08-18-2013, 12:52 AM | #1 |
Nameless Being
|
I'd like to start reading the classics. How should I begin?
Hi all,
I'd like to broaden my mind and my vocabulary - upon seeing the absolutely excellent public domain library offered right here, I've decided that this is the best place to ask for help. I normally read fantasy, horror, thriller and young adult novels - a few of my cherished authors, specifically, are Stephen King, China Miéville, Cassandra Clare, Sarah Diemer, Dean Koontz, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson and J.K. Rowling. I hope this gives you an idea of the kinds of novels that I gravitate towards, as well as the calibre of writing I tend towards. Now, as far as the "classics" go, I'm looking for older classics rather than newer one - Slaughterhouse-Five is a classic which I've read, for example, but it's newer than what I'm aiming for. Let's say that if I can access it in the library here, I'd like to read it. I've previously read The Picture Of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde and Sense And Sensibility by Jane Austen. I adored them both - the former because of the haunting, gothic themes of vanity, greed, and their consequences; the latter because of the view it presented of societal behaviour (and, I'll admit, I love non-erotic romance!). Even though I've read these two, and enjoyed them both immensely, I'm not sure where to go from here. I feel entirely uneducated in the classics, and I'm sure that there's a treasure trove of excellent literature within them - why else, after all, would they be considered classic? Should I begin with Don Quixote? War And Peace? Les Misérables? Ulysses? The Divine Comedy? Bleak House? Frankenstein? Middlemarch? It's such a vast field to choose from - I feel, frankly, lost. If I haven't talked your ear off (or, as it were, typed your eyes out!), can you please provide me with a suggestion or two for what to read, and maybe even broadly suggest how I should go about tackling the classics? I won't stop until I've read 100! (Though not all at once!) I'm sorry if I really have typed your eyes out; I can be a tad ... verbose. What can I say? I'll blame it on my tutors - I'm studying writing, after all! |
08-18-2013, 02:17 AM | #2 |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,305
Karma: 43993832
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Monroe Wisconsin
Device: K3, Kindle Paperwhite, Calibre, and Mobipocket for Pc (netbook)
|
I'd suggest trying the Harvard Classics. We have the full set here at MR in several different formats.Harvard Classics Wiki
Last edited by crich70; 08-18-2013 at 02:20 AM. |
08-18-2013, 02:57 AM | #3 |
Connoisseur
Posts: 91
Karma: 1186533
Join Date: Jan 2012
Device: Kindle
|
I've recently decided to read some classics myself, and decided to jump in with both feet and start with Don Quixote. I'm about halfway through and am loving it. There's a well-regarded modern english translation currently available for $2.99:
Kobo Amazon Barnes & Noble I'm reading a different translation, but might be reading that one if it'd been $2.99 at the time. Good luck with the classics! I'm thinking Anna Karenina next for myself. |
08-18-2013, 03:06 AM | #4 |
Wizard
Posts: 3,388
Karma: 14190103
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Berlin
Device: Cybook, iRex, PB, Onyx
|
Very good suggestion, crich!
