Classics "everyone has read" but you haven't

ElaineA said:

*hands Cassandra trophy to be used for doorstop*

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But I already have a copy of War and Peace...

I do think a read of the Bible enhances enjoyment of a lot of literature. Ditto a read of some mythology. I had the Bible and a great deal of mythology under my belt before I hit high school; I think I spent a lot less time looking at footnotes as a result (which likely caused me to enjoy some works others found painful).

I really don't think we all need to read and enjoy all the classics. I don't even think that's possible. I enjoy a vast number of them, but some didn't work for me. (I'm not crazy about Moby Dick, to tell you the truth. I see why it's a classic and why it has merit, but I didn't love it. But I love Thomas Hardy. Go figure.) However, I do shrug when I hear people dismiss all the classics as dull and irrelevant. Really? A huge and very diverse category of books that generations of people have found valuable and interesting, and you're too special for every damn one of them?

Oh, come on. Refusing to read classics and taking a stand that you don't "need" to is not in any way equivalent to claiming to be "too special" for them. IMO people justifiably sometimes become defensive, however, because, yanno, Clahssics!

Also, I loved Thomas Hardy but that was because as a teenager I was looking for validations for my habit of moping around feeling depressed and *extremely* special, far from the madding crowd and all that.



I might still enjoy Hardy but I have no current intention of testing that out.

Feeling no need to read the classics may not make you too special. Life is short. Read what you want.

Making a blanket statement that the reason you refuse to read them is because they are all boring and irrelevant -- yeah, I stand by my words. Given how many classics there are, i'm not sure anyone is actually in a position to make such a statement unless he's quite spectacularly well read. Usually it's more a case of coming into contact with maybe half a dozen classics in high school, and on that basis rejecting thousands of books you've never bothered to look at. Millions have loved them -- they're all just being pretentious?

Eta:

I've heard a fair number of people dismiss all the classics in a lump as irrelevant -- generally those who've had little contact with them. Some even dismiss all fiction as irrelevant. They're entitled to do so, but I can't help but feel they're the ones who are missing something.

In a way, it doesn't really matter whether you want to read classics or not. You will read them whether you want to or not !

The decision is not yours to make, unless you wanna be made to stand in a corner wearing a dunce cap throughout grade school, mid school, and high school ;-)

Ooh, yes, I've played this "Humiliation" game before! [And I'm an English literature nerd of epic proportions so my gaps always make me feel guilty...but there's just not enough time to read everything I want to and struggle through things that aren't my cuppa].

Some of my 'shouldas':

Lord of the Flies
anything Faulkner (I can't read his style for some reason - I've tried, many times)
Paradise Lost (I only made it half-way through)
A Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations
Anna Karenina
1984
Don Quixote
Slaughterhouse Five
Waiting for Godot
Faust

Granted, I'm not sure how much of this list is "high school" reading versus college perhaps, but these are ones I find either commonly referenced or that I want to read, but haven't been in the right frame of mind to do so. I always squirm when admitting to not reading these items, but I have read a LOT of other classics from various periods, not only for my past studies but also personal enjoyment. I still do. I happen to love Austen, Bronte, Hemingway, Poe, Twain, Hugo, Dumas, Plato, Homer, Machiavelli, Joyce (with the exception of Ulysses), Brecht, Malory, Hess, Spencer, Dante, Chaucer, Eco, Shakespeare, V. Wolfe...[it's a long list]

LJD said:

Macbeth. Around here, this seems to be the Shakespeare play that everyone reads in high school, but by switching schools, I managed to miss it.

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*holds hand up, hangs head in shame* I, too, have not read Macbeth, though I have read pretty much every other Shakespeare play. And many of his contemporaries. *cough* This is particularly egregious given what my graduate degree is in...I've seen the play performed several times, mind you, but I always seem to skip reading the play.

Some day. Until then, I'd prefer to reread Lear and the Henry cycles.

Brightdreamer said:

I've read one Bradbury title, and keep wanting to try more - the style can grow a bit thick, but in a good way.

