Best Of Classic

Top Box Office. More Top Movies Trailers Forums. Certified Fresh Picks. Certified Fresh Pick. Holiday Movie Guide Top Classics Movies.

Best of Rotten Tomatoes Movies with 40 or more critic reviews vie for their place in history at Rotten Tomatoes. Sorted by Adjusted Score. No Score Yet.

The Amazing Race. The Masked Singer. SEAL Team. The Surgeon's Cut. Murder on Middle Beach. The Queen's Gambit.

Your Honor. Selena: The Series. The Mandalorian. The Flight Attendant. Gangs of London. The Undoing. Big Mouth. Citizen Kane The Wizard of Oz Casablanca Modern Times It Happened One Night A Night at the Opera The Third Man La Grande illusion Grand Illusion Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Singin' in the Rain The Cabinet of Dr.

Caligari Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari All About Eve Shadow of a Doubt The Adventures of Robin Hood King Kong Sunset Boulevard Metropolis A Hard Day's Night Seven Samurai Shichinin no Samurai The Philadelphia Story Rebecca North by Northwest The Bride of Frankenstein Rear Window The Lady Eve A Streetcar Named Desire On the Waterfront The Blows Les Quatre cents coups The Treasure of the Sierra Madre The Thin Man The Lady Vanishes My eight-year-old asked this very question after spending several days with her nose buried in Charlotte's Web.

Here's the catch. For me, classic books need to be readable because I'm not studying literature at university these days. There are many important books published decades or even centuries ago that have great significance but I'm not going to recommend them for your reading enjoyment.

The prime example is Moby Dick , which I have read and I will never recommend. Life's too short and that novel is too hard to read.

The most challenging book on this list is The Seven Pillars of Wisdom because it's epic in length and contains great detail about the Arab rebellion against the Turks.

This list covers 30 examples of fiction and 10 non-fiction books because that's how the cookie crumbles.

I actually prefer non-fiction books but I seem to focus on non-fiction published in the last 10 years, which doesn't help for a list of this nature.

As I put the list to together, I was surprised by how many 'classics' I had read and shocked by how many I had not.

No Jane Austen. No Anthony Trollope. No Vonnegut. No Tolstoy. Sorry about that - I'll try and cover them off in the next 50 years.

I should also explain that becoming a parent opens the door to reading classics you missed as a child and rejuvenates your interest in books from the past.

Also some major examples of classic literature that make everyone else's list did not make mine because they are not my cup of tea.

I've tried to like F. Scott Fitzgerald but we just never got on. On the Road goes off the road for me.

Holden Caulfield is a phony as far I'm concerned. The most recent book on my list is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy from and I am a bit worried that might be a little recent for the 'classic' tag.

The oldest is Don Quixote , from , which I read as a child and didn't remotely consider as old-fashioned. Madness never goes out of fashion even if chivalry has.

The settings include two islands, an inn, a farm, a hospital and a garden. Through these books, you could visit the Yukon, Gloucestershire, Brighton, Paris, the Alps, Spain, Kansas and Cyprus, and meet pirates, smugglers, soldiers, spies and firemen.

Because this is no sickly sweet romance. Holy cow, those Doones are wicked people and Lorna's caught in the middle. Twenty—year—old Mary Yellan is surrounded by murderous Cornish wreckers.

Alan Breck Stewart is a memorable character. More rum, more fun. Because an animal tale should be on the list. Because it might be the perfect bedtime read.

I had to have children to discover this magical book of farmyard thinking. Because this might also be the perfect bedtime read. Read it for Toad alone — so conceited, so arrogant, so resourceful.

Because a great setting always helps. Because it was no picnic being a child on the street in Victorian London.

My favorite piece of Dickensian literature. Because Dickens showed he could write magnificent historical fiction with this dramatic story of the French Revolution.

Because Waugh could string sentences together like few others. Posh family goes to pieces in style. Because you should never sell your wife and child.

I can't read too much Hardy as he does go on, but this novel shows what goes around comes around. Some of them are crazy. Four hundred years old and still going strong.

Because children's literature does not have to be predictable. Again, I had to have children to discover this baffling fantasy story.

Because losing your looks is a terrible thing but selling your soul is much worse. This drama has so many themes.

Because totalitarianism is not a nightmare — it's a reality for millions of people. This terrifying novel shaped modern culture.

Because race continues to be the defining, and dividing, issue of modern America.