Another way could be to search the internet sites of universities/colleges. Literature classes often have their reading lists online. One example with rich stuff for this and your next life is the Open Courseware Project of MIT. - They have a lot of literature courses online: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/literature/ - As an example, this link shows you the reading list of the course "Foundations of Western Culture II": http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/literatur...2003/readings/ |
08-18-2013, 03:23 AM | #5 | |||
Nameless Being
|
Quote:
Quote:
I'd like to tackle Anna Karenina fairly early on, myself! I've heard nothing but good feedback regarding the classics of Russian literature, specifically Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov and War & Peace. Who knows? Maybe we'll end up reading Anna Karenina at the same time! Quote:
I have to admit that I hadn't thought to search for the course listings of literature degrees, and probably never would have - my own university, Griffith University in Australia, has simply assigned set readings (which tend to be journals and articles, rather than books) thus far in my degree, despite one of my majors being creative writing! Sigh, maybe I should become a literature student... I've bookmarked those MIT webpages that you've linked me, and I'm going to have a read through several of the listed courses (I can see Pride and Prejudice in the Foundations of Western Culture II: Renaissance to Modernity class that you linked me to - maybe I should read that fairly early on; I did enjoy Sense and Sensibility!). This looks great. Thank you! Last edited by Neverwhere; 08-18-2013 at 03:26 AM. |
|||
08-18-2013, 03:24 AM | #6 | |
Inharmonious
Posts: 416
Karma: 2157616
Join Date: Jan 2013
Device: Sony PRS-950, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1
|
Quote:
Don Quixote Les Miserables The Three Musketeers and most other books by Alexandre Dumas père Most anything by Charles Dickens The Brothers Karamasov, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Pretty much everything by Jules Verne Pretty much everything by H. P. Lovecraft (since you express a liking for haunting gothic themes) Pretty much everything by Edgar Allen Poe (ditto) Wherever you start you have innumerable hours of great enjoyment ahead. There is, after all, a reason they're called the classics.... It's very nice, by the way, to see someone who's actually eager to tackle them, something which isn't exactly common fare these days. |
|
08-18-2013, 03:32 AM | #7 | |
Nameless Being
|
Quote:
At your comment regarding Ulysses, I've decided to push it somewhere towards the back of my more immediate list (which is by no means fully formed, obviously). As you've given another suggestion to read Don Quixote, I am again resolved to pick it up earlier than intended! There are numerous copies of the book on the library here, which it seems I can access regardless of the geographic restrictions imposed when I looked at the book on Kobo. Would you recommend any particular upload of the book? I have, of course, added every else that you mentioned to my notepad - and I've underlined Lovecraft and Poe. I'd love to finally discover where the beloved horror genre originated! Will I notice any particular themes or linguistic quirks reading translated French or Russian literature, as opposed to English literature? EDIT: Alright, I've downloaded a few things based on your replies so far - sitting in my library are Matthew Gregory Lewis' The Monk, Edgar Allen Poe's complete works, H.P. Lovecraft's complete works, Jules Verne's complete works, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot, Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Leo Tolstoy's War And Peace and Anna Karenina, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote and Jane Austen's complete works (which I purchased a while ago from Amazon, but only read Sense and Sensibility, as mentioned earlier). My Kobo itself is perched atop my paperback copy of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. By no means am I satisfied, though, so keep those suggestions coming, please! Last edited by Neverwhere; 08-18-2013 at 04:55 AM. |
|
08-18-2013, 05:17 AM | #8 |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 5,100
Karma: 24047426
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands
Device: Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition
|
Also try M.R. James if you like ghost stories and if you like Gothic novels you could try Anne Radcliffe.
|
08-18-2013, 05:20 AM | #9 |
Nameless Being
|
|
08-18-2013, 08:05 AM | #10 |
Indie Advocate
Posts: 2,863
Karma: 18794463
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Device: Kindle
|
This is one aspect of electronic literature that I've really profited from - the availability of public domain classics.
