The classics actually worth your weekend

"Classic" is a word that has scared more readers off good books than any bad review ever could. But a handful earn the label the honest way — by still being gripping a century or two later.

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a psychological thriller that happens to be 150 years old; you'll finish it faster than you expect. Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo is pure revenge-fueled momentum. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is long, yes, but it's long the way a great series is long — you don't want it to end.

And Moby-Dick? Skip the whaling chapters if you must. The rest is one of the strangest, most alive books ever written. Start with any of these and the word "classic" stops being a warning and starts being a promise.