The BEST Classics for Beginners 🧐📖

[@dragonlyra]

The first classic that I ever read in English was Jane Eyre. It was actually the first full book that I read in English. See, English is only my second language but I just loved the 1996 movie so much that I defied every and any hardships. It was hard to understand (for multiple reasons...) but I was so proud of myself when I finished that it kept me going, and now I have a fairly good grasp on the language itself. Looking back on it now, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is studying English and wants to start reading novels to pick up Jane Eyre immediately but in my case it turned out pretty well :D Still one of my favourite books. I added some of your recommendations to my to-read list, thank you :)

[@crackle6875]

Advice for those new to older works 1. ABRIDGED VERSIONS As a child, before I ever read Alexander Dumas's Three Musketeers & Count of Monte Cristo, older persons (who read them) recited - to some extent or other - the stories to me & I read children abridged versions (of various lengths, some were more like long summaries). As an older child, this helped me go into the unabridged works with less confusion over the intent or meaning of certain passages and aided the cultivation of patience during necessary slow bits. I'd watched the 1959 film Ben-Hur numerous times, but never thought twice about the book until I picked up an abridged copy aimed at adults. It wet my appetite & caused me to want to seek out an unabridged copy. Fact: Beauty & the Beast was a novel written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, but the version most people are familiar with stems from the abridged & rewritten one by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. 2. TRANSLATION & NOTES I'd read a book on Roman and Greek tales by a French author. Throughout the book he would present two different translations of a story segment to illustrate how different translators create differing images of a story or an author's writing. Keep that in mind while picking up a book that was translated into a language you read. In fact, it IS possible that your copy's translation is what's holding you back from enjoying or 'getting' it. For certain works it is beneficial to have an edition with excellent footnotes and/or annotations (Penguin classics often do fairly well with their notes) to make things easier to 'get' without repeatedly pausing to go and do research. In fact, I have sometimes not realized the significants or double meaning of something until looking at a publisher or translator note in the book. Many older classics have annotated editions which are often used in school courses, such as The Annotated Pride & Prejudice revised & expanded edi. (edited by David M.Shapard). The Broadview Editions series have good notes and (wikipedia quote)"...the inclusion of primary source documents....that help demonstrate the context out of which the work emerged." Their print of A Marriage Below Zero includes things like newspaper articles & tracts. I recommend checking out their site broadviewpress.com Fact: Not every edition of Little Women has Beth's death. In the U.S, the publishing practice is typically to combine Little Women (which contains Beth recovering from a bout of scarlet fever) with the book Good Wives (which contains Beth's steadily declining health and death) while in the UK it is typical to publish them as the separate books they originally were. 3. ANTHOLOGIES & COLLECTIONS Plenty of anthologies can be found full of short stories and novellas; some also offer excerpts from an author's longer works. For some authors - ex. Edgar Allen Poe, Rabindranath Tagore, Hans Christian Anderson, Truman Capote, Walt Whitman - you can easily find collections containing all their known published works, likewise their are ones with a select body of an author's work - ex. The Lottery & Other Stories, Ancient Sorceries & Other Weird Stories, Blandings Castle and Elsewhere, About Love & Other Stories, Flying Home & Other Stories and Tevye the Dairyman & Motl the Cantor's Son. If you want to discover new authors or sample various ones, than I suggest looking into literature anthologies intended for school or scholarly use (If you intended to buy them, keep in mind the older an edition the cheaper it will be; think $4-$10 verses $78-$140.) such as The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, Norton Anthologies (Jewish American Literature, African American Literature, Literature by Women etc.), Longman Anthologies (World Literature, Drama and Theater, Detective Fiction etc.), Broadview Anthologies (British Literature, Short Fiction etc.) Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction and Literature an Introduction to Reading & Writing (compact & non-compact edition.), Due note that some of those anthologies are split into multiple volumes. Both of the later grades in the original & revised McGuffey readers have some great pieces. A few non-academic ones that might still be in print are Penguin Collections & Anthologies (The Portable 19th-Century African American Women Writers, Metaphysical Poetry, Book of Ghost Stories etc.), Other Voices Other Vistas (edited by Barbara H. Solomon), Vintage Detective Stories (compiled by David Stuart Davies), Risking Everything (edited by Roger Housden), Anthology of Classic Christian Literature (compiled by Michael Williams) and Oxford Anthologies (Roman Literature, English Love Stories, Book of English Verse, Brazilian Short Story, Book of Love Poetry, etc.). 4. CLOSER TO YOUR OWN TIME If this is your first time venturing into works that aren't much older than around 25 years, no pressure to automatically jump into The Odyssey or 14th century The Decameron. There are plenty of applauded authors closer to home, especially if foraying into children's literature (more on that in a sec). Beverly Cleary was named a Library of Congress Living Legend before dying at 104 years old; her writing career started in the 1950s, with the likes of Henry Huggins, Fifteen and Ellen Tebbits. Maybe look into the authors China Achebe, Betty Smith, M. R. James, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, Evelyn Waugh, W.O. Mitchell, James Baldwin, Bette Greene, Madeleine A. Polland, Anthony Trollope, Maud Hart Lovelace, Chaim Potok and the stories Flowers for Algernon, Fog Magic, Heinlein juveniles, Bambi, Watership Down, The Circular Ruins, Lassie Come-Home, Christy, The Charioteer, The Little Prince, Black Beauty, The Price of Salt, Volkswagen Blues, Kristin Lavransdatter and Phantastes A Faerie Romance. Starting closer to your own time and working out backwards from there is sometimes essential for a person to be able to better grasp the humor found amongst certain works. I've been surprised by the amount of people I've encountered that struggle with older works - such as Cranford, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Don Quixote, Sense & Sensibility, The Count of Monte Cristo, Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet because they are comedies, or interlaced with comedic moments/lines. Often this is because the reader was trying to view it outside the context of a comedy (school texts or teachers are usually the culprits), already struggling with the book's language or never really encountered that form of humor before etc. Some works to develop your humor pallet on are Gentleman Prefer Blonds, Sunshine Sketches, The Sword in the Stone, The 100 & 1 Dalmatians, Winnie the Pooh books, The Necklace (by Guy De Maupassant), Lavender & Old Lace, The Grand Babylon Hotel, When Patty Went to College, Tobermory, Gabriel-Ernest, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Pinocchio, The Adventures of Sally, The Good Soldier Svejk, Around the World in 80 Days, Lucky Jim, The Canterville Ghost, The Ransom of Red Chief, Diary of a Madman, Candide, The Other Two (by Edith Wharton) The Female Quixote, The Gift of the Magi and Mr. Harrison's Confessions. Also, check out penguin.co.uk list's The 50 Funniest Books of All Time and nonsenseliterture.com The Gromboolia Anthology of Nonsense. Quotes from a witty book titled The Man Who Was Thursday: The More his mother preached a more Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached a point of defending cannibalism. "Your offer...is far too idiotic to be declined."

[@estadoagridulce]

“passing” sounds a lot like “the vanishing half” (i haven’t read it btw) but they sound similar. Thanks for the recommendations Daria, i have been reading classics lately and i’m constantly looking for more.

[@MinaReads]

YES SPONSORSHIP WE LOVE TO SEE IT

[@GraveyardShift-tl6ri]

i also recommend The Yellow Wallpaper if that qualifies! very very short, and quite good and easy to follow. finished it the other morning. (the ebook is free on project gutenberg as well as other classics under the public domain! (:

[@miladravigne2461]

the first classic i read was jane eyre and it was definitely really long but so worth the read i loved it

[@jemimahlikesfood5792]

I honestly didn't like many classics until I read Little Women. Then I have fell in love with so many authors. Like Jane Austen, Robert Frost, agatha christie honestly Iove it so much.

[@crackle6875]

You might also enjoy Alcott's Eight Cousins & An Old Fashioned Girl.

[@bb_reads]

These were some great recs! I still need to read some of these. Personally I think the best place to start with classics is children's classics like hiedi, Pollyanna, jungle book etc. These are engaging, the writing is digestible and they also have good themes and messages. Great video. :)

[@crackle6875]

Very