If you like societal comment and non-erotic romance, it seems appropriate to recommend authors such as E M Forster and Jane Austen. You've already written that you enjoyed Sense and Sensibility so there's no reason you wouldn't start working through more Austen novels. If you do like Sci Fi, you could do worse than dabbling in some H G Wells. I've read two before and I'm just starting my third and I certainly haven't been disappointed. I can't talk about classics without recommending Dostoyevsky. It's my goal to finish reading all of his novels before I die. I've only read three so far and enjoyed all of them. Then there's the adventure type classics and there are an abundance of these: Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Dumas, John Buchan and Jack London. I see there have been a couple of haunting/gothic suggestions come through (Lovecraft, Poe, M R James). You could possibly add another work or two: - The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - Dracula by Bram Stoker (of course) Our book club also read Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu and some of us really enjoyed that. Another book with a fairly heavy atmosphere that I really enjoyed reading was Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I haven't read everything I've mentioned and (to be honest) I didn't actually like The Turn of the Screw. However its renown as a classic ghost story is indisputable. I have to mention also, that when the book club read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, I was blown away. Lastly, if you like dystopian classics, let me throw my hat in the ring for 1984 by George Orwell and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (this one not public domain in English). In any case, there's so many wonderful books to choose from. I could drop all other books and just read public domain classics for the rest of my life and still got get my fill. |
08-18-2013, 08:17 AM | #11 | |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
Posts: 71,506
Karma: 306214458
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Norfolk, England
Device: Kindle Voyage
|
Quote:
No-one's recommended Kipling yet. I strongly recommend Kim - the version I uploaded here has a very clean text. If you want to see the lighter side of Oscar Wilde, read The Canterville Ghost. The Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are obviously worth reading. |
|
08-18-2013, 08:20 AM | #12 | ||
Nameless Being
|
Quote:
I've added all of the individual books that you've listed to my ever-growing document of to-be-read classics. I've actually wanted to read both Heart Of Darkness and Dracula for a while, but wasn't sure - I've heard some dreary feedback about both of them. I'm willing to give anything a go when it's presented as part of such a thorough post, though! Dystopias are a source of great (albeit ... masochistic?) entertainment for me, and I've already read 1984. (I've read Animal Farm, too.) It was an interesting, short read, though I preferred Aldous Huxley's Brave New World by leaps and bounds - it always makes my top-ten-books list. EDIT: Quote:
Thank you for your other recommendations - I've downloaded Kim, but not The Canterville Ghost - I'm not much for comedy in books. I prefer to listen to or watch humour. A friend owns a gorgeous edition of the Sherlock Holmes works, so I'll see if I can borrow it from her at some stage. (Or I'll simply download it - whichever suits my fancy when I get to it!) Last edited by Neverwhere; 08-18-2013 at 08:58 AM. |
||
08-18-2013, 08:22 AM | #13 |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 7,195
Karma: 70314280
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Atlanta, GA
Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2
|
At one time, the classics were taught in high school. Way back in the distant reaches of time, when I had to dodge dinosaurs to get to school (as I like to tell the kids), we had Moby Dick in the 8th grade. (I'm kind of odd, I actually like Moby Dick and liked it in the 8th grade). Now it seems to be more the pop book de jour that talks about whatever the teacher thinks is significant social issues. It's too bad that kids are missing out on the basis of our shared culture.
There are a lot of classics lists out there. I agree with the earlier poster that the Penguin Classics list is a good place to start. I read a good many of those in high school (I can't possibly imagine why "I, Claudius" and "Lolita" and "Lady Chattery's Lover" weren't on my summer reading lists . ) I would also toss in some Shakespeare, though I would suggest reading in combination with watching a good performance of the play in question. Hamlet is the most famous. The Olivier film version is the most well regarded, though quite a bit was removed. Branagh's version is unabridged and runs 4+ hours. |
08-18-2013, 09:03 AM | #14 | |
Nameless Being
|
Quote:
I'd love to read some Shakespeare, but I'm intimidated by the English that he uses. If I take my time, reading paragraphs twice or thrice and keeping my laptop on hand to look up unfamiliar words, then even with the footnotes and study guides, it's a real task to comprehend the King James Bible - and the last time I tried to read that, it wasn't for pure leisure, the way that Shakespeare would be. Are there companion guides to aide me in developing a grasp of Shakespearean English? |
|
08-18-2013, 09:35 AM | #15 |
Wizard
Posts: 2,409
Karma: 4132096
Join Date: Sep 2008
Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App
|
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a wonderful, whimsical fantasy story, even if it was written for kids You might also like the 14-volume Wizard of Oz series, books by Robert Louis Stevenson and short stories by Poe.
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
'start reading at' | Me! | Conversion | 13 | 11-03-2012 10:59 AM |
Strategies for reading the classics? | ficbot | General Discussions | 185 | 06-17-2011 09:25 AM |
Do you finish reading every book you start reading? | JSWolf | General Discussions | 56 | 08-12-2010 05:52 PM |
How did you start reading? | HorridRedDog | Reading Recommendations | 92 | 04-28-2010 03:17 PM |
Problem Reading RTF how to even begin to diagnose?? | nerys | Sony Reader | 7 | 09-03-2007 03:07 AM |