Hello friends! Today I decided to create a post that is somewhat less conventional, but still quite relevant. Since I’m a student that apart from studying also loves to read, this post will be dedicated entirely to reading classics and how to enjoy reading them! When I first started out I probably felt the same things many people feel when they first start reading classics, especially in school, but I can promise you, once you start to read them more, you’ll start to actually like them. In any case, below you’ll find a list of tips and recommendations I wish to share with you, so I hope you like it :)
1. Where/how to start
Getting started with classics is for many people the biggest obstacle, but you can overcome your fear of classics by just simply starting to read them. However, where many people go wrong, is that they don’t choose their first classics wisely and will be appalled by them because of it. But worry not, below is a list of some of (personal) recommendations of classics generally considered enjoyable. If you feel like this is a step too big, you can also start off by watching some good TV/movie adaptations of classics, which are included as well.
2. Recommendations below 200 pages
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde (very hilarious)
Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy
Silas Marner - George Eliot
Persuasion - Jane Austen
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (the classic Christmas read)
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
3. Recommendations beyond 200 pages
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien (yes, this is a classic)
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Emma - Jane Austen
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë (one of my favourite books of all time)
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (a gigantic 1400 pages)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë (super feminist!)
Reading classics is at some point a kind of trial-and-error experience, so I suggest that you begin by reading a wide variety of shorter classics from which you can gradually decide upon the types of classics you do like and the types you don’t. Once you discover the time/era, writing style, themes, and place you favour, it’s much easier and enjoyable to read more classics, and lengthier ones as well. Reading classics does not mean that you have to read within all times or eras, but you can also enjoy one particular era as well (I personally love the 1850-1900 era). In the end, you should have a pretty good idea of what you like, and trust me, reading classics will by no means be scary anymore!
7. How to enjoy them at school
Once you have familiarised with classics, you’ll also have familiarised with the writing style and the types of stories. This means that reading classics in school will be much easier to do as well, because it will help you spend much less time worrying about the book, but can instead help you enjoy and appreciate it. Truly, not all the books you’ll read in school will be fun or good, but just remember that not all classics are like that! If you’re lucky enough to read a book that you do like, you’ll read it much quicker and understand a lot better now that you know in what context it can be placed. If you still feel scared, please watch this video, it does wonders.
This post turned out to be longer than expected, but hopefully it can help all of you out! If you have any questions about this post, or more general things (or if you’d like to talk to me about books), you can always send me an ask. See you next time!
I wish more than anything in the world I remembered what the book was called, because I will 100% never find it again (too niche) (hyper local history on Wisconsin lumber camps) and once I type it out no one will believe me BUT
Way out in the woods there wasn’t much opportunity for entertainment, and at night the foreman or whoever would fall back on that tried and true 19th century past time of reading aloud, which was more popular than one might expect. Apparently there’d be a bunch of burly dudes around the campfire rapturously listening to Jane Eyre, to the point where one of them exclaimed, at a moment of peril for the heroine [sadly paraphrased by me] ‘God DAMN them! God them that would be so cruel to one of God’s own lambs!’ etc
I wish more than anything I could find the book again and confirm the quote both for my own sake but also for our proud heritage of being completely insane. Heirloom blorbo.
holy SHIT i found it
“He spent his winter evenings reading from the boss’ collection of Walter Scott novels. The linkage of lumberjacks and literature was not entirely exceptional. James Johnston, a Canadian immigrant who spent the winter of 1856-1857 logging on a branch of the Snake River, was delighted to find in camp a copy of Ivanhoe and a collection of Captain Maryatt novels. Later he "made it a custom to have some book in camp and sometimes at the request of the boys would read aloud while the crew would listen.” On one improbably occasion he was reading Jane Eyre to the men who sat in rapt attention as the young orphan Jane was humiliated by one of her teachers. One of the men, who regarded Jane Eyre as “one of God’s little lambs”, shouted out a curse “from the very bottom of his soul” at the insult to the heroine. The rest of the crew then “broke out in cheers and laughter”
Happy Birthday Charlotte Brontë, born April 21, 1816, died March 31, 1855
Charlotte Bronte believed believed art was most convincing when based on personal experience; in Jane Eyre she transformed her experience as a governess into a novel with universal appeal.
ReadJane Eyre, one of the classics of English Literature.
You said I was a liar. I’m not. If I were I’d have said I loved you, and I don’t. I dislike you less than anybody in the world. People think you are good, but you are bad, and hard-hearted. I will let everyone know what you have done.
