Since I've retired, I've read tons including:

[clawhammerdan]

A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens), The Last Jew (Noah Gordon) and Shaman (by same), The Other Boleyn Girl (Phillipa Gregory), The Frontiersmen (Allan Eckert), Lake Wobegon Days (Keillor). Several other memoirs and shorter stuff. Lots of non-fiction not worth mentioning. I would suggest The Last Jew or The Other Boleyn Girl if you're into historical fiction. Both are excellent! Let me know what you think.

[daphodil]

Hi! I'm reading Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun; my neighbor/dd's dance instructor lent it to me. Then I am going to read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would love to read Tale of Two Cities--don't have the book yet.
I will list some of the books I have read, or in better part read most of, in no particular order:

Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
The Great Gatsby
The Old Man and the Sea
Gone With The Wind (read three times)
North and South (first two books)
most of The Winds of War (very long)
The Canterbury Tales in Chaucer's Middle English
How Green Was My Valley
The Kings James Bible and other translations
Beloved
Wuthering Heights
some book about a Southern Governor, can't think of the title right now
A Christmas Carol
Diary of Anne Frank
The Executioner's Song (not all of it)
Snow Country (I think that's the title, will have to google it--a Japanese translation)

Have so many more I want to read before I die. Oh, have read several Anne Rice novels--prefer the Witch series as the Vampire novels were a bit too homoeroctic for my taste. . .

read too many romance novels as a teen; favorite one:
Love Play by Rosemary Rogers

I've read many--dare I say--'insignificant' books, falling way outside the realm of Literature. . .

[clawhammerdan]

I had read Tale of Two Cities in high school, but wanted to reread it last summer. I was actually kind of disappointed in it. It dragged and was very choppy in parts. I think contemporary writers are easier for me to understand. Perhaps the problem was the uncommon use of some language...rather antiquated. So what is Atlas Shrugged about?