Your first classics

[historybuff234]

Hey everyone, I'm just thinking that since we are talking about lit and life that we should talk about your first classics that you read and how they effected you and what you learned from them.

One of my first was Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I loved it! And I still re-read it to this day. I'll think of some others later.

[Laurel]

When I was in about seventh grade I got so disgusted with books written for teenagers that I told the librarian, with whom I worked, that I was not going to read any more fiction. She very wisely said, "Why don't you read this one book first, and then make up your mind?" and handed me Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. I read a lot of fiction after that.

---

historybuff234 wrote:
Hey everyone, I'm just thinking that since we are talking about lit and life that we should talk about your first classics that you read and how they effected you and what you learned from them.

One of my first was Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I loved it! And I still re-read it to this day. I'll think of some others later.

---

Message Edited by Laurel on 07-22-2007 07:00 PM

Message Edited by Laurel on 07-22-2007 07:01 PM

[Choisya]

Did you read the unabridged edition HB and did you read it as an adventure story or see deeper meanings?

---

historybuff234 wrote:
Hey everyone, I'm just thinking that since we are talking about lit and life that we should talk about your first classics that you read and how they effected you and what you learned from them.

One of my first was Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I loved it! And I still re-read it to this day. I'll think of some others later.

---

[APenForYourTho…]

My first classic was probably Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I had to read it in my eighth grade reading class. I thought I would hate it, but I actually enjoyed it. My life since then has been rather crowded with classics since then. I had to read The Odyssey over the summer before my freshman year, and then I read Things Fall Apart and Romeo and Juliet in my ninth grade English class, and I also read Pride and Prejudice as part of an independent reading project. Then, remembering Dickens right before my sophomore year, I picked up A Tale of Two Cities. In my tenth grade English class, which will always be very near and dear to my heart because it changed me so much, I read The Once and Future King, Siddhartha, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Hamlet, Night, and Notes From Underground. As part of this class, we also had to pick an author and study some of their works in depth, then read criticism and a biography about them. I picked Jane Austen because I loved Pride and Prejudice, and now I'm obsessed with classics.

[historybuff234]

---

Choisya wrote:
Did you read the unabridged edition HB and did you read it as an adventure story or see deeper meanings?

---

historybuff234 wrote:
Hey everyone, I'm just thinking that since we are talking about lit and life that we should talk about your first classics that you read and how they effected you and what you learned from them.

One of my first was Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I loved it! And I still re-read it to this day. I'll think of some others later.

---

---

No I didn't read the un-abridged, but I'd like to. I read it as an adventure story, but I'd like to buy the un-abrdidged so I can find the deeper meanings.

[Choisya]

I think it is one your mother would approve of HB so you could buy it

My first classic BTW was Dickens' Christmas Carol and I still have it - a leather bound, gold embossed edition bought for me by my grandmother in 1939, just before the war, when I was 6.

---

historybuff234 wrote:

---

Choisya wrote:
Did you read the unabridged edition HB and did you read it as an adventure story or see deeper meanings?

---

historybuff234 wrote:
Hey everyone, I'm just thinking that since we are talking about lit and life that we should talk about your first classics that you read and how they effected you and what you learned from them.

One of my first was Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. I loved it! And I still re-read it to this day. I'll think of some others later.

---

---

No I didn't read the un-abridged, but I'd like to. I read it as an adventure story, but I'd like to buy the un-abrdidged so I can find the deeper meanings.

---

[historybuff234]

I know that she would approve, she is the one who encouraged me to buy it. A Christmaz Carol is a great work! It's one of my favorites!

[APenForYourTho…]

I lied. A Christmas Carol was my first classic. I had forgotten about that one, though I don't know how I could have; it is a great work.

[Crystal8i8]

If I thought long and hard I could probably come up with the very first classic...

Some of the first were things I read in school like Little Women, Romeo & Juliet.

I've started reading classics again recently and the one I chose to read first was Robinson Crusoe, then I moved on to books like Dracula, Dorian Gray, Uncle Toms Cabin.

My new favorite thing is to go to Barnes & Noble and pick up 2 or 3 classics at a time. The Metamorphoses is one of the next one my list. I definately have enjoyed them.

[Ebeth]

I have to think back to when I was nine or ten years old, and I think I read Tom Sawyer, Heidi, and Black Beauty. I loved those books and plan to read them again. I think it was my first exposure to novels that weren't the paperback-kid type.

Somewhere around junior high, I read David Copperfield and Les Miserables. Les Miserables was slow going at first, but it was well worth reading. There is so much going on, so many characters that you fall in love or hate with. David Copperfield was a wonderful read.

In college, I read The Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, various plays of Shakespeare, My Antonia, and Brave New World, among others.


I'm slowly building my own library of classic literature. I buy my hardcover classics at thrift shops for a dollar each. There's a big book sale coming in the spring, and I can't wait.

