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I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for a laugh and it made me want to read the real Pride and Prejudice, which I had started a couple of times. It's a great book.I enjoyed Carmilla recently, but Dracula I'm getting through so slowly - it's not uninteresting, but it's very long and written in a very fragmented way.
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I enjoyed Carmilla recently, ..."
My mum's always been a fan of Pride and Prejudice films, so that was how I got introduced to it. I read the book to see which was better and actually liked the book the best. I think Mr Darcy came across a lot better in the book.
As a writer, I think reading the classics is like studying history. I gives you an insight where modern fiction comes from. Not every classic is easy, or even enjoyable, reading. Classic plots and characters are often referenced. Most of all, some of them are just damn good.
At some point I want to read Sam Richardson's Clarissa and Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
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That's why I'm determined to go through with them. I tried reading Bleak House in a university course and all I remember is a sentence that spanned about 13 pages, all about the weather. Then two pages about a court room. I do want to go back to it though, to see what the real story is. :)
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Vanity Fair is on my list, but I'm sorry to say I've never heard of Clarissa. Off to look at it now :)
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P.S. You can buy the Volumes on Amazon for Free! Going to download the series now. :) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clarissa-Harl...
I loved Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Mayor of Casterbridge. I also enjoyed George Elloit's Middlemarch. For little more macho reading, try Hemingway. Vanity Fair is good reading too.
Elaine wrote: "P.S. You can buy the Volumes on Amazon for Free!"Cool - thanks.
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Thanks Emmy. My mum got me this amazing set of Classic books, all in leather binding like this one - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81... - so I've got the likes of Tess and Middlemarch, I just need to get around to them :)
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Cool - thanks."
You're welcome. I think there are about 9 Volumes. But better to get all 9 for free than to pay for the all-in-one. Especially since I don't know much about it. I love a bargain. :)
Elaine wrote: "Some of you probably know by now that I'm unfamiliar with the 'Classics' of Literature. I was always too young, too busy studying or whatever to dedicate my time to getting to know the real Art tha..."Dracula is one of my all time favorites. I have read it several times and have read it to my children. It is actually quite frightening and fraught with tension. I also feel that it is not terribly hard to follow. The first batch of children I read it to were two boys ages ten and eleven and they were on the edge of their seats. My four-year-old daughter, who I did not even think was paying attention asked me to put it down because it was scaring her. Dracula-big thumbs up.
I loved Room With A View and cried at the end. I know, sappy, right. Charles Dickens-David Copperfield-so beautiful, a character sketch of a man's life, his trials and tribulations, as well as successes. I had lump in my throat at the end. Oliver Twist was great and gives you an insight of how children were treated as almost half human back in the eighteen hundreds and Jews were portrayed as skulking, evil, thieves. Kaufka's Metamorphosis is disturbing, yet I read it three times. I am not sure if The Jungle is considered a classic, probably not, but a great read. Well that should be good enough to get you started.
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Wow! Thanks, that's a great list to get me going. Sadly to say I'm not getting very far at the moment, because of editing my own writing, which seems to take forever. But I'm so looking forward to digging into these books. I'm adding them to my TBR list now. :)
Editing! that is a never ending project. I must have gone over my own novel like 13 times, I was so sick of it. But it needs to get done. Good luck to you, and would love to read when you get finished:)
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Thanks. :) Yeah, it was made even more difficult by the fact that I had to edit all previous 7 books in the series, before writing no.8, to tie up loose ends. Unfortunately, I noticed that 2 books were far too long for my publisher's preference, so I now have 10 books. At least they're edited now and I can get on with writing no.10. :)
And when I say Classic, I mean things like Dracula, The Phantom of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes (which I have read) and the likes of Jane Austin and Charles Dickens.
I'm planning on dedicating my reading time of 2014 to just Classics, once I get the last of some more modern series off my shelf but what I'm wondering is, is it worth it?
Are Classic books something you have to read once in your life, even if they turn out to be a bore or in Ye Olde Language you can't understand? Are there any Classics that I should completely avoid because there is absolutely no point in reading it?
I had a friend tell me that they watched Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy once, glued to every movement and they still, months later, have no clue what it was about. Is the book better?
What are your favourite Classic books?