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Old 12-24-2014, 11:20 AM   #21
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When I was 12 or 13 I spent a week staying with an uncle and his family in a different state. The first night he handed me a copy of Tom Sawyer spent two days solid reading it. It was creating pictures in my mind, like watching a movie. It was life changing and I soon after started Huck Finn. That hooked me on reading. On the other hand, in a College Humanities class we had to read War and Peace. We were assigned 100 pages a night. I kept up for the first few days but then life (girls and friends) got in the way. If you fall behind at that pace, you are dead meat. With weekly tests on content, I took a withdraw. Now I seem to have adult-onset ADD when it comes to reading. I have to go back and re-read the page I just read.


The book that kept me up all night reading was The Godfather, which while not a classic, was a hell of a read.
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Old 12-24-2014, 11:59 AM   #22
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Most of my reading is the classics; I especially love Mark Twain's works. Some time ago I was lucky enough to find a 1910 hardcover set of the complete works of Twain for $20 at a church book sale. I have been going through a lot of that lately. Just finished "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences"; hilarious.
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Old 12-24-2014, 12:14 PM   #23
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I read the classics a lot. They were mainstay of high school summer book reading requirements in late 70's. Schools these days don't require much reading of classics. Instead, they seem to have their "classics" which are more contemporary. That makes sense. Who in this age can relate to Hugo, Dostoyevsky, or even Steinbeck?
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Old 12-24-2014, 12:22 PM   #24
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I've read and enjoyed as an adult lots of Dickens, Dafoe, Melville, Twain, Dumas, Collins, Austen, and the like. The language is harder to follow, but the mental and emotional images evoked make it worth the effort for me. I like the newer stuff too though. I'm currently reading The Great Santini, which, while modern, might be considered a classic in its own way.
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Old 12-24-2014, 01:27 PM   #25
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I read a ton of classics in K-12 school. From US authors like Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Twain to British authors like Shakespeare, Shelley, Dickens, Austen and Orwell. Also Russians (in translation) like Tolstoy, Nabokov and Dostoyevsky. I always went to decent to extremely competitive K-12 schools and took 2 years of AP English in HS. Also took AP Spanish Literature in HS, so managed to read (in Spanish) a number of old and new classics from the likes of Neruda, Cervantes, and Marquez.

That was in the 1990's. Is that abnormal?

I also love reading classics today and I'm currently reading or re-reading Steinbeck's novels (in between some non-fiction). For a couple of years as an adult, I realized almost everything I read was published around 1900 or earlier.
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Old 12-24-2014, 02:34 PM   #26
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I read a lot of nonfiction, but I have downloaded and read or reread several classics on my Kindle (for free). My favourite was The Country Doctor (translated from the French) by Honore de Balzac, and my least favourite was Middlemarch, by George Eliot. I thought that was horribly overwritten. I also find Dickens too flowery. Tastes have changed since the 19th century.
Middlemarch made an excruciatingly boring TV miniseries as well.

I plan to read some Dumas.

I really enjoyed the high school reading assignments.
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Old 12-24-2014, 02:39 PM   #27
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My mother really tried to get me interested in Dickens. It just didn't take. I found "Great Expectations" boring. In general, I've read classics in English only when required to as part of a class and of those I've read, only Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" stands out. OTOH, I've read Hugo's "Les Miserables", Balzac's "Memoires de deux Jeunes Filles Mariees" and de Beauvior's "Tous les Hommes sont Mortels" on my own in the original French and loved them. I liked The Canterbury Tales in original Middle English, too.


I read a lot; much of it is light mysteries, but I try to read a good, substantial biography like Massie's "Catherine the Great" or a translation of a book written by a non-American every time I get a bunch at the library.
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Old 12-24-2014, 03:17 PM   #28
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I got my start reading Golden Books and then Dr. Seuss in my earliest years. Then I started reading books like Black Beauty and that sort of thing. But then in junior high, they started to "make" us read, and that kind of ruined it for me. I had always enjoyed reading classic lit up until that point, because I read it because I wanted to. Once it was forced on me, and I was required to read specific books, I rebelled against it.

But once I hit HS, for the most part, we were given the opportunity to read whatever we chose to, and do our reports and such on those choices. I did take a few classes that had required reading lists, but taking those classes was of my choosing, because I knew that the required reading was mostly all classics, by either American authors or English authors. And that bring the case, I regained the enjoyment of reading again. A large portion of my classmates hated the books that we had to read, but I thought they were great!

I love classics, and have a lot of them in my personal library. I enjoy pulling one off of the shelf and rereading it again. The best deal that I ever got was about 30 years ago at a major bookseller, where I picked up a beautiful 16 or 18 volume set of nicely bound and imprinted classics, for less than $1 each! I also enjoy good old westerns by the likes of Louis Lamour.

A good book exercises the imagination, and keeps the gray-matter strong.
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Old 12-24-2014, 04:21 PM   #29
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I like to take one from the Classics rack and one from the western or SciFi rack at the library.
Other than Dickens and Poe I don't enjoy pre 19th century prose very much. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut are on my list as classics.

