Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
But if I want to read for 'education' then does that really mean I have to slog through Plato if I don't really want to?
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No, you just need to know the important things he wrote that influenced later people who then also influenced people, and you can get that from a good commentary on Plato or SparkNotes or whatever.
Mind you, sometimes some classics will look boring because of bad translations, so you might want to find another version and try again. But sometimes works just simply don't appeal and you shouldn't force yourself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
And how important is it to read chronologically? Can't I just pick something interesting and see where it takes me?
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Sure, and I encourage that. James Burke's excellent
Connections series of history/technology programs jumps back and forth all the time.
As far as chronology goes, really mostly if later works were significantly influenced by earlier works (although sometimes it's more interesting to read the later works first and then go back and look at the earlier works and think "a-ha! so
that's where it comes from!") and you want to see things unfold in progressive steps.
I do advocate for reading stuff from a certain culture/time period together if you've the taste for it.
It can help you get a better grasp on the viewpoint of the time if, say, you also read Marlowe and Milton when you read Shakespeare, and you'll be getting context for stuff you might not quite understand from a single source from multiple sources instead, which might help you figure out what it means when writers use a certain out-of-date slang phrase or reference a common cultural event of the times.
And also regarding commentaries, a good modern non-fiction book or journal article can also help if you read it alongside the classics you're looking at. There's plenty of stuff that you might not normally "get" that an expert on the subject matter can point out, and it's nice to know about the background setting and influences on a particular work, that might lead you to looking up some other more obscure works that inspired it.
By the way, I recommend Barnes & Noble's B&N Classics Editions of annotated texts with introductions and footnotes and mini-essays by scholarly types. They're very nicely done and well worth taking a look at.
Just over a dozen of them are permanently available free:
Pride & Prejudice,
Dracula, and
Little Women are available DRM-free when you sign up an account at their website and you don't need to give them personal info.
And you can get the extra 12 when you download the
NookStudy app from their website, and B&N seem to have recently removed certain restrictions on non-US customers getting some of the free books (but you'll still need a credit card for their website for the DRM-scheme).
The freebie selection includes a mix of poetry, novels, and prose non-fiction that spans millenia (
Beowulf and
Canterbury Tales are there, as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald) and they've got a copy of Plato's
Republic that you might find an easier read (or at least derive value from the essay that goes along with it).
If it turns out you like the series, they normally only cost $1.99 and B&N sometimes give them away free as promo during holidays and such, which is how I acquired over 100 of the things to slowly read my way through.
Hope this helps.