When should you read the classics?

I don't know. I know what you're talking about. I, for example, read Naked Lunch way too soon. Oddly enough, I read Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition before that, and I don't find that was too soon. You never know.

The flip side of always reading age-appropriate stuff is that you never stretch yourself, which makes the reading experience as a whole a bit less dynamic. You don't need to get it all. There are fascinating, puzzling bits in books you read - and then you read something else somewhere and remember what you didn't get back then...

If I hadn't read Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front - German is my mother tongue) at nine, who knows what I'd be reading now.

I read Wuthering Heights at fifteen. Dracula at seven. Loved them both. Got more out of them at a later age, of course.

I read Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night a few years back, round about the age of thirty. Thought it was a heap of shite.

Depends on the book, depends on the person.

Hmmm. Maybe it's because I don't re-read things very often, but I don't really feel like I didn't "get" stuff when I was younger. I've always been very cognizant of underlying themes and deeper meanings, etc.

But I do think it's really important to develop an early love for literature, so I wouldn't keep the classics away from kids. Plus, most people would never read them at all if they didn't get them in school.

Actually, I'm looking forward to revisiting many of those classics with my own son, once he gets old enough to understand.

You know, maybe that's part of the experience of classic literature - the "hand-me-down" aspect of it. We're introduced to them by older generations when we are young, and then we in turn introduce them to the generations after us. I mean, that's practically the definition of why they are classics, right?

If it speaks to you, that's when you should read it!

Some stuff we get more out of reading it when we're older. But some stuff has a developmental expiration date, and when we get to a certain age, it just doesn't sing to us anymore. I'm very very glad my childhood contained all the great books it did. My life would not be better if I'd waited to Grow Up before reading them.

sleepsheep said:

I feel like, generally (very generally), it's possible to miss out when reading these books too early.

Click to expand...

Perhaps reading later in the day, like after dinner...

I hate that I was forced to read certain books at school. It took away the pleasure I had in reading. My mother never censored what I read - so I was reading Harold Robbins A Stone for Danny Fisher at the same time as Mrs Gaskell's Cranford. Gave me a weird moral code but an appreciation of how wide the scope of literature is. I don't think there should be a hard and fast rule about when certain books should be read. What concerns me is the type of books kids have to read now - they are certainly not classics and some of them just put kids off reading for life.

I read that very same Robbins book when I was in my mid/late teens.

I went from Bram Stoker to Danielle Steel to Harold Robbins to Emily Bronte to Plato.

No wonder I turned out so weird.

scarletpeaches said:

I read that very same Robbins book when I was in my mid/late teens.

I went from Bram Stoker to Danielle Steel to Harold Robbins to Emily Bronte to Plato.

No wonder I turned out so weird.

Click to expand...

Somehow I don't think it was your summer reading list.

Like someone said above, if some kids don't read this stuff in high school, they never will so might as well fit it in when they can.

In all honesty I think many classics are sorely overrated. Of course, that's just my own opinion, but I would much rather scratch my eyes with rusty needles than dive into Wuthering Heights again. Personally, my reading habits haven't changed from when I was a teen, or younger. Granted I tend to keep pop-up books to a minimum but I still like the same thing and when I read them now, I get the same feeling I when when I read them way back when so I don't feel like I missed much. Unless all those head traumas had a harder effect on me than the doctors thought.

Kids are far more perceptive than what many people give them credit for and I don't think it's a matter of missing something or not enjoying something as much, but just the circumstances around the reading. When you're forced to read something, chances are you're not going to enjoy it. But even kids can go into something hating it and come out loving it.

They get what they want to take away from it, just like adults. Sure, experience helps with interpretation but if an adult doesn't want to interpret anything and just wants to read the words on the page, they're not going to get anything more than a teenager would out of the same book. I mean, life's mysteries aren't written on the pages of Chaucer or Joyce and you won't be missing anything not reading them. You might end up feeling better read or cursing the book because you wasted a week reading it and you'll never get that time back.

Like I said, personally, most classics are overrated anyway are have become out of touch with its reading public that it's message isn't relevant anymore. It's happening with Catcher in the Rye. Most kids that read it think Holden's a whiny pain in the ass. They don't relate with the original message of the book anymore. It's not that they're missing it but the nostalgia is losing its touch.

Whenever the spirit moves you.

caw

Read 'em when you feel like reading 'em. If you never feel like reading them, that's fine. I think most people will never read all of the "classics." Pick a few that sound interesting to you and go for it.

I've enjoyed all the classics I've read, even when I didn't like the style or subject. They're considered classics of literature for good reason. If you're astute, you can learn something valuable from each one.

scarletpeaches said:

I read that very same Robbins book when I was in my mid/late teens.

