ashnistrike (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ashnistrike) wrote2006-11-11 12:08 am
ashnistrike) wrote2006-11-11 12:08 am
Entry tags:
Classics Project
I've been meaning to do this for a while. Like a lot of people, I had to read a certain portion of the classics canon in high school. I had a decent teacher, so I liked several of the things that I read, and was capable of explaining at length why I disliked most of the things I didn't. And then I got out of high school. Since then, I have mostly settled into the SF/F genre, with very occasional forays based on recommendations, or favorite authors writing historicals. This has never stopped me from dissing on Dickens, when the subject arises. But occasionally I wonder whether Ashni-at-31 should actually be cavalierly passing on the opinions of Ashni-at-17. It's been a while, after all, and I've changed. I have social skills now. And I like people, most of the time. These are probably things that influence one's interpretation of A Tale of Two Cities.
So, I'm going to go back and read some classics. Because I'm no longer in high school, because I have a job, and because my ability to enjoy reading any given book is heavily mood-dependent, this will be less than systematic. I have a set of rules, which I'm going to break as I please.
-The list includes books that I read in high school, as well as books that I should have read in high school. Replacing a high school book with another book by the same author is permissible. For example, One Hundred Years of Solitude was one of the best-named books I've ever read. I hated it with a passion easily capable of withstanding the decades. My sister adores Love in the Time of Cholera, so I'll try that instead.
-I am required to give each book a fair chance--no putting anything down on page 2 because I'm not yet enraptured. On the other hand, I'm no longer in high school and I'm not required to finish anything if I still hate it on page 50.
-Books have to be "classics" in the general sense. Classic science fiction that is not also part of the general canon doesn't count. I'll finally get to Dune and Foundation some other time. Or not.
-Given that the definitions of "classic" and "canon" are pretty darn fuzzy, I'm not bound by anyone else's definitions.
-All else being equal, I'll read in chronological order. Things which might not be equal include but are not limited to: a particular book being on my shelf at home, a particular book being readily available at the local library, and my mood when I'm looking for something to read. In other words, chronological order will probably have very little to do with it.
-Reviews get posted to LJ. I like doing reviews; I don't like worrying about the reviewee coming along and reading the post. I think 2 or 3 of the people on my classics list are still alive, and if Harper Lee and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have Livejournals, they can bloody well take their licks.
-In high school, I had to go on at length about the symbolism of everything I read. I am permitted, but not required, to engage in deep literary analysis of the re-reads. I just want to know if I think these are good books.
The list so far is as follows. Un-starred books were original high school reads; starred books will be new. Suggestions are welcome. I'm especially curious about suggestions from the non-Western canons and pre-1700, but also looking to be reminded of things I've missed. Suggestions for translations to seek or avoid from the non-English-originals are also welcome. As per the rules above, I am allowed to ignore all suggestions if desired.
In order:
Gilgamesh (~2500 BCE) (but not the most recent translation, which tries to sound like it was written by 21th-century Americans)
*The Iliad (~700 or 800 BCE)
The Odyssey (~700 or 800 BCE)
Antigone (441 BCE)
Medea (431 BCE)
*Arabian Nights (~800s) (probably the Burton translation)
*Beowulf (~1000 CE)
*Dante: Inferno (~1308-1321)
*Chaucer: Canterbury Tales (1380s-1390s)
*Cervantes: Don Quixote (~1600)
*Milton: Paradise Lost (1667)
*Swift: Gulliver's Travels (1726/1735)
Voltaire: Candide (1759)
*Austin: Pride and Prejudice (1813)
*Shelley: Frankenstein (1818) (I actually just read this--I'm posting the project description a little later than I meant to. This book rocks! I'll do a full review later.)
*Dickens: Oliver Twist (1838) OR *A Christmas Carol (1843) OR A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
*Dumas: Three Musketeers (1844)
*Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Poe: ?? (1809-1849) (looking for suggestions here; I can remember reading several short stories by him, but little in the way of specifics)
Melville: Moby Dick (1851)
*Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
*Eliot: Silas Marner (1861)
*Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1876) OR Tom Sawyer (1884) (One chapter of Tom Sawyer in my high school lit textbook, which I enjoyed, but I never got around to reading the rest)
*Stevenson: Treasure Island (1883) OR Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) (Reading Treasure Island now.)
Whitman: Leaves of Grass (1855/1865/1891)
Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)
Conrad: Heart of Darkness (1899)
*London: Call of the Wild (1903)
*Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)
Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1915)
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925)
*Woolf: Orlando (1928) (in place of To the Lighthouse)
Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
*Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (1929) or Old Man & the Sea (1952)
Camus: The Stranger (1942)
Salinger: A Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Becket: Waiting for Godot (1952)
Miller: The Crucible (1952)
*Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Knowles: A Separate Peace (1959)
Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
*Heller: Catch-22 (1961)
*Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
*Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)(in place of One Hundred Years of Drudgery)
Things that aren't on this list for a reason:
-Shakespeare. I've continued to read, watch, and enjoy Shakespeare during the last 14 years, and am eternally grateful to my high school English teacher for demonstrating how a modern reader can understand and appreciate the Bard. (That can be a separate post, if anyone doesn't know already.) ...Wait a second. If I include Shakespeare, then I can buy tickets to his plays with the excuse that it's not just recreation, it's educational. It's part of the project; I have to go. Yeah, that's it. Okay, any Shakespeare play counts.
