What are YOUR Classics?

In my book 'The Opening Line,' in which I discuss the opening lines of almost 200 books, I write these words;

But onto the classics. What makes a classic book? How come some books serve multi-generations yet others are fairly short-lived? Italian journalist, Italo Calvino, wrote an essay in 1980 entitled ‘Why Read the Classics?’ in which he stated, “Your classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him.”
Freelance journalist, Chris Cox, in a blog on the Guardian website in 2009 stated that there are actually “two kinds of classic novels: The first are those we know we should have read, but probably have not. These are generally the books that make us burn with shame when they come up in conversation ...…The second kind, meanwhile, are those books that we've read five times, can quote from on any occasion, and annoyingly push on to other people with the words: ‘You have to read this. It's a classic.’”
So bearing these two definitions in mind, I hope you’ll forgive me if I choose my classic opening lines from a combination of books that;
• My Dad gave me and I really should have read, but probably haven’t
• Books that I’ve read five times
• Authors that I just cannot feel indifferent to
Your own personal list, of course, will be different as each one of us will have our own ideal libraries of classic books, so allow me to start with an opening line that in my opinion is one of the most famous, yet one of the worst;
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way …...” and it goes on. You see, I just don’t get it. Dickens was a great writer, there’s no doubt, but this just reeks of a cop-out to me, and yet this was the most interesting of Dickens’ opening lines I could find. I trust everyone recognised A Tale of Two Cities.
Let’s have a bash at it; “It was the best of meals, it was the worst of meals, it was a banquet, it was a picnic, I hoovered it down, I nibbled at it, it was the epoch of ‘doing lunch,’ it was the epoch of dining on roadkill, it was meat, it was straw, it was pao de queijo, it was jerk chicken, it was Cabeza de Cordero, it was okonomiyaki, it was boiled, it was shallow fried, I ate the crust first, I saved the crust for dipping, It made me feel vibrant and alive, it made me feel swollen and ponderous …...” A Tale of Two Meals by Karl Wiggins. Its crap, isn’t it?

But what are YOUR classics? What books have you read five times or more and will continue to return back to?

For me they’d be ‘Flesh and Blood’ by Pete Hamill and ‘Sailor’ by Richard Jessup. And they’re closely followed by Steinbeck’s ‘Cannery Row.’

What about you?