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My personal favorites are Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. I always reread these two every summer and fall. Personally, I find Bradbury's writing hauntingly beautiful.

CassandraW said:

Ditto a read of some mythology. I had the Bible and a great deal of mythology under my belt before I hit high school; I think I spent a lot less time looking at footnotes as a result (which likely caused me to enjoy some works others found painful).

I really don't think we all need to read and enjoy all the classics. I don't even think that's possible. [snip] However, I do shrug when I hear people dismiss all the classics as dull and irrelevant.

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I think a solid grounding in mythology and the Bible provides much more enjoyment because you "get it" when the author is either referencing these works, or using an archetypal structure and twisting it in a new fashion. Perhaps folks don't always enjoy the classics because there are often nuances to the stories, based in mythology and the Bible, that add a deeper meaning - and if you miss the reference in the first place, it won't hold the same appeal. That's why I still turn to classics I've read before and other classics "new" to me all the time, in addition to more modern works. I like it when it's self evident that an author is well-read and has incorporated that knowledge base, however subtly, in his/her works.

Again, from an SFF perspective, I know some of those references back annoy the heck out of some people. But as a former academic who loved medieval/Renaissance studies, well...I get all geeked out when I understand where someone is getting their story archetypes and ideas, be it Arthurian tropes, history chronicles, or Old English.

I don't begrudge a disinterest in the classics; frankly, though I'm an English lit nerd myself, I hated what I perceived as the classics up until my senior year in high school. My husband, a very smart individual, doesn't enjoy the classics at all. He only recently read Conrad's Heart of Darkness and asked me after finishing, "WHY exactly is this considered a classic?" A very lively discussion ensued, but he's still not convinced. Then again, he can happily re-read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, while I try not to gnash my teeth struggling through it.

I think whatever sparks a love of reading and a love of language is the most important thing. If that leads into the classics, wonderful. If that leads into philosophical treatises, economic theory, or heck, every latest crime thriller, mystery, romance, etc. you can get your hands on, wonderful. But I'm rambling and off-point from the original post.

Most of the ones mentioned as unread, I haven't read either. I have read Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and Frankenstein. Albeit decades ago. I've read most of Dickens, and most of Hawthorne. James Fenimore Cooper was so appalling racist (according to modern sensibilities) that it was painful reading Last of the Mohicans. I agree with tiddlywinks hubby about Conrad. I don't mind books being doorstop size, as long as they are interesting. I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when I was 14. I read Lolita way back when, to see what the uproar was about, and found it boring.

Different strokes for different folks, as we used to say back in the sixties.

MM

tiddlywinks said:

Paradise Lost (I only made it half-way through)

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The first half was the good bit. Don't even feel guilty about not bothering with the rest.

I'm of the school of thought that as a writer reading is part of the job description not just something done for enjoyment. In that sense, there's a lot to be learned from the classics simply because something in them made them rise to classic level. Trying to understand what that is can't help but improve your own writing.

But the list of classics is clearly too long for anyone to read them all so there's no shame in admitting you haven't accomplished the impossible. I think it makes sense to pick ones you'd expect to like and ones that you expect to learn from. Quite likely those two things will intersect a fair bit and give you a good reading list.

On that note, Ulysses is the one that I haven't been able to get through but feel I should because I know there's something to learn in there.

Hey, I read War and Peace too!

I've actually read most of the typically assigned classics, except for Dickens, Hardy, and any Hemingway novels that are not Old Man and the Sea. I'm more of a genre\mystery guy, so for me:


Frankenstein (self-explanatory why this is important. It's on my bookshelf right now, so no excuse.)
Neuromancer (I got part of the way through this and loved the imagery but was so confused.)
A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery (I've read most of the other classic detectives)

I've also got to try some more Stephen King one of these days.

I am actually not that voracious a reader. Id have an easier time listing the ones i have read than the ones I haven't. But on that list are:
ferenheit 451
Ann of green gables
Tale of two cities
Oliver Twist

I'm a middle-of-the-road classics gal: I've loved some, hated others, and as an educator have witnessed firsthand how shoving them down the throats of high schoolers and then shaming them when they don't enjoy them turns kids off reading altogether.

I have a very short list titled "classics I haven't read, and I actually care that I haven't read them". I'm working my way through that list, and not sweating the others.

I'm reading War and Peace now. I've got it on audiobook, so I listen to it while I'm cleaning or on the rare occasions I have a long drive without my kid in the car. At this rate, it will take me 27 years to finish it. But I'm enjoying it much more than I thought!

Interesting, I think I would enjoy W&P better listening to it as well. Preferably in a car while driving around Europe.

I have read a few classics, and I will generally buy them when I find them in op shops, with the intention to read them some day.

Unless I'm reading a series, I tend to alternative between one 'modern' book and one 'classic' book.

Some of the classics I've read in recently years I've gone "Yes, I absolutely understand why this is a classic" like Pride and Prejudice, Animal Farm, 1984, Lord of the Flies, A Clockwork Orange. I liked them very much.

Some I find vaguely interesting as a historical work, like Little Women and To Kill A Mockingbird.

And some I hated, like Great Expectations.


On my 'to read' list are:
Peter Pan
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Sherlock Holmes series/collection
The Great Gatsby
A Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
Frankenstein
Dracula
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Ivanhoe
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Jane Eyre
Sense and Sensibility


Looking at that list, I don't seem well read at all - but my intention to read them counts for something, surely!

Tess of the D'ubervilles was disheartening and unpleasant, but I was 15 when I had to read it. They say you bring your own experience to literature or poetry.

I did give two thumbs up for Silas Mariner at that age.

Oh man, who gets to say what's a "classic" and what isn't?

I've read Dracula and Frankenstein, nearly everything Poe wrote, ditto Lovecraft. I've read Wuthering Heights (loved it) and Great Expectations (hated it), Gormeghast, all of H.G Wells and most of Jules Verne, and Animal Farm and 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye and Macbeth and Hamlet and Naked Lunch, Heart of Darkness and As I Lay Dying.

I've never read anything Russian, or any Jane Austin, or Tom Sawyer or Moby Dick.

I've read most of the great Greek plays and all of Homer, Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, odd bits of Hemmingway, To Kill A Mockingbird and about half of Pepys' Diary (dear gods that was dull) and Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Golden Bough and Liber Null and Winnie the Pooh.

What's a classic and what isn't? FWIW, after all that lot I write pulp urban fantasy.

I'm trying to read Moby Dick at the moment. I'm enjoying it through gritted teeth. By modern standards it's so slow. But I'm determined to get there. If only so I can tick it off.

Never could finish Ulysses. I might try that one after Moby Dick.

I read most of the classics for my English literature degree. There are some of the American classics that weren't on my course (To Kill a Mockingbird and Gatsby). I added those in later.

Of the modern "classics", I couldn't get more than 1½ books into Harry Potter. Or more than 1½ paragraphs into fifty shades.

PeteMC said:

nearly everything Poe wrote,

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I've never managed to read Poe despite being gifted many copies. I've not forgiven him for misusing my maiden name

Ken said:

In a way, it doesn't really matter whether you want to read classics or not. You will read them whether you want to or not !

The decision is not yours to make, unless you wanna be made to stand in a corner wearing a dunce cap throughout grade school, mid school, and high school ;-)

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I didn't read a LOT of the books we were assigned, and did fine. I know lots of kids who don't now.

I read some, and later read some of the ones I'd shunned in school, but I don't think people who are recalcitrant actually read stuff just because it's assigned. I was assigned Tess of the goddamned D'urbervilles in high school (along with the Fountainhead, Scarlet Letter, and others). Still haven't read it, but I got really good grades on the assignments and tests.

I saw the movie.

I've read most of the classics.

War & Peace, Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, Tom Swayer, Gatsby etc.

I've read German and French classics.

Want to know why?

My mother thinks anything that isn't a classic is not literature... and everything that is not literature should not be read by her child. I mostly had access to her wide range of books... all classics... and it was either read and educate yourself or don't read.

I really liked when I was finally allowed to go to the library on my own and read books she disapproved of.

