(Re)Reading the Classics?

[Aimee]

Anyone interested in joining me on my quest for higher knowledge?

By that I mean that I'm have a goal to read all those books they made you read in High School/Middle School, but didn't really appreciate them until I was older. Maybe I'll throw a few others in too.

Books like:
*To Kill a Mocking Bird
*Cather in the Rye
*Animal Farm
*Lolita (Didn't read it in high School, but still a decent one)
*The Scarlet Letter
*The Giver
*I know why the Caged Bird Sings

Am drawing a blank. There are other really great ones that I can't think of at the moment.

if anyone is interested in reading with me and having a discussion, let me know!!!

[[deleted user]]

I could make a go of The Scarlet Letter . . . I don't remember thinking very much of it when I was in high school.

[Aimee]

I actually never even had to read it in high school! But I am most likely going to have to teach it at some point, and best case scenario, be tested on it to get my secondary certification.

Ok. We have one for the Scarlet Leter? Anyone else??

[Lori]

I did my classics reading this summer. I reread Catcher in the Rye (and liked it even more the second time around!) then i read all the ones I thought I should have and never did...

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (great book)
Farenhiet 451 (great book)
Martian Chronicles (ehhh...)
1984 (ugh)
The Bell Jar (just ok for me)
Clockwork Orange (liked it)

Maybe next summer I will try to read a few more I feel I missed out on, such as...
To Kill A Mockingbird
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
The Great Gatsby

and for my re-reads (ones i had to read in school)
Lord of the Flies
Ordinary People
Flowers For Algernon
Of Mice and Men

[Natalya]

Frankenstein was great second time around (college a few years back) and even better the third time (a few months ago)

[Lisa]

I've been doing the same thing lately. I just read "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Farewell to Arms" recently others might be
"The Great Gatsby"
"Gulliver's Travels"
"Great Expectations"
"Lord of the Flies"
"East of Eden"

[Aimee]

I just started reading "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.

I tried reading it a year or two ago, but I couldn't get into it. Now, I don't know why! I really am enjoying it, and can't think of why I couldn't wrap my head around it the first time. It's pretty straightforward, imaginative and chilling.

[Korie]

Having taught The Scarlet Letter and To Kill a Mockingbird a few times, I don't know if I want to actually re-read them, but I will join in on the discussion. (Large sections of both are memorized at this point!) Also, what about The Grapes of Wrath and Jane Eyre, two of my perennial re-reads?

[Husnara]

Hi all

I havent read most of those yet :o(

However I did read to kill a mocking bird and of mice and men...

both are a must read...esp to kill a mockingbird is an awesome book.

has anyone read underground to canada? Another one we had to read in school and was totally worth it!

[Korie]

funny to be here this month... I just found out that I'm guest lecturing an AP English class next semester and so need to re-read Othello and Pride and Prejudice over the next couple of weeks...

[J.C.]

Sorry, I am playing this game too, but I am doing it on my own, that way when I quit no one will know that I am still to dumb for classics.

Someone should kill Hawthorne.
anyway....

Native Son--Richard Wright. I didn't see it on anyones list, and it being the only book I actually read in high school, I thought it would be appropriate.

one that should be added to school curriculum: Catch-22.

hope I didn't offended to many of you Hawthorne lovers...

[Korie]

I taught Catch-22 one year. 75% of the class did not read it at all. Ten percent read the first few chapters and then gave up in disgust. The fifteen percent that did read it absolutely loved it. I guess those of us who think that it's an absolute work of genius are a brilliant minority...

I like Hawthorne.... after writing a paper about The Scarlet Letter where I "proved" that everyone in the book is actually a sexual deviant. (Yes, I do think the book is that sick, but in a good kind of way... Hawthorne does make an interesting point about religious hypocrisy that many these days would do well to notice...)

[Aimee]

I am in the middle of Catch-22, and I think it's brilliant. It's not a page-turner, per se, but every time i pick it up, I'm never bored and I'm always amazed at how he connects every little detail and twists them around to the absurd...

[Renee]

I have a list of classics that I want to read because I have not read to many classics. I'm hoping to start on some this summer.

[Korie]

I will be reading One Hundred Years of Solitude this summer. Anyone want to discuss it?

[Larry]

I'm brand new here, and reading TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD with my class (high school) and JANE EYRE for my monthly Book Club.
JANE EYRE is more fun (and pretty) than I thought it'd be. That's what nice about a Book Club. You read books you might not, if not asked to.

[Karen]

Well I made the goal of reading a few classics this summer. I started with Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen and next will probably be Dante's Divine Comedy. I think I will add Jane Eyre to the list for the summer now. Thanks!

[Lori]

wow... its summer again and Ive been reading classics like crazy...

The Pearl
The Old Man and the Sea
Heart of Darkness
Brothers Karamazov (currently reading now)
A few novels by Jules Verne
A few novels by Nabokov

I did also reread Lord of the Flies.

(tons more on my shelf to read as well)
:)

[Larry]

I've always treasured THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA as a simple story, strongly told, regarding a lone ambition. Sort of like all of us?

THE PEARL, one of Steinbeck's lesser read stories, I liked as a study not so much of greed, as one of hope and subsequent despair - not unlike today's lottery fever amongst some.

Lovely tales, both of them.

Larry Kimport

[Larry]

I hope you like Jane Eyre. My book club trashed it as "too much detail," yet they endorse some contemporary stuff of fluff with maddening detail. I quarrel with them. It's enjoyable.

I liked Jane, her tale, her irritable master/lover and his faithful dog, Pilot. All the great ones are love stories.

Larry Kimport

[Karen]

What is it about summer that makes us want to read classics?

[Lady of the Lake]

How odd to have JUST signed up for GOODREADS and then to find this group and this PARTICULAR discussion because this summer I have been catching up on all the CLASSICS!Read read and read some more! I JUST asked myself that very thing..."WHAT IS IT ABOUT SUMMER THAT MAKES US READ CLASSICS?" I think it may be a throw back to our youth when school required us to read the classics in the summer? But I don't know about any of you I never could wrap myself aroung them when I was in HS but now I can't get enough and I kick myself for all the wasted time NOT reading classics!

[Jamie (The Perpetual Page-Turner)]

i'm all about this..i just added a bunch of books i had to read in high school..i think i will definitely appreciate them more this time around.

[Annie]

I love to go back and read the classics! A few that I would suggest: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (a tragic love story, I have to agree with Larry that those are the best), Also I didn't see anyone mention Gone With the Wind! I could not put that book down. And anything by Kurt Vonnegut, he is brilliant and hilarious at the same time, you could start with Slaughterhouse Five.

[Larry]

Poor Kurt, he's gone now, but you can look into his A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, which he published prior to his death. It's a collection of essays, and true to form, brillant and hillarious, and written when he was aging so wonderfully. I also see that someone in his family went and published more of his stuff posthumously - which I don't trust enough to buy - just yet. I'd rather have the old man's living stamp of approval.

Larry