FILL: Ten Essential Classics?
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writercisesOriginal posting 1 Dec 2009
The e-mail newsletter from Penguin books includes a short bit about their recommendation for the 10 essential Classics. Being curious, I went to check out what they thought were essential Classics. Here's their list:
Actually, I seem to have numbered them backwards -- the last shall be first and the first shall be last, a countdown instead of a count up?
It's an interesting list. Exploring hell, living by yourself, dysfunctional family relations, fantasy, whale hunting, the play's the thing..., search for a golden fleece, a romance or two, and a couple of drifters in the Great Depression. More or less?
What do you think about Classics? Do you read them? Do you remember being forced to read them in school? If you had to pick out a list of five or 10 top books that you recommend people read -- in particular, the writers gathered here on the list -- what would they be?
Or perhaps you'd prefer to make a list of five books in your genre? The Classics of science fiction -- that's harder than I really want to work right now. Dune by Frank Herbert? Maybe the Lensmen series by E.E. Smith? Heinlein? Ender's Game by Card? Drat, that's four, and there are so many good ones still to choose from.
Oh, well. Classics? What do we learn from the classics for our own writing?
The e-mail newsletter from Penguin books includes a short bit about their recommendation for the 10 essential Classics. Being curious, I went to check out what they thought were essential Classics. Here's their list:
- The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau
- Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
- Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Actually, I seem to have numbered them backwards -- the last shall be first and the first shall be last, a countdown instead of a count up?
It's an interesting list. Exploring hell, living by yourself, dysfunctional family relations, fantasy, whale hunting, the play's the thing..., search for a golden fleece, a romance or two, and a couple of drifters in the Great Depression. More or less?
What do you think about Classics? Do you read them? Do you remember being forced to read them in school? If you had to pick out a list of five or 10 top books that you recommend people read -- in particular, the writers gathered here on the list -- what would they be?
Or perhaps you'd prefer to make a list of five books in your genre? The Classics of science fiction -- that's harder than I really want to work right now. Dune by Frank Herbert? Maybe the Lensmen series by E.E. Smith? Heinlein? Ender's Game by Card? Drat, that's four, and there are so many good ones still to choose from.
Oh, well. Classics? What do we learn from the classics for our own writing?
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