Hashkafah.com: Re-reading the "classics" written by Moshi

I was browsing through someone's bookshelf yesterday, and there were many books they obviously had around since their high school days -- assigned classics such as Tom Sawyer, and One Flew Over the Coockoo's Nest, and Crime and Punishment, and Catchers in the Rye, The Great Gatsby and other such books.

These are books that pretty much everyone is familiar with because they're in the curriculum. At the very least, you've heard of them through other people referencing them at random times. Having gone to school back in the USSR, I had a slightly different curriculum, but there's a lot of overlap.

Anyhow, I was thinking that maybe these books are wasted on 13-year-olds? Have you tried reading some of these classics in your adult years? Do you appreciate them more? Or do they seem a little tired/hackneyed because you've been overexposed to them already / because lots of people have copied them?

I don't think Dostoyevsky or Fitzgerald intended 13-year-olds to make up 90% of their readership...

Moshi, on May 11 2009, 04:29 AM, said:

Can we start a bookclub (thread), to reread the classics, on h?
I say we start with 1984

RebPropagandist, on May 11 2009, 12:35 PM, said:

i recently reread east of eden and anna karenina. There are nothing like the classics.
1984 is not the first book that comes to mind when i hear classics, although it is on most high school reading lists.

jewess, on May 11 2009, 11:38 AM, said:

Moshi, on May 11 2009, 12:29 PM, said:

I'm glad I slept through HS and decided to catch up on what I missed in my later years.

Moshi, on May 11 2009, 11:29 AM, said:

I've re-read some (charles dickens comes to mind). Anything I've re-read I think I appreciated 10 times more as an adult.

I hope one day to really go through More Nevuchim, Chovos HaLevavos ,and the Kuzari.....
Oh yeah, and the Bible too....

I've read nearly all the classics as an adult. We didn't really read non-Jewish books in school and I haven't gone to college (yet). About two years ago I decided I would read all the classics, and yes, I certainly think most classics are wasted on teenagers.

Kalashnikover_Rebbe, on May 11 2009, 12:57 PM, said:

There's a man my speed.

I did read Robinson Crusoe a few times. I like it a lot because I'm antisocial, but there the problem is that I'm also lazy.

jewess, on May 11 2009, 12:38 PM, said:

Really? Why not?

Quote

Whoosh, went the point.

RebPropagandist, on May 11 2009, 11:35 AM, said:

There are some almost-"romance-novel"-like scenes in that book.

Moshi, on May 11 2009, 02:19 PM, said:

Those scenes are so stiff, they can hardly be called "romantic"./Just saying.

Amber, on May 11 2009, 01:21 PM, said:

Really? The ones where the main character meets the woman he likes in some building (hotel?) in secrecy, away from the prying eyes of the state? It's been 14 years since I read the book, but I remember it as VERY "romantic", at least to 15-year-old me.

Moshi, on May 11 2009, 02:32 PM, said:

I read it for the first time like two years ago, but I kind of skimmed over the torture scenes. I already got the point by then.

Oh, and I enjoyed Brave New World much more than 1984.

Jeanette, on May 11 2009, 01:36 PM, said:

That one I never read...

Short, on May 11 2009, 01:32 PM, said:

We read goyishe books in HS but we only read like one "classic" each year. The only ones I remember from HS (besides Shakespeare plays) are The Pearl, Great Expectations and A Separate Peace.

I read a lot of "classics" on my own during HS. There are so many I haven't read yet that I don't bother going back to reread those.

Moshi, on May 11 2009, 02:32 PM, said:

The whole nature of their "romance" just seemed very unnatural. I wonder if you'd still find it to be very romantic.

If "1984" and "Brave New World" belong on the classics list, then "Fear and Loathing in LV" and entire trilogy of Bayan Shiryanov do much more so ...

My mom only bought classics for me when I was young, but I appreciate them much more now as an adult (and I stole them all back from her and now have them at home).

Jeanette, on May 11 2009, 02:39 PM, said:

OMG I think we went to the same school.