Should I read the classics?

[Butterflyfriend]

Hello everyone.
I have to confess, I find reading Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare etc. a chore.
I have an English degree, so I can understand the language and appreciate their merit, I just feel they are mountains to climb rather than a pleasure.
Are they really worth persevering with?

[AnneEtAramis]

Count of Monte Cristo is amazing (imo)

And IMO too. It took me a month to read, but was worth every single second.

I far preferred The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to Agnes Grey. I cannot remember anything about Agnes Grey and I only read it last year, but do think Tenant is a fantastic read.

Somebody mentioned Zola. I read The Dram Shop last year (it was obviously the year of giant books) and adored it but I love depressing books. Tess of the d'Urbervilles was great too, I am still recovering and it's been years.

I do agree that life is too short to be compelled to read anything. I won't touch science fiction because it just isn't for me.

For 20th c classics I like D H Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.

[Freya888]

Austen - yes
Brontes - yes
Dickens - yes
Eliot - yes
Gaskell - yes
Tolstoy - no

[everydayinMK]

Funnily enough, there was a piece in The Guardian about this, this very week. Only 1% of the population has read Middlemarch. 4% have read War & Peace or Moby Dick. 21% have read Oliver Twist:

www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jan/21/dont-read-classic-books-because-you-should-war-peace-fun

[QuietWhenReading]

bigbad oh come on, don't get huffy my post was tounge in cheek.

Yes of course you can dislike Jane Eyre if it's not your thing.

The moment that you dislike is just a plot device to give the character an excuse to return to the house of a married man who had previously threatened her virtue. The 'telepathy' bit is to make it 'okay' that she does a fairly shocking thing for the times.

Re the bumping into people coincidence - it doesn't happen much now (although we have an example in our own family) but there are 70 million people living in the UK now. The population was much less in Bronte's day. The characters are also moving in a pretty limited geographic area.


However once a again it's just a plot device. Feel free to hate it all you like.

[bigbadbarry]

Not all, no. Some are. I don't much like the ones, like Jane Eyre, that go along perfectly normally, have one instance of telepathic communication, then carry on as normal. But then I don't really like Jane Eyre at all. That's ok, isn't it?
I also dislike too many far-fetched coincidences in a story - and I suspect this is why I am not that keen on Dickens (although I do really like Dickens done by the BBC). Randomly bumping into people happens, sure, but not that often. Finding out people are long-lost relatives, ditto.
Sorry if that offends you

[QuietWhenReading]

How many millions of books, plays and films have some element of the supernatural in them? It's a pretty well known plot device.

Are they all 'ridiculous'? Because if so your viewing and reading is going to be severely curtailed.

[bigbadbarry]

Ah come on, Jane Eyre might not be boring but the telepathy bit is a bit ridiculous!

[QuietWhenReading]

Quite right too Moving

[Movingonmymind]

Am washing

[QuietWhenReading]

Moving the Tennant of Wildfell Hall boring or ridiculous?! wash your mouth out!

Jane Eyre boring or ridiculous?

[Movingonmymind]

I dont find Brontes difficult, in fact i like a challenge. But so boring, ridiculous plots. Each to their own. Love the satire and closely observed domestic world of Austen.

[IndridCold]

I like the Brontes too, with the notable exception of Wuthering Heights. It's a blithering load of old tosh that is like a parody of itself!

[lemonymelanie]

oh I love a Bronte! I'm re-reading them all at the moment. Infact it was Anne Bronte's birthday yesterday, so in honour, you could start with her - Agnes Grey is easier to read than the Tenant. Other Brontes -Jane Eyre is easy too, Wuthering Heights not difficult - Shirley and Villette a bit harder to get into, but worth it. Also Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte B, a classic biography and so interesting :-)

[angie95]

The Mysteries of Udlpho ,(think thats . the correct spelling) is wonderful, a gothic classic. The Monk is good too, Jane Austens are all great.

[cressetmama]

Loved Dumas, but then I have always been a sucker for a good swash and buckle with lots of politics and skullduggery, for preference.

The library service should be everyone's friend. We have to use them or we will lose 'em.

[Moln]

Don't read because you 'have to'. Keep reading a pleasure.

