March Task: Read a Classic
This month's book club task (that we'll talk about in March) is to read a classic you haven't gotten to yet. I have to admit I have actually enjoyed many of the classics I've read in the past. That might be the glow of memory speaking since it's been a while since I dived into reading anything written before 1970. I will readily admit to getting easily caught up in the hype of new books, because they're NEW and EXCITING and so the classics tend to stay unread.
However, I remember vividly reading Anna Karenina and being floored by the prose. I remember reading Don Quixote and absolutely delighted to see the type of quirky weirdness in such an old book that I felt in myself and thought was "not ok". I remember reading The Picture of Dorian Grey and realizing that a classic book didn't have to equate to just British characters extrapolating about people's gestures and party manners years and years and years ago (wink).
Another tip I have that can help classics be more meaningful is to find a good narrator, perhaps an actor, who has worked on the audiobook version and listen to it! Sometimes all you need is those tiny lines of text read aloud for it to make any sense :) check out Audible and your library's digital lending app.
Previous classics I've enjoyed that I would also heartily recommend:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
Any Jane Austen
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (fun fact: I wrote my senior paper/thesis in college on this book - might be interesting to re-read it and I think it's far enough in the rearview mirror I could open the book without getting stressed out)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (the best adventure story!)
Bartleby the Scrivener (short, and in my opinion, utterly hilarious) by Herman Melville
Dracula (I like to listen to this every October) by Bram Stoker
The Hound of the Baskervilles (or other Sherlock Holmes stories) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
What I might read:
Maybe I'll finally finish Moby-Dick (don't tell my college english professor!) by Herman Melville
Maybe I'll work on revisiting something from my high school reading list (as outlines in this post)
1984 by George Orwell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (I started this years ago for school but never finished it and am curious about the history surrounding it)
Do you have a favorite classic book or any that you've been meaning to get to?