AIBU to think classics are bloody hard to read?

[Blackbootswithredribbons]

Now, don't get me wrong, I've read some amazing classics in my time (Lord Of The Flies, Jane Eyre etc) but it definitely hurts my brain sometimes! Amazing stories but the long, pointless descriptions, written in that old fashioned way that makes you feel a little stupid sometimes .

So, AIBU?

The worst book I tried to read was The Turn of The Screw. I couldn't understand the language and I had to keep reading the same sentence over and over whilst trying to work out what was happening. I gave up. I'm fairly intelligent and have read many different types of book, including some classics, but that book completely mystified me.

I often find that it isn’t the way they are written as much as the plot is lacking or I cannot connect with the characters so I not invested enough to care what happens to them.

There are many I have read and just do not understand what makes them so special.

I do enjoy the social history aspect though.

The 'craze' for writing sci fi in that period was was fab.

Eg Forster wrote at least one sci-fi short. I had no idea! It was mentioned recently as scarily prescient around tech now and lockdown lifestyle.

Read it obv. Creepy as fuck.

Brave New world interesting even at 13 or whatever I noticed the way the main characters etc all blokes and a lot of talk about women being pneumatic.

Essentially with babies through other means. Women iirc (been decades since read!) were for body sex and really could be wrong but a bit thick? I mean yes that's dystopian esp for women. But I didn't get the feel he was doing it for that reason iyswim

Like I say decades ago and I was young so if memory wrong interested to know!

When I was doing my MA in Writing, I could tell they thought I was beneath them when I said I don’t tend to go in much for classics! I’m not interested in experimental fiction either 🤣

I love sci-fi from the 50s but I also adore Dickens. Loved a clockwork orange and will read the screwtape letters ASAP now it has been recommended.

The point is that 'classic' only really means not contemporary and 'has stood the test of time'. We haven't got much to read from the dark ages so Beowulf is pretty much our only choice. It's not an easy read but worthwhile if you have the inclination and patience.

I also love Dick Francis which is total codswallop but also classic ... where do you start and finish with all this..

Hope you enjoy screwtape!

I thought this was going to be about the MN classics board

Some classics are surprisingly readable. I genuinely enjoyed Middlemarch. Also struggled with Dickens except a Christmas Carol.

@Namechangedforthethousandthtim

I thought this was going to be about the MN classics board

Some threads on there

Hard to read cos you're laughing so hard!

I think Lord of the Flies is easy to read. It is why it is often one of the books studied in schools. I mean it depends what you compare it to. If you like reading magazines and mumsnet and never read anything else, yes Lord of the Flies and Jane Eyre are heavy going. If you are used to reading books, they are both pretty easy reads.

Some classic books still please an unsophisticated modern reader like me, but plenty of others are "the best of their time" and written for people who didn't have a whole load of competing entertainment. I'd put Dickens and Moby Dick firmly in that category.

I think this is it. I love Dickens in principle (the storylines and the characters) but find the books hard to get into. Modern books try to grab you from the first line but Dickens tends to take a while to get into the main plot. But Dickens was serialising his books for a newspaper. Most people didn't have many books in those days. The weekly chapter in the newspaper was likely to be the only new fiction many people had access to on a regular basis. There was an incentive to read it and understand it. Nowadays we have millions of books available to buy online or even read digitally so of course we're going to prefer the ones that are easier to get into.

Ive read a lot of classics from different eras as my Dad had lots of them & we were both bookworms , so for pleasure & for O & A levels .The one I just couldn't get into was Pride and Prejudice. The adaptations on TV were great so I don't know why that particular one just didn't grab me. If you find classics hard going try the film version first , they're often a way in so to speak.

I hated Catch 22.

I just feel like there shouldn't be any sort of competition/ snobbery about all this. Not talking about posters but in general.

Everyone has different interests, preferences, experiences etc. And plenty of people here have poor literacy skills, feel various aspects aren't for them, as it were.

In the end reading should be primarily a pleasure. Even if reading something considered by people like my mum to be trash.

There's escapism from whatever the person has in life and that is not at all trivial. Relaxing. Losing yourself and being engrossed must be good for you. Feeling things, things that maybe you don't feel in general life. Being submersed in a different era, a different country. Being made to laugh, cry, feel anxiety, relief, joy etc. Even soppy, romantic, sexy. Luxuriating on a yacht, doing dangerous offshore fishing...

And that is all good, IMO.

Maybe there will be something learnt, new words, info about a country or time in history. Maybe not.

Thinking about it. This snobbishness about certain parts of culture. High brow, intellectual, worthy. And the connotations around class with some areas. Esp ballet opera.

I'm sure act as actively off-putting to many people.

So that's pretty shit isn't it.

A DC is reading Sherlock Holmes to me and that is fab.

Tried it when I was young and nope. Really like it now! And learning loads of (generally out of use) words.

I have told them when I'm old and bed bound they have to come and read me Dr Seuss though. As I did for them. That will be better than dickins or Proust by a mile

@Allmyarseandpeggymartin

I read this as “Mumsnet classics” are hard to read.

Thanks enough internet for today

Me too, I was expecting something about doing the T-Rex or elderly Korean lady.

[quote WoolyMammoth55]@NiceGerbil, Lolita isn't worth worrying about IMHO! Read it if you're intrigued, but I just read it as sort of seedy and sad - probably like you'd find meeting a paedophile in real life...[/quote]
I actually think this is exactly why Lolita is worth reading. Because it’s what I imagine it is like inside a paedophile’s actual head. It is an uncomfortable book though.

Although I still hate Austen. I’ve tried every one of the books so it’s not as if it’s a knee jerk reaction. Just find them boring and overly long for the fact that nothing happens. But others love them. And then I love lots of other classics that others hate.

@julieca

I hated Catch 22.

Easily one of the worst books I've ever read.

Nothing to do with "classic" status, just very poorly thought out and written IMO.

@Rosesareyellow

They're "hard to read" because reading is far more accessible nowadays, as language is much simpler and more people read and write. When a lot of classics were written, reading was for learned people only - so they are written in the style of learned people rather than everyday people!

Yes and they were more expensive too - so you had to be clever and rich to read them. I think a lot of people read stories chapter by chapter in magazines, they’d be cheap and most likely easy to read - but not sold in WHsmiths for us to read today. Shame, because they might actually be more entertaining than some ‘classics’.

That’s how Dickens published most of his novels, though — serialised in magazines. And they were hugely popular with a mass audience.

What I hate and find hard to read is simpering, facile modern books where the narrator sounds like a half-drunk fuckwit wittering vacuously at some hideous party.

I recently started reading a thing called Shopaholic and I felt it was giving me brain damage, so stopped.

If it's a choice between that or Villette...

There were plenty of simpering, facile Victorian books, of course, but they have been consigned to the dustbin of history in the meantime- thank God.

It’s all about finding the right ones for you. I adore books by Jane Austen, Tolstoy, most of the Brontes but can’t get into anything by Dickens or Hardy.

I think it's a matter of taste, like any other choice of reading. To me, Jane Eyre and Lord of the Flies are gripping novels and easy to read. I don't get on with Wuthering Heights at all, nor with any Dickens. Love most of Jane Austen, no to Thomas Hardy. I love T.S ELiot, DD1 hates him (had to do Prufrock for English Lit A level). If you struggle with the vocabulary and language, the answer is to read more and make the language your own.

I simply do not understand the endless fawning fuss about Catcher In The Rye

That is all.