I've read a handful of Bronte but find them so tedious. It's not the writing but I just think the life it revolves around brain numbingly uninteresting. I would try another Bronte but if I'm near the beginning and not interested I'd stop. Too many other books!!

I'm was considering war and peace. Though I felt Tolstoy went off on (and on and on) a tiresome self indulgent philosophical ramble in Anna Karanina. It made me want to bang my head off the book with frustration. I got the idea from the bbc version there might be more of the same in War and Peace!! Yet I know someone who adores it

I adore Dickens's stories. But his writing not so much.

Count of Monte Cristo is amazing (imo)

My advice get them out the library, try them but don't keep on reading if you find it a task. If you feel you should because other people are hand wavingly horrified you haven't then if you've tried them you'll have a reason why.

Met someone once who was disgusted I didn't think Animal Farm was as marvellous as he did. Honestly I read for enjoyment not to look good. I'm currently reading a children's classic - it's very enjoyably (and nostalgic)

[IAmAPaleontologist]

If you've not read many of the classics then you won't get most of the jokes in the Jasper Fforde books. That is the best reason I can give for reading them. Anything else is just about taste. I love some, I hate others. Some people like Kate Atkinson and others don't. Some think Harry Potter is amazing and can spend hours unravelling the story yet others think it a poorly written piece of tosh. There is no point reading something just because you feel you ought to.

[OhShutUpThomas]

I didn't like any of the Brontes except for Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which I think is amazing.

[Movingonmymind]

Cresset- am a fellow Brontes hater, never got their work or enjoyed it. Love JA, Thackeray however.,
Having been to see a Shakespeare play recently, I do think it's easy to miss some of the many gems which flow through his work if you never read it also. So am dipping into a couple of key speeches to catch up on what i missed. Yes, he'd probably be writing soaps if he were around now but the lyricism, imagination and beauty of his language is breathtaking and a shame to miss.

[Themodernuriahheep]

If you feel you ought to know the plots, then there are wonderful cribs you can get!

I love crime novels ! And IMV Ngaio Marsh, DL Sayers, Sarah Paretsky, Val McDermid all write well. Ian Rankin too. And the late Anthony Price.

[cressetmama]

Love some (JA Persuasion, P&P; Dickens Nicholas Nickleby; Great Expectations) and hate others... the Brontes topping that list. Quite like Hardy, adored Vanity Fair, War and Peace is long but so is Middlemarch. You choose, and stop 100 pages in if you aren't enjoying the book. It's not a set text now, you don't have to finish anything you don't like, or pass an exam on the language and structure, which was why I refused to do English Lit at uni. It spoiled the enjoyment of reading.

I'm with Indrid, it's about pleasure. I like crime novels, some are even well written .

[IndridCold]

Personally I love 'the Classics', however reading is for pleasure, surely? If you don't enjoy reading them, don't bother. There's plenty of other good stuff out there.

[Themodernuriahheep]

Sales not sakes, stupid fingers

[Themodernuriahheep]

I found that with plays. It took me years before I went to see a play and I never ever read them now, save occasionally for the poetry. Ie I might read them, but rarely for the play itself.

And I rarely read serious modern novels...

There are lots of 20 century classics that are good reads as well as classics. Just read for the story. And actually, that's what Dickens was doing, really. Telling a story. His serials were exactly the equivalent of Eastenders or Corrie. And people waited for and discussed the next episode, so all the chapter ends had to have cliffhangers of some sort as otherwise sakes would fall...hence the crowds in New York waiting on the docks to hear if little nell had died..and Oscar Wilde's sarcastic comments

How about - mainly short, mainly 20 century-
Portrait if the Artist as a young Man
Howard's End
A room of ones own, not a novel, but great work beautifully written
Jane Eyre - read fast for story, or see the recent film,
Precious Bane
All quiet on the western front
The great gatsby
The sun also rises
A farewell to arms
The end of the affair
Our man in Havana.
Maupassant's short stories

Read quickly, for the story. Skip the boring bits, you can always come back and reread.

[Butterflyfriend]

Thank you! It is exactly that, I am analysing everything I read rather than reading for fun.