I enjoyed Homer's Odessey and Illiad ( there for a while I studies Greek and Roman mythology ). The Count of Monte Cristo is always a good recommendation but just about anything by Alexandre Dumas is. Little Women is a classic that I always go back to every couple of years.
I actually prefer reading classics to most of what passes for "contemporary literature." I recently read Thomas Hardy's JUDE THE OBSCURE for the first time at age 45. It's too bad that some of the people on this thread can't get into classics--I understand not grasping Shakespeare's language, but the great 19th century novelists (including the French and the Russians, who I think surpass the English and Americans) don't olffer any such difficulty. Everybody should read ANNA KARENINA and at least one Dostoevsky novel since they are the summits of the art of the novel.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. My favorite among favorites! I've read it three times and even have two copies, one my ninth grade English teacher gave me when she bullied me into reading it and a beautiful hard-backed copy I recieved for a gift years ago. I cried, I laughed, I cried, I was afraid, and I cried some more. Nothing I've read since compares.
Recently, I watched the movie House of Mirth from the book by Edith Wharton. Actually haven't read the book, but I find the movie pretty slow and unintense. So here's the question:
Do you or do you not support the viewing of classical films made from the book IN PLACE OF reading the books?
(after all, it's faster and more effective?)
A film is not a book.
The experiences are not interchangable.
It's funny, I hate Lord of the Flies.
Umm, I liked reading a couple of books in high school, but not all of them are classics.