-Kipling. I never read him in high school, but was introduced to him more recently by Nameseeker. I may very well read him, but it won't count as part of the project.
-Kurt Vonnegut Junior. This is one concession I'm making to the tastes of my former self. Vonnegut was my favorite author for a long time, but I haven't read him since early in college. I strongly suspect that I am no longer sufficiently misanthropic to appreciate him, so I'm going to leave the memories lie.
-Non-epic poetry. I like much of the poetry I read in high school, and since, but that's a whole other project. Maybe later.
-Non-fiction/philosophy. Plato's Republic, On Walden Pond, Plutarch's Lives... again, another project, and saved for later.
So that's it for now. I will probably do these slowly, in between keeping up with my favorite modern authors. It will be interesting to see how my tastes have changed. I remember Catcher in the Rye as brilliant, but Nameseeker hated it--will Ashni-at-31 also think that Holden is a whiny prick? Is Dickens better once you know a bit about Victorian London? Is it possible to enjoy Moby Dick without a support group? Was I right when I thought I'd enjoy the Odyssey, if only I didn't have comprehension questions? For that matter, do Gilgamesh and the Odyssey read differently to a Judeopagan than to a Jew?
Wish me luck.
So, I'm going to go back and read some classics. Because I'm no longer in high school, because I have a job, and because my ability to enjoy reading any given book is heavily mood-dependent, this will be less than systematic. I have a set of rules, which I'm going to break as I please.
-The list includes books that I read in high school, as well as books that I should have read in high school. Replacing a high school book with another book by the same author is permissible. For example, One Hundred Years of Solitude was one of the best-named books I've ever read. I hated it with a passion easily capable of withstanding the decades. My sister adores Love in the Time of Cholera, so I'll try that instead.
-I am required to give each book a fair chance--no putting anything down on page 2 because I'm not yet enraptured. On the other hand, I'm no longer in high school and I'm not required to finish anything if I still hate it on page 50.
-Books have to be "classics" in the general sense. Classic science fiction that is not also part of the general canon doesn't count. I'll finally get to Dune and Foundation some other time. Or not.
-Given that the definitions of "classic" and "canon" are pretty darn fuzzy, I'm not bound by anyone else's definitions.
-All else being equal, I'll read in chronological order. Things which might not be equal include but are not limited to: a particular book being on my shelf at home, a particular book being readily available at the local library, and my mood when I'm looking for something to read. In other words, chronological order will probably have very little to do with it.
-Reviews get posted to LJ. I like doing reviews; I don't like worrying about the reviewee coming along and reading the post. I think 2 or 3 of the people on my classics list are still alive, and if Harper Lee and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have Livejournals, they can bloody well take their licks.
-In high school, I had to go on at length about the symbolism of everything I read. I am permitted, but not required, to engage in deep literary analysis of the re-reads. I just want to know if I think these are good books.
The list so far is as follows. Un-starred books were original high school reads; starred books will be new. Suggestions are welcome. I'm especially curious about suggestions from the non-Western canons and pre-1700, but also looking to be reminded of things I've missed. Suggestions for translations to seek or avoid from the non-English-originals are also welcome. As per the rules above, I am allowed to ignore all suggestions if desired.
In order:
Gilgamesh (~2500 BCE) (but not the most recent translation, which tries to sound like it was written by 21th-century Americans)
*The Iliad (~700 or 800 BCE)
The Odyssey (~700 or 800 BCE)
Antigone (441 BCE)
Medea (431 BCE)
*Arabian Nights (~800s) (probably the Burton translation)
*Beowulf (~1000 CE)
*Dante: Inferno (~1308-1321)
*Chaucer: Canterbury Tales (1380s-1390s)
*Cervantes: Don Quixote (~1600)
*Milton: Paradise Lost (1667)
*Swift: Gulliver's Travels (1726/1735)
Voltaire: Candide (1759)
*Austin: Pride and Prejudice (1813)
*Shelley: Frankenstein (1818) (I actually just read this--I'm posting the project description a little later than I meant to. This book rocks! I'll do a full review later.)
*Dickens: Oliver Twist (1838) OR *A Christmas Carol (1843) OR A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
*Dumas: Three Musketeers (1844)
*Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Poe: ?? (1809-1849) (looking for suggestions here; I can remember reading several short stories by him, but little in the way of specifics)
Melville: Moby Dick (1851)
*Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
*Eliot: Silas Marner (1861)
*Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1876) OR Tom Sawyer (1884) (One chapter of Tom Sawyer in my high school lit textbook, which I enjoyed, but I never got around to reading the rest)
*Stevenson: Treasure Island (1883) OR Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886) (Reading Treasure Island now.)