[Ebeth]

Another story about classic literature: my mom is from Mexico and has lived in the US for forty years. She learned to read when I was in first or second grade. She would follow along in our readers when my sister and I had to read aloud as homework. My mom now reads anything and everything, magazines, newspapers, biographies, and novels.


One day she asked me for a good book to read. I suggested My Antonia, and mentioned I had read it for college. She was uncertain about reading it when I told her that, because she thought it would be too difficult for her, being college level reading. (Mom only graduated from high school.) I encouraged her to try it, and she finally did.

She absolutely LOVED it. I guess she related to the book so well because she is an immigrant like Antonia and her family were. She asked me to find more books by Willa Cather and devoured them. And periodically she would ask for a suggestion from me, and she usually liked the books.


Other favorites of hers are To Kill A Mockingbird, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Joy In The Morning, and The Good Earth. I suggested Dickens, and she tried it, but could never get into it and really understand it. I think she had difficulty translating British English. (She has never cared for British movies, either.)

[IlanaSimons]

I'm glad your mom loved My Antonia.  We did a reading group for that novel here at B&N last year. 

Ilana

---

Ebeth wrote:
Another story about classic literature: my mom is from Mexico and has lived in the US for forty years. She learned to read when I was in first or second grade. She would follow along in our readers when my sister and I had to read aloud as homework. My mom now reads anything and everything, magazines, newspapers, biographies, and novels.


One day she asked me for a good book to read. I suggested My Antonia, and mentioned I had read it for college. She was uncertain about reading it when I told her that, because she thought it would be too difficult for her, being college level reading. (Mom only graduated from high school.) I encouraged her to try it, and she finally did.

She absolutely LOVED it. I guess she related to the book so well because she is an immigrant like Antonia and her family were. She asked me to find more books by Willa Cather and devoured them. And periodically she would ask for a suggestion from me, and she usually liked the books.


Other favorites of hers are To Kill A Mockingbird, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Joy In The Morning, and The Good Earth. I suggested Dickens, and she tried it, but could never get into it and really understand it. I think she had difficulty translating British English. (She has never cared for British movies, either.)

---

[paula_02912]

I also loved My Antonia...Willa Cather was one of my favorite readers when I was in HS...I loaned someone my coy and they never returned it...I was very unhappy at the time, but I just bought another copy for less from Barnes...

[paula_02912]

Ebeth, I read all those books that you mentioned in you post...they were all wonderful reads and I am trying to get them all in Hardcover now...did you also read all the Austen's and Bronte sisters?

[Ebeth]

I have read Pride and Prejudice, but none of the other Austen novels. (on my TBR list). I'm currently rereading Jane Eyre. Oh, and I read Wuthering Heights waaaayyyy back in high school.

[karinlib]

This is a good topic.  Let's see, I read a lot of classics in High School.  I had a class in 11th grade called Independent Reading, and we read for an hour every day.  I read Pearl Buck, James Michener, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Pushkin, Tolstoy and the Brontes.    I had a gotten away from the classics for a long while, and decided that for each new book I read, that I have to read a classic.  Now, I am trying to read the books I never had the time to read, such as Bleak House, War & Peace, Crime and Punishment, etc. 

[kiakar]

I think my first was Emma by Jane Austen. I read alot of poems, shortstories, that were classic all through grade school and high school.

[va-BBoomer]

Remember distinctly - Jane Eyre.  It was recommended in Freshman English class in high school, and the synopsis appealed to me, so I started it, and my favorites to this day are Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

[IlanaSimons]

Hi va-BBoomer,

Thanks for posting.  Jane Eyre is firmly lodged in me, too.

Ilana

---

va-BBoomer wrote:

Remember distinctly - Jane Eyre.  It was recommended in Freshman English class in high school, and the synopsis appealed to me, so I started it, and my favorites to this day are Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

---

[Everyman]

va-Bboomer doesn't say what gender he or she is, but I'm betting female. Jane Eyre seems to appeal far, far more to women than to men. It's not so much the romance content; many men (myself included) love Jane Austen.

I think with JE it's that none of the men are very nice. None are role models or men we can admire or relate to. I can't imagine wanting to be friends with any of them, or even enjoying being in the same room with any of them.

The women are much more acceptable characters. I don't care all that much for Jane, frankly, but I know that many women really like and admire her. But Helen is a sweetie. I could see being happily married to her.

---

IlanaSimons wrote:

Hi va-BBoomer,

Thanks for posting. Jane Eyre is firmly lodged in me, too.

Ilana

---

va-BBoomer wrote:

Remember distinctly - Jane Eyre. It was recommended in Freshman English class in high school, and the synopsis appealed to me, so I started it, and my favorites to this day are Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

---

---