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Reading the Classics.

I've made a commitment to myself to be more literate in that there are a lot of classics I have never read. I read a fair bit, but some of what would be considered "core" material I've never touched.

To get ideas, please put in 5 books (or authors) you have read that you think are essential to being a literate human, and 5 books that you have NOT read that you think you should:

5 that I have read

To Kill a Mockingbird

Lord of the Rings (Trilogy) or Chronicles of Narnia

Gate to Womens Country or Handmaids Tale

1984 or Lord of the Flies

Robert Heinlen, Issac Asimov or Orson Scott Card

5 I think I should read (going by authors so that I have a bit of wiggle room on what I can find available):

Ernest Hemingway

Charles Dickens

Hamlet (I've read some Shakesphere but not this one)

Clockwork Orange

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

Something by one of the Bronte sisters

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Permalink Reply by DonnaKat on January 4, 2011 at 7:54am

I went through a phase of trying to read as many of the classics as possible, back when I wanted to be in college but couldn't afford it. I'm not sure that any of these are essential to being a literate person, but they're the first that popped into my head.

5 that I have read

- Jane Eyre

- Great Expectations

- Moby Dick

- War and Peace

- Pere Goriot

5 I tried to read but didn't finish (yet. There's still hope, right?)

- Grapes of Wrath

- Anna Karenina

- Updike

- Hemingway

- Edith Wharton

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Permalink Reply by SweetJudyB on January 4, 2011 at 10:05am

I think the only real think I got out of my bachelors degree was reading Brave New World (Huxley) and Metamorphosis (Kafka). I picked up some young adult classics a while ago- Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz, Secret Garden. Also liked The Time Machine, Dracula, Age of Innocence, Catcher in the Rye, Beowulf (some of these I should re-read)

Should read- Atlas Shrugged- anything Jane Eyre- The Oddesey- Huck Finn- Of Mice and Men

Good thing hubby got me a kindle :)

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Permalink Reply by Mommy Monster on January 4, 2011 at 10:11am

5 that I have read

Robert Heinlen - Stranger in a Strange Land

Carl Sagan - Contact (completely changed many of my previously held notions on, well, everything)

Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls

Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury

Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind

There are so many I should read...hard to pick just five.

The Grapes of Wrath

T.S. Eliot - pretty much anything

Beowulf

Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer

Willa Cather

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Permalink Reply by mcglory13 on January 4, 2011 at 11:23am

I feel like the main benefit to reading canonical texts is that you get the allusions other people make to them, the cultural capital, I guess. To that end, I am going to list works I see lots of references made to in culture in general of late:

Have read:

1. Shakespeare

2. Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, etc

3. Emma or other Jane Austen novels

4. The Scarlet Letter

5. The Tell Tale Heart and other Poe stuff

Have not read:

1. Moby Dick

2. Crime and Punishment

3. Ulysses

4. In Search of Lost Time

5. The Sun Also Rises

And of course, I'm noticing that the majority of things that pop to mind as canonical are almost all by dudes.

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Permalink Reply by Floor Pie on January 4, 2011 at 12:29pm

This was hard to cull down. Here we go:

Have read

Greek mythology /British canonical poetry (foundations)

William Shakespeare (obviously)

Virginia Woolf /F. Scott Fitzgerald / Ernest Hemingway (modern classics)

Hawthorne / Twain / O'Connor / Kerouac (American zeitgeist)

Updike / Vonnegut (postmodern)

Should read

Russian novels

Jane Austen (I know, I know...)

Ulysses by James Joyce

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

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Permalink Reply by LeastLikely2Breed on January 6, 2011 at 7:06pm

Things I've read:

Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre & all the Bronte sisters stuff -- even the not so good ones

Gravity's Rainbow (it's post modern torture -- just like Joyce's Ulysses -- I only enjoyed the accomplishment of having finished it, not the reading of it)

Of Human Bondage

The House of Mirth & everything Edith Wharton

The Great Gatsby & everything by F. Scott Fitgerald

and a whole bunch more...

Things I feel I should read but just can't bring myself to do:

any Thomas Hardy other than Tess' d'Urbervilles -- too damn depressing and rural (poor women live a life of sorrow and death - yippee)

War and Peace

Crime and Punishment

As I Lay Dying -- or for that matter anything by Faulkner

anything by Eudora Welty

---

BTW the best classics title ever: "Death on the Installment Plan"

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Permalink Reply by DLBK on January 7, 2011 at 7:56am

After looking at a list of classics, I realized I've read a bunch, but not as many as I should have.

Some that I've liked a lot:

Color Purple

Flowers for Algernon

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Tale of Two Cities

The Iliad and The Odyssey

Wuthering Heights

I'd like to read:

The Last Temptation of Christ

The Satanic Verses

Given how long both books are and how little time I have to read (and how tired I am), I don't see myself reading those any time soon.

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Permalink Reply by Mamawho on January 7, 2011 at 8:06am

Religious leanings or not, reading a decent amount of the Bible (and some good commentary) is usually a good thing to do, if you're interested in literature.