everyone who knows me knows that i'm a bibliophile. i love books. i love reading them, obviously, but i also love the smell, the feel, the look of books. when i was a kid i used to dump my book into water to make them look "old". my mother still tells that little funny fact about me to her friends. well, i'm beyond dunking books into the bathtub, but i'm still pretty compulsive of how my books look. it's one of my quirky little tendencies. luckily i also love the stories the books contain. while i occasionally run across some modern fiction that is really great, i am a deep lover of the classics. i enjoy the opportunity they provide to experience a different time, a different place, different lives. in these gems of the past, i can live in nineteenth century russia, smell the smells of old london, empathize with poverty without going hungry (to some extent), feel the limitations women experienced years ago as well as their liberation. i can be french, british, asian, male, female, child. this is true of all literature, but what i appreciate about the classics is the culture so unlike my own, yet still similiar in many ways. c.s. lewis said, "literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. it enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become." books and the stories they contain not only let us experience a different reality, they alter our own. and that's what i love about reading.
that being said, there are a few great authors i have never read; authors who, as a lover of the classic tales, i should have already read. i know they are great authors because they are timeless and their stories famous. only the really great stories affect history for so long. so, before i wade through anymore of my beloved kid books (my love of those i'll save for another post), or reread any books or read any unread books by an author i've already read, i'm taking a journey through these unknown (to me) and famous writers and update here on my blog what i think of them. i do not flatter myself that many will really care what i think of a great book, but i'll enjoy writing about it. some of the authors i plan to visit on this tour are gustave flaubert, thomas hardy, henry james, mary shelley, bram stoker, j.m. barrie, dawn powell, graham greene, george eliot, george sand, rudyard kipling, robert louis stevenson (i think i did read treasure island long ago, but i count him as still unread as i remember little), daniel defoe, elizabeth gaskell, mark twain (if i read huckleberry finn in high school, i don't recall it), anne bronte, herman melville, nikolai gogol, lewis carroll, mary elizabeth braddon, d.h. lawrence, fanny burney, nathaniel hawthorne (i did read the scarlet letter in high school), l. frank baum, gabriel garcia marquez, and i'm sure some others i can't think of right now. join me on the journey if you will.
my first endeavor: madame bovary by gustave flaubert.
05 March 2010
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5 comments:
Reading your blog .... I already feel enriched. Maybe YOU will finally inspire me to read the classics too. So far, I'm embarrassed to say, I haven't done very well.
Thank you, Ashley
I'm not the best when it comes to classics...or reading in general... but lewis carroll, l. frank baum, and gabriel garcia marquez are among the few I really love. Maybe I'll start reading some of them again! Good luck with your list and NJ misses ya!
this is alarming. did you say you say never read huck finn? what about the great gatsby or to kill a mockingbird or grapes of wrath? to me those are the four (the only four) perfect american novels. let the debate begin.
If you haven't picked out your Graham Greene book, try The Heart of the Matter. One of the few books I read over as soon as I finished (it helped that I was in Sierra Leone at the time). Also, W. Somerset Maughan...if you haven't read him...The short story Flotsam and Jetsam and the novel The Razor's Edge. A must!!!
thank katie! i was actually wondering which greene to read. and i DO want to read maugham, but again, was unsure which to start with...he's written tons. thanks for the suggestions!
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