Couldn't pick it up? A reader in Krakow university library. Photograph: Czarek Sokolowski/AP
A recent blog I wrote about the trouble I'm having finishing Cervantes' long, windy masterpiece Don Quixote prompted some very interesting responses. I now feel I know much more about how to pronounce the deluded main character's name, as well as having a good grounding on crazy beer brewing medieval women and kidnapping in Italy. What's more, I've also been persuaded to take up the book again. So thank you.

I owe especial gratitude to a poster called whyohwhy, however. That's because I'm now going to shamelessly borrow her (or indeed his) idea.

After sensibly noting that Henry James isn't necessarily a rewarding read and that Catch-22 easily transcends the label "zany hipster stodge" whyohywhy asked whether there are "any unarguably great books that are instantly engaging and never let your attention slack." That's to say: "real page-turners with that compulsive quality that makes you read them through in one sitting".

Of course, a lot depends on how you define a classic (whyohwhy helpfully suggests sticking to books that are set as university texts), but the post certainly raises some enjoyably thorny questions.

Is there something inherently less valuable about compelling easy reads? Is there some kind of equation where the amount of effort you put in to a book is equalled and compensated by intellectual reward? Will Ulysses therefore always be worth more to the serious reader than Right Ho, Jeeves, no matter how beautiful Wodehouse's style?

Does the fact that we whizz through some books prevent them from ever being able to make a real lasting impression? To use one of whyohwhy's examples, The Faerie Queen may require hours of diligent study for each page, but it stays in the mind for a correspondingly long time. Conversely, although I loved reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I couldn't tell you the first thing about it now.

Or is that are we all just masochistic in our approach to literature? Is there a tendency to assume that a book is tough that it must be somehow, on some level, doing us good, much like taking a cold shower or swallowing castor oil?

Or is the fact that page-turners usually get so much less academic and critical attention based on simple snobbery? Why does it take longer for writers like Raymond Chandler to be accepted into the canon than it does for the Thomas Pynchons of this world? And why are entire genres like "crime" and "horror" so disregarded?

Why, even though he is arguably one of the most influential writers of our age, is Stephen King still widely regarded as trash? (Not so long ago, a friend of mine at a renowned university was even told not that she couldn't write a dissertation on King because no academic would take it seriously)?

Or is this whole idea easily disprovable? Are there, in fact, hundreds of serious page-turners out there that not only have the power to keep you up all night, but are also stimulating, provocative, intelligent and everything else we demand of so-called literary classics?

Provocatively, whyohwhy noted that the only real page-turning classic that he/she could think of is Lolita and "even that trails off at the end..." (?!) For myself, I can think of plenty of books that I'd say are thoroughly "unputdownable" as well as profound and beautiful. I tore through Hemingway the first time I read him, couldn't stop reading Wuthering Heights as a teenager and even now I have to physically stop myself from too often picking up A Dance To The Music Of Time, so I can savour its pleasures for just a little longer. There are plenty of others I can think of as well, but now I want to know what you think. Can page-turners really be regarded as classics? And if so, which ones?