I went from Bram Stoker to Danielle Steel to Harold Robbins to Emily Bronte to Plato.

No wonder I turned out so weird.

Click to expand...

LOL! I think I was about 12 when I read it! l went to the Brontes, Georgette Heyer and, well, anything I could lay my hands on. I did a lot of the Greeks - Herodoutus, Iliad, Odyssey and the grim tragedies. Interesting but not a fair contest when the Beatles were around!

I need to point out that this is an American list, an English one would be entirely different. Having said that, it's an impressive compendium, but to read the SatanicVerses by Salman Rushdie at the age of 15 would be soul-destroying for most teenagers.

They'd be better off with Shakespeare, Dickens, Goethe, Schiller and Sartre, and if they're wearing kilts, Robert Burns,.

Classics are meant to be read more than once; I studied Pride and Prejudice because I had to, and I hated it, when I grew up, I read it again and it blew me away.

Q: When should you read the classics?

A: Right now.

/snark

Reread the classics you think you'd be interested in, and that you feel you'd get a different perspective now that you're older.

I just reread Lord Of The Flies. Hadn't read it since high school. I got a lot more out of it now.

I've reread The Great Gatsby several times and always find something new I didn't see before.

And it's always a good thing to read a classic you'd never have bothered with in high school or college.

When should you read the classics?

Click to expand...

WHEN YOU WANT TO.


i read the top 4 before high school.

I went through a period of classics binging a few years back.

I formed my own opinions on authors like Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and Hardy - but they were MY opinions.

At school, you read, you dissect, you write an essay the teacher barely has time to read.

Now my opinions on Jane Eyre are well known. And what I think of Dickens' propensity for coincidence as a plot device...but I'm in my 30s now. I think for myself; I don't parrot what my English teacher wants to hear.

So...you can enjoy the classics at any age, but actual opinions and comparison to your own life experience comes with time, I think.

I had a great English teacher for two of my high school years that went about "the classics" quite differently. He had a huuuuge list of books he was allowed to choose from, as a teacher, to teach in class (aside from a couple of pre-set requirements, which we all went through together). Instead of picking the ones he wanted, he gave us the list and let us each choose our own. We had to read a certain number of pages within a set time period, and then he had a method of interviewing each and every one of us, individually, to test us on the content and also what we thought about what we had read.

Yes, he worked a TON of overtime - did interviews during break, lunch, and after school.

And yes, I will be forever grateful to him. If he hadn't done that I never would have read Confessions of an English Opium Eater or Boswell's Life of Johnson.

I totally agree that I read some of these books too early. I remember being thrown completely out of Lolita the first time I tried it, then coming back and finding it really brilliant.

It's not that I don't think high school students can grasp complicated books, because they regularly do, but sometimes a particular book might not speak to an individual until much later (or never).

For certain books and certain readers, there can be a window, Some books are read too soon -- they don't resonate. Other books can be read too late, for the same reason.

I'm sure if I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes until today, I'd enjoy it, but nowhere near the way I did as a teen. And books that didn't interest me much at one time in my life sometimes now fascinate me.

And the best books resonate in entirely different ways when read at different times in ones life. It's not necessarily about getting more out of a book because you're older, but about viewing it in a different light because of your life experiences. A book about a tragic affair between a teenager and an older lover will have a different impact for a 17 year old than a 40 something.

Some books hold up; some don't. So read anything that catches your interest and don't worry whether you love it or can't even finish it.

One caveat -- many of the classics were written in a different age, where novels were constructed more leisurely. Like pieces of music, some books are more immediately accessible than others.

And with complex books, you have to give them a chance. I've found more than a few where the first fifty or even a hundred pages seemed to drag, to not really be getting anywhere. But as the novel progressed, it caught me and dragged me in deeper and deeper until I was finally knocked off my feet. Those who throw books away, crying "bor...ring" because they're not immediately hooked can end up missing a lot.

I'm not old enough to look back and think that but I feel like I got a lot from the classics we read in class
I took AP so there was a lot more deeper study of the material ( Though sometimes you have to wonder if that takes away from the experience.)

My teacher was/is also amazing, she's the one who turned me on to writing.

The Scarlet Letter might have been done too soon, but I doubt I'll ever be ready to read that one again.

I had the Popol Vuh read to me when I was five, I read Beowulf when I was thirteen.

Yes, they shaped what I became. However, now, I would get as much from reading The Great Gatsby now (something I have never read) as I would if I read it when I was twelve. Art moves us in different ways depending on how we feel when we experience it. It's the same way that Richard Coeur De Leon and CS Lewis both read the Bible and come back with very different ideas.