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Old 12-24-2014, 04:24 PM   #30
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Some but not very much. I did like some of Mark Twain's stories. We were forced to read Great Expectations and that was excruciatingly boring. Wow, I hated that one!
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Old 12-24-2014, 04:42 PM   #31
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Oh, come on. There are plenty of 20th Century writers that are "Classics" -- James Michener, Mickey Spillane, Stephen King, Grace Metalious, Tony Morrison, Jacqueline Susann, etc... to name but a few.
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Old 12-24-2014, 06:35 PM   #32
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I attended parochial school for 12 years, so I had plenty of classics back then. I took American Lit 100 in college as a distribution requirement for my BS.

I actually read Bullfinch's Mythology when I was in 8th grade. It took me a while but I loved the stories. My teachers couldn't believe it.

I used to take what I called "junk food" reading (in comparison to the constant techie stuff in my c*reer) on the flights across country on TDY. I could almost polish off half of a 200+ page book for a flight to San Diego. I liked Danielle Steel books.

I haven't read much lately since FIRE. No particular reason. I've gone in phases all my life ranging from voracious reading to who cares ?
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Old 12-24-2014, 08:54 PM   #33
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Not much of a "classics" reader but do like Poe, Alcott, TA Daly, OW Holmes, Emerson. I have a library that was left to me by my husband's grandfather. It's full of wonderful books like "Rookie Rhymes by the Men of the 1st & 2nd Provisional Training Regiment-1917", "Our Cruise", written & illustrated by Chas A Kilwinski, USN, painter, second class, USS Vicksburg-1910, "A Meteorological Account of the Weather in Philadelphia from Jan. 1, 1790 to Jan. 1, 1847" by Charles Peirce and many other books from the mid to late 1800's and early 1900's. No one on my husbands side of the family was interested in the books except me.
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Old 12-25-2014, 05:50 AM   #34
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I think that I prefer to read rather than watch/listen as when I open webpages on Yahoo with video I usually pause the video and just read the text. I can read a lot faster that the video.
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Old 12-25-2014, 06:45 AM   #35
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I think that I prefer to read rather than watch/listen as when I open webpages on Yahoo with video I usually pause the video and just read the text. I can read a lot faster that the video.
Not the same thing. Non-fiction is way different than fiction. Your experience is more related to impatience than to a dislike of reading -- you are skimming through the text not "reading" in the true (the OP's) sense of the word. I, too, have the tendency to a "just get to the point" attitude when reading/watching such material. I doubt that you would be able to say the same thing about a "Star Wars" movie - preferring to pause the video and read the transcript.

My contention stands... reading is hard and not natural.
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Old 12-28-2014, 05:41 PM   #36
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In the OP, I used "classics" as before TV for a reason.

I was there, "before TV", and other than listening to radio adventure stories like Little Orphan Annie, the only way that was available to venture outside my little world, was to "be read to" or early on at age 7 to become a "reader".

I shall forever be thankful for my 2nd grade teacher, who taught a love of reading, and a very large part of my misspent youth and young adulthood was spent in reading... often from 2 to 5 books a week. Many books read under the covers with a flashlight, when I was supposed to be sleeping.

It was a time when experience was created in imagination. Nothing to go by but a few illustrations in the book. Reading The Brothers Karamazov was not only a reading, but an emotional experience, and reading that at age 10 or so was very formative.

In reviewing lists of "best classics", makes me wonder how I could have possibly read so many. Virtually all of Poe, Dickens, Mellville, and literally hundreds of others.

About 10 years ago, while doing a lot of biking, turned from reading to listening to books on tape, and now, with eyes that tire easily, have gone back to this. Librivox, for the most part, and auto reads of Gutenberg (though not really satisfactory).
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Have you considered checking out audio books from your local library? Likewise, there is also the Overdrive media console app for tablets and smart phones that allows you to check out audio and video materials for free.


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Old 12-28-2014, 06:12 PM   #37
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I've read about half the authors you listed - and tried some of the others - but couldn't get past the first few paragraphs.

Some authors you listed are very entertaining, easy reads (Twain, Dickens, Orwell), others are harder (Melville, Homer).

I would toss Hemingway and Fitzgerald in your list. Perhaps even Kafka.

Some I've read more than once (most Twain, several Dickens, most Hemingway) - others once was enough. (Huxley).
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Old 12-28-2014, 06:48 PM   #38
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I took a great course in college - "The Bible as Literature." This course covered the Bible in a historical context, and provided background for the basis of the major stories.
Just recently I started reading the Bible again. I am not at all religious but merely reading it in that same historical-context fashion. Admittedly, I skim quite a bit.
Simultaneously, I'm currently reading Milton's "Paradise Lost." Not an easy read, but it is getting easier now that I've gotten used to the [old English?] language format.
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Old 12-28-2014, 06:59 PM   #39
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I've loved to read since I was young. A career that meant I was always reading squashed recreational reading, with I restarted after retirement. Tried some Classics because I hadn't read any since required in school, and can't imagine a life of not trying new things.

Poe short stories were a mixed bag. Moby Dick (I'm half way through) is fascinating. I'll reread The Great Gatsby every year until either I'm no longer stopped in my reading tracks by the writing quality or my eyes give out. Does Raymond Chandler's work count as Classics? Damn, he's funny.
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Old 12-29-2014, 08:36 PM   #40
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Worth the effort: Don Quixote, War and Peace, and Count of Monte Cristo. Unlike other, modern works of fiction or non-fiction, these stories stick with you years after reading them.

It's very rewarding to draw connections in how characters interacted in these period pieces - not unlike ourselves today.
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