Whitman: Leaves of Grass (1855/1865/1891)
Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)
Conrad: Heart of Darkness (1899)
*London: Call of the Wild (1903)
*Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)
Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1915)
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925)
*Woolf: Orlando (1928) (in place of To the Lighthouse)
Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
*Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (1929) or Old Man & the Sea (1952)
Camus: The Stranger (1942)
Salinger: A Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Becket: Waiting for Godot (1952)
Miller: The Crucible (1952)
*Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
Knowles: A Separate Peace (1959)
Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
*Heller: Catch-22 (1961)
*Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
*Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)(in place of One Hundred Years of Drudgery)
Things that aren't on this list for a reason:
-Shakespeare. I've continued to read, watch, and enjoy Shakespeare during the last 14 years, and am eternally grateful to my high school English teacher for demonstrating how a modern reader can understand and appreciate the Bard. (That can be a separate post, if anyone doesn't know already.) ...Wait a second. If I include Shakespeare, then I can buy tickets to his plays with the excuse that it's not just recreation, it's educational. It's part of the project; I have to go. Yeah, that's it. Okay, any Shakespeare play counts.
-Kipling. I never read him in high school, but was introduced to him more recently by Nameseeker. I may very well read him, but it won't count as part of the project.
-Kurt Vonnegut Junior. This is one concession I'm making to the tastes of my former self. Vonnegut was my favorite author for a long time, but I haven't read him since early in college. I strongly suspect that I am no longer sufficiently misanthropic to appreciate him, so I'm going to leave the memories lie.
-Non-epic poetry. I like much of the poetry I read in high school, and since, but that's a whole other project. Maybe later.
-Non-fiction/philosophy. Plato's Republic, On Walden Pond, Plutarch's Lives... again, another project, and saved for later.
So that's it for now. I will probably do these slowly, in between keeping up with my favorite modern authors. It will be interesting to see how my tastes have changed. I remember Catcher in the Rye as brilliant, but Nameseeker hated it--will Ashni-at-31 also think that Holden is a whiny prick? Is Dickens better once you know a bit about Victorian London? Is it possible to enjoy Moby Dick without a support group? Was I right when I thought I'd enjoy the Odyssey, if only I didn't have comprehension questions? For that matter, do Gilgamesh and the Odyssey read differently to a Judeopagan than to a Jew?
Wish me luck.
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awesome
No Jack Kerouac? He's on my "someday someday" list. HG Wells?
Re: awesome
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George Orwell: 1984 or Animal Farm
Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Lorraine Hansberry: A Raisin In The Sun (play)
Nabokov: anything. Personally I couldn't stomach Lolita's plot, but the man's prose is amazing, that much was evident on page 1. Read him aloud.
More Russians, Chekov, etc.
The Tale of Genji, the oldest known extant novel
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(To my mind, he, Orwell and Huxley have surpassed genre to become classics.)
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(Anonymous) 2006-11-11 02:10 am (UTC)(link)I'd also add on Kafka & Hasek - there's a lot of good Central/Eastern euro-literature. I'm not a huge fan of German literature, though, but there are some classics there too.
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I enjoyed Orlando a lot, I hope you will too.
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Beowulf translation -- I haven't read it, but I've heard good things about the new Heaney verse one. The Crossley-Holland is really good, and I read it aloud to Z when he was about six and neither of us could stop talking in the metre for days.
Chaucer, assuming you're going to read in translation, get the Coghill -- Penguin Classics -- translation, because it rocks.
Other suggestions -- Trollope, and the one I would suggest is Phineas Finn. Mrs Gaskell, North and South, don't read the footnotes because there are spoilers. John Fowles The Magus. Robert Graves I, Claudius?
I think you should put all Greek plays on your Shakespeare list rather than reading Antigone, and go to see any you get the chance to.
I did approximately this when Wordsworth Classics, bless them, brought out attractive paperback editions of OOC classics for a pound in the early nineties, and
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I've tried to read Framley Parsonage a couple of times since reading Tooth and Claw and keep getting distracted by something else, so perhaps I'll try Phineas Finn instead.
The book contains footnotes that spoiler itself?
I haven't read I, Claudius in years. It actually wasn't an assignment, but something that I read for pleasure. It was in high school, though, so I've got the excuse.
The plays on the list are both ones we read aloud in parts in class. I loved them and would be happier to see them performed, but know that I at least used to be able to enjoy them under less ideal circumstances. It's easier to find Shakespeare on stage than just about any other pre-modern play, but I suppose in a big city there must be someone doing Greek tragedies, right?
Thanks much for all the translation suggestions. I somehow suspected you'd have a few.
Harper Lee is alive
(Anonymous) 2006-11-13 02:06 am (UTC)(link)But she might kick before you get through your very admirable list of books to read.
Video of Harper Lee
(Anonymous) 2006-11-13 02:09 am (UTC)(link)