I write this sitting in the kitchen sink; what is a classic?
My new discovery of I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith led me to wonder what other classics I had missed and additionally what is a classic? In my mind it is a book that was around when I was child that my mum or penguin told me I should read, or perhaps was part of the A level English Lit syllabus. Richard Davies (50 classic books) defines as
“If people are still reading the book 50 years after it was published then it's probably on its way to being a classic.”I have to agree with him though, the pressure of reading books because you should disappears after the end of our formal study of English Literature. I hated Austen's "Emma" although I was brave enough to read "Pride and Prejudice and actually enjoyed it but this forced reading of Austen put me off classics for a long time. It has to be something more than just note-worthy, it has to be enjoyable and still resonate however many years after publication. I think this can definitely be said of I Capture the Castle. I started with two lists of three to complete (I was not being over ambitious here) but the options suggested by the twitter sphere have been too good. The first is classics to re-read:
- Little Women - I loved this as a child and so have to revisit it
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
- The Color Purple - Maya Angelou (as suggested by Caroline Bond)
- 1984 - George Orwell (basically on everyone's suggestion list)
- ......
The second is classics to read that I have never attempted before :
- The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope
- The Woman in Black - Susan Hill (as suggested by @eilisburdon)
- Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier (courtesy of Stephanie @Stephaniereads)
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (@stephaniereads)
- James Baldwin - If Beale Street Could Talk (Caroline Bond)
- .......
Can you please help me with suggestions to fill these lists? What are the classics that you want to revisit and which are the ones you have yet to move off your TBR?
If you've never read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier or 1984 by George Orwell, both are really good and really readable. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those books I reread every so often because I always seem to discover something new in it.
ReplyDeleteCharles Dickens is another author who's really easy to read- Oliver Twist was surprisingly fun (I actually read that by the side of the pool!), but A Tale of Two Cities is more complicated. I only got through that because I read the ENTIRE thing out loud to my then-three year old! (And it was incredible, and maybe you'll do better with just reading it silently than I would. Otherwise, audiobook!) Other classics I've read and loved: Jane Eyre (read it when I was 14), My Antonia (read it when I was 12- I wasn't a super brilliant scholar or anything, I just liked books. This one made me cry), Madame Bovary, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lolita (such a creep of a narrator, but so well-written). All of these turned out to be surprisingly relaxing reads, as opposed to, say, Victor Hugo (I'll finish Les Miserables one day!) or Nathaniel Hawthorne, who are more work to read.
I love Dickens! Read Oliver Twist at Christmas every year (it's my tradition). I've done 1984 and Jane Eyre (in Yorkshire, you don't get your passport of you haven't read a significant amount of Brontë's) but I have never read Rebecca so that's on the list now. I'm ashamed to say The Great Gatsby has been on my Kindle fire a while so will now very a promotion. Great suggestions, thank you!
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