classic - something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. - Mark Twain

A classic line, that Mark Twain himself quoted from Professor Winchestor whoever that is. Anyway I was surprised in Italy to find outside of the Rome Central Station, good english publications surprisingly hard to find, except of course for classics, which are cheap due to no need for licensing.
So I've been reading them, and as a slight aside I have to say that the modern books that are available make me feel bad about the human race, that people who suddenly find themselves on vacation in need of a good read for their idle hours want to read crime fiction and books whose titles all begin with 'shopaholic' I mean shopoholic? what are you 7?
Anyway the first was Bram Stoker's Dracula, it took me about a week to read, which was the plan because I bought it because it was the thickest and cheapest, my purchase criteria.
And you know what, its really good. Well at least for the first two sections, Jonathon Harker's imprisonment in Castle Dracula and the mysterious death of Lucy Westenra. After that it declines into about 300 pages of Van Helsing and Mina and crew standing around taking hands and kissing them and making vows until action finally picks up again with Dracula's reappearance in the last two or so chapters.
But I have to say there was something about the Victorian Era gentleman that makes an engrossing narrator. Maybe its the naive belief systems that make them particularly subject to the element of surprise.
I also picked up 20,000 leagues under the sea. Which again is good and mysterious for the first 4-5 chapters and then becomes a thinly vield naturalists text book as one labours through page after page of sea animal scientific classifications.
Yes that's right, the vast majority of the adventures of 20,000 leagues under the sea are not covering the grand Mystery of Captain Nemo, but instead are dedicated to a professor looking out a porthole and documenting the fish he sees.
It's also incredibly gay. Sorry Jules Verne but there's no denying it these days. Good for you though.
Then I also read the Island of Dr Moraue which was exploring the horrors of vivisection and again, this one has that compelling Victorian-esque stranded british man in a strange place narrative but one thing HG Wells does well is avoid filler, which Verne and Bram certainly smeared on so thickly that if you'd ordered a ham samwidge, you would get the ham between two inches of cheap margarine spread, and only whitebread rural australians like that shit.
One classic though, and irrefutable genius to finish on a tangent is Andy Kauffman, in my mind, he is the 'pure comedian' out to entertain himself with uncompromising artistic integrity, how he ever became commercially succesful is a miracle.