Literature Ever read the classics... just for fun?

[AnimeGenork]

I don't actually do much of this, but for a while I've considered reading some of the classics I didn't have to read for school, like some Dickens, Dumas, any other Austen I've surely missed. A few years ago, I read Pride and Prejudice because why not? And my friend had it, so...

For a project in my AP Literature class, I'm reading Tale of Two Cities because my insane English teacher sophomore year never got around to it, and I'm enjoying it so far.

So does anybody else read the classics for the heck of it? Or do you really only read them when you have to for a class?

 

[DisneyGirl]

I've been slowly reading Pride and Prejudice. And by slowly, I mean slowly. Like, I started it eight months ago and am just now barely halfway through....

 

[AnimeGenork]

I've been slowly reading Pride and Prejudice. And by slowly, I mean slowly. Like, I started it eight months ago and am just now barely halfway through....

My friend had an annotated version so it made it easier for me to understand/get through XD

 

[Onmyoji]

Hmm I mostly read it for classes but I read quite a few of those books ahead of schedule. So I guess that can count as reading for fun since it wasn't and assignment (yet) XD
Dickens is a good example of that. I read more books than were needed for class.

 

[Lord Aphrodite]

I read Beowulf, Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Divine Comedy all for fun.

 

[CrowOuttaHell]

I rarely ever read any classics for fun since I prefer to read whatever I have lying around...which are usually books with cool covers. That and the last time I read The Invisible Man for a class, I had to give a science lesson on how he turned himself invisible to a class of bored eighth graders.

That being said, I was big into King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Didn't even read it for a class, I just read it because I wanted to read about knights.

 

[kevintheradioguy]

I haven't been in class for many years now, but I do love re-reading Hugo. It gets everyone in my family disgusted, but I love his writing style so fucking much. Love Dostoevsky, who is one of my favourite writers. Shakespeare sonnets as well, though I am kind of meh towards his plays, sue me. Stoker's Dracula and Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, Golding's Lord of the Flies, Howard's Conan series, and pretty much any short story by Poe... I am not sure if those can be considered classics, but they are very well-written, and I enjoy them a fuckton.

 

[Elise Ebele]

I read Jane Eyre for the heck of it, since I was getting ready to graduate and I was constantly bored. I’m a really slow reader, though, and it took be more than a year...

 

[Kaerri]

Jane Austen is my favorite author. I read a lot of other classics as well, mostly on my Kindle app -- not just for the portability, but because you can get an awful lot of them for not a lot of money. For example, a lot of the classic authors, you can get their collected works for $0.99, which beats print prices by a long shot! (The typos are annoyingly frequent, but you get what you pay for, I guess.) And getting the collection means I've found a lot of them wrote a lot more than I thought -- and some of the books I've never heard of are really, really good! Currently making my way through Louisa May Alcott because I got in a Little Women mood.

 

[Jackstack]

Don Quixote is an excellent classic, if you don't like classics. (Funny enough, for a lot of scholars, it's at the top of the list to be the best novel in the western canon.) It's easy to read, and the humor is still there by today's standards.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson isn't a true classic, but it is a horror classic. It's a fraction of Don Quixote in length. It highlights loss, isolation, and perspective.

Those two are my favorite.

 

[Jackstack]

I haven't been in class for many years now, but I do love re-reading Hugo. It gets everyone in my family disgusted, but I love his writing style so fucking much. Love Dostoevsky, who is one of my favourite writers. Shakespeare sonnets as well, though I am kind of meh towards his plays, sue me. Stoker's Dracula and Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, Golding's Lord of the Flies, Howard's Conan series, and pretty much any short story by Poe... I am not sure if those can be considered classics, but they are very well-written, and I enjoy them a fuckton.

Just started reading The Brothers Karamazov.

 

[Funkybub]

Lots of Dicken's work was inspired by the city I come from

 

[Winter_Wolf]

One week a few years ago, I (re)read Plato's Phaedo dialogue when I went to use the treadmill at the gym. I had read it a couple times in college, paying special attention to the Ancient Greek on the facing page.

 

[Blemmigan]

Sometimes? But sometimes they really are just a slog. I had to read Tess of the D'Urbervilles once and it was an absolute chore. Maybe if I tried again today it wouldn't be, but I'm honestly not enticed to. I like some of Hardy's short stories, though, some of his Wessex tales.

I think that... a lot of classics were products of their time, and were groundbreaking in their own right, but it doesn't mean that if you don't enjoy them then you're an uneducated philistine. Nowadays anyone can publish (rather than just a small section of the upper classes who had the time to write), including on this very site, so there's so much more variety. Anyone can be a pioneer. And we've moved on so much in terms of what's acceptable as published text and new ways to write and present stories, that we can successfully expand on those ideas put forth in those classics. Even if the originals don't always hold up so much nowadays.

At least, that's what I tell myself.

 

[SCSaya06]

Only classics I actually read because I wanted to were King Arthur and the Divine Comedy. I guess the Greek and Norse Myths fall under classics as well? Edgar Allan Poe's stuff as well. Everything else, I just read because they were required for a class or something. The fact that I can't even remember what classics I managed to read from high school onwards kind of proves that I don't really like most of them.

Unless I'm interested in the story, genre or characters, I don't bother reading or watching something. I don't care what time period they were from or if they are even considered "classics" or whatever. They're good but they're not for me.

 

[pfpfpfpf]

I read Dracula in high school before. An interesting book but I was amazed how Hollywood could twist it around.

 

[Qazi]

Been reading The Aeneid for a while. Just for fun.

It's plenty good—granted, a simulacrum of Homer's twin magnum opus Illiad and Oddysey but works just fine enough for me.

 

[Madruga]

I read To Kill A Mockingbird and some of Lovecraft's short stories solely for fun. Both are definitely up there in my tops list.

 

[Malphaestus]

My perception of Classics seem quite more antique than what everyone else has mentioned. I do read a lot of books, yes. I have read a lot of 'classics,' yes. But my idea of classics refer to the Aeneid of Vigilus, the Odyssey of Homer, and the Republic of Plato. I have not read many classics as of late, but Plato is a philosopher I often revisit.

 

[Infinitee]

Not sure if Conan Doyle is considered a classic writer, but I love reading Sherlock Holmes. I also really enjoy reading dystopian novels like Orwell's 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. If not for entertainment, then, just to compare how the writer's projections of the future compare to today's society.

 

[chaya]

I will always have a soft spot for Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and so many more authors. However, when I think of 'classics', going off of Infinitee , I have a different interpretation and they are usually books I have read since childhood due to my mother's influences such as Agatha Christie, the Nancy Drew series, and so much more in the mystery range. I have yet to dive in the world of philosophies such as Plato and Aristotle, even perhaps expanding my horizon in reading other books like The Art of War, however, they are on my to-do list.