisible Man

Orwell - 1984, Animal Farm

Camus - The Outsider (very simple on the surface yet loaded with meaning)

It's an effort. I hadn't read a novel until I was 23 but have managed Crime & Punishment and other weighty ones. I found commuting was my best reading time.

Try a tale of two cities again ,but this time make up simpler names for the characters , it will help as the only thing taxing in that novel is trying to remember who is who

It might benefit you to read the Cliff Notes or Spark Notes of some of the classic books. I find it narrows them down to something more understandable. Also of benefit would be to watch the movies. It puts the story in a better perspective.

Is this just for the 'Oh look whats cluttering up my coffee table effect' ?= Try an author - Alan Bennetts Monologues / Plays - The Madness of King George - Diaries - acute observations of contemporary life.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy- It's adventurous, fun to read, great characters, and you still get the political and historical significance.

O.K. Try The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas.

It is not a children's book.

or

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor, I read it one Christmas, I didn't feel warm again until Easter.

or

The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald. ..... so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Try "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway. It's good read and fairly easy to get through as I recall.