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 Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 11:15 pm
The Three Musketeers, Moby d**k, Robinson Crusoe, The Scarlet Letter, etc
Books we all know about, books you probably even have sitting on your bookshelf, but how many have you acually read?
it's surprizing how people read these books anymore (unless they're assigned in some high school English class...)
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Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 11:42 pm
I generally try to avoid them
I know they're good books and all, but because everyone knows about them, I dunno, i think it loses its charm for me, thought i have read a couple of them.
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Romantic Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 6:38 pm
I'm an English major, so it's expected that I have the classics read. If I haven't read some essential work, I get an aghast look and the exclamation "You haven't read ____ ? What the heck!?" Even so, I find that I have a pretty good repertoire of classic literature, thanks to my mother (who kept scores of classic books among our many bookshelves). I think it's important to read the classics, just as it is important for artists or art enthusiasts to be familiar with classic art.
It's history because it can show the evolution of literature and the movements that it has gone through. It's very interesting to see how a certain type of literature comes out of a group of writers from a specific place and time, such as the Modernists and Realists. No one got together and decided that they would write that way, but world events influenced and were reflected in a new style.
It's also important to see that there really is nothing new under the sun. When my brother began reading classic literature after a period of reading contemporary, he started to see the same themes repeated everywhere. You can even spot Hamlet in The Lion King and Sherlock Holmes in House if you're familiar with the classics.
Finally, I think it's amazing to see the same things that I/we as a society face today in literature by Hawthorne or even Chaucer. I was amazed to see how baudy early English literature was compared to the relatively tame literature of today. Sex, farting, cheating, disrespect for the church ... every generation thinks they're the first real rebels, but every literary movement has been about breaking censors.
The classics are not important because they're old and forced into every English canon, they're important because of the things that have made them classics, tried through the centuries: excellent writing, and a deep, social-restraints-defying look at hard questions and our own lives.
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Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 7:14 pm
I know I've read a few, but to be honest I chouldn't tell you which sweatdrop
some books you become so fumiller with though other means that it feels that if almost feels like you have read it
things like the old Wishbone shows or mabie after watching a movie version of it, etc...
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 7:50 am
Jaconis I generally try to avoid them I know they're good books and all, but because everyone knows about them, I dunno, i think it loses its charm for me, thought i have read a couple of them. A lot of the ones that you think have lost their charm just because they've been read a lot, you end up underestimating a lot of them. Because those people who read it or you for just having known what the book was about you miss out on your personal experience from reading it. Because it is a great thing when an author is made known, but sad when people dismiss the books because they have been talked about for years. Granted though, there are some of those books considered classics that are absolutely atrocious (ie:Kate Chopin's "The Awakening").
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 12:38 pm
I know I read The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Three Musketeers for fun. I've had to read a lot of "classic" children's books for my job (or at least be familiar with them, like Harry Potter, Charlotte's Web, the Narnia series). I remember suffering though The Scarlet Letter, but reading Shakespear for fun in high school (I was bored enough in class to at least skim everything in my English class textbooks, and they always had one full-length play). I've sometimes looked for the original classic when I read something that's derived from it, or refers to it.
Would anyone consider the Sherlock Holmes stories classics? Or anything else that's genre fiction, like sci-fi?
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Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 2:30 pm
My introduction to literary classics was Sherlock Holmes. It also prompted my dad to introduce me to contemporary classics like Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, so the classic lead me to other books that I like.
I agree with what Fairgrass has already said about the importance of reading classic literature. As for myself, I love reading historical fiction so they're perfect for me. I've read many classics and I like to indulge in what works have managed to stand the test of time.
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Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 7:24 pm
The Count of Monte Cristo is actually one of my favorite books ever, along with Frankenstein and Dracula. Surprisingly enough, even though I HATE romance, I'm a huge fan of Jane Austen...
Most of the time though, someone will ask me if I've read so-and-so classic and I'm like "Yeah! ...Wait, no, I've only seen the Wishbone..."
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Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:47 pm
The thing about old books is that time has filtered out all the crap.
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Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 10:18 pm
I had someone say to me once that everyone has their own classics. Some are old and some are new. "Classics" are just books that many people have enjoyed, supposedly. (I've read a few I don't know how any one enjoyed them at all!) Classics need not be books on a list defining them as such. They can be a book that you loved and would be willing to read over and over again. That is the end of my thinking on classics as personal favorite novels.
I am not saying books usually defined as classics are good or bad. I have loved many and disliked a few also. They usually have wonderful writing and plots that by nature are timeless. It is good to read a few classics and find out which ones you prefer.
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Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 10:11 am
i've been working my way through some of the classics in the last few years. some of them are classics for very self-evident reasons (like gone with the wind - what a great epic story!), but others made me wonder how they ended up becoming classics... i wasn't too impressed with moby d**k, for instance. i think the classics are worth reading, even if they're not always the most interesting. there were definitely parts of les miserables and anna karenina that i had to force my way through, but they were worth the experience.
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