I have a whole list of classics that I still need to read, but I have been so busy lately I keep putting it off. I've been wanted to read Anna Karenina for a long time now. I saw the film adaption a while ago and thought it was cool, but I know the book was probably way better. I haven't read Moby Dick yet either.

I also want to read Les Misérables. I've seen the musical and movie like 1001 times, but I read a short version in French class in high school and really liked it. I'd like to read the full version at some point. Whenever I can find the time..

CassandraW said:

Feeling no need to read the classics may not make you too special. Life is short. Read what you want.

Making a blanket statement that the reason you refuse to read them is because they are all boring and irrelevant -- yeah, I stand by my words. Given how many classics there are, i'm not sure anyone is actually in a position to make such a statement unless he's quite spectacularly well read. Usually it's more a case of coming into contact with maybe half a dozen classics in high school, and on that basis rejecting thousands of books you've never bothered to look at. Millions have loved them -- they're all just being pretentious?

Eta:

I've heard a fair number of people dismiss all the classics in a lump as irrelevant -- generally those who've had little contact with them. Some even dismiss all fiction as irrelevant. They're entitled to do so, but I can't help but feel they're the ones who are missing something.

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In high school I had to slog through the bone-crushing boredom of Moby Dick and in college I had other "classics" I had to slog through. I resolved when I was not required to read a book I would not. My time for reading is limited and I don't want to waste it reading a book I'm supposed to read to show how much appreciation I have for great works of literature.

A classic is a book someone else thinks someone else should enjoy as much or be as bored by it as they were.

I guess I'm the odd one out, because I actually like "Moby Dick."

Initially I hated it because, as others have mentioned, plot-wise it's ridiculously slow. Then one day it occurred to me that it's basically a book version of those TV shows like "Ice Road Truckers" or "Pawn Stars" that give you a window into a career you never thought much about. Once I approached it with that expectation and quit tapping my foot with impatience for the story to come back, it became much more interesting.

I've read a lot of classics. In school, when my teacher would assign a book, I'd seek out and read every closely related book I could find. He gave us Grapes of Wrath, I read it in a day, then hit the library to get The Pearl, Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, and Travels with Charley. He assigned 1984, which I had already read several times, so I got Animal Farm and Brave New World.

Still, my education in classic literature is weak in some areas.

I've never even opened War and Peace or Anna Karenina. In fact, the only Tolstoy I've read is The Death of Ivan Ilych which was depressing as heck, but at least it was short.

I tried reading Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22, but couldn't get through them. I've never read Little Women, just due to lack of interest. A lit teacher I know has often waxed on about how great Nabokov is, but I have no interest in him, either.

I'm not sure I've ever read a book that won a Man-Booker prize.

Lord of the Flies, Old Man and the Sea, Grapes of Wrath, and Moby Dick come to mind immediately for me. Haven't read War & Peace either. I've read a good enough number of other classics that I don't feel bereft, though -- I always kinda feel like the classics I need to work more at filling in are the SFF ones.

For those wanting to try Austen, I HIGHLY recommend the Pemberley.com's online annotated version of Pride & Prejudice (as long as you're not bothered by hyperlinks in your reading -- and yeah, start with P&P, it's amazing and there's a reason it's the most popular Austen). I find I got SO much more out of reading it that way, because they link stuff and explain why it's important, or ironic or, you know, whatever else! There are so many things in Austen I wouldn't have gotten without reading annotated copies -- like, who knew that writing letters to someone you're not engaged to is so scandalous??? (Although that's Sense and Sensibility.)

I'd also recommend The Lizzie Bennet Diaries to any Austen fan. Hands-down my favorite modern P&P adaptation. If you watch the first episode and aren't sucked in then you have no soul.

As for the Brontës (Emily and Charlotte, at least -- I haven't read Anne), it always weirds me out a little that they're grouped together. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights struck me as such vastly different books (although that might be my lack of historical context as well; who knows). I've never felt like they're even really in the same category, or that reading one gave me any idea of the other. I like them both, but I was an especial sucker for the complexity of the characters in Wuthering Heights. But then, I like antiheroes.