Mark Twain said a classic is “a book which people praise but don’t read.” How true is that for you?
Mark Twain said a classic is “a book which people praise but don’t read.” How true is that for you?
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Must be true for me – I’ve been slowly working at finding new homes for over half my collection of c. 2000 books, most of which I acquired very cheaply because I knew they were “classics” – Anna Karenina, assorted works of Vonnegut, etc. etc., but which I probably will never get around to reading. Or if I do, I could find them in the library easily enough. In fact, come to think of it, I sold my vintage copy of Mark Twain’s book on Christian Science (which I never read).
* quietly nods in agreement *
If one wants to read them, one might be able to find support for that with a group of like-minded readers.
In Jan. 2000 my wife and I founded a community reading group. We meet during the academic year, about ten weeks per semester, for one-hour conversations. The reading group has read items such as the following classics:
Austen: Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park
C. Bronte: Villette
Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps
Conrad: The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes
Dante: Divine Comedy (complete)
Dickens: Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit
Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, Demons (The Possessed), Notes from Underground, The Brothers Karamazov [which was our first book])
Haggard: King Solomon’s Mines
Manzoni: The Betrothed
Scott: The Heart of Midlothian, Old Mortality
Wells: The Time Machine
We will begin Dickens’s David Copperfield in a few weeks.
There are people out there who are interested in reading classics. In our experience they are mostly retirement-age women. We have a very good time discussing these things. These books are alive.
I went to St. John’s College (Santa Fe campus) for 2 years. I kept the classics habit afterwards.
But it’s unusual, I think, especially in this day and age.
On this basis (and maybe only on this basis) I’m a highly moral man, for I’ve never praised a book I haven’t read. (This isn’t a great claim to fame I realize; but it’s one of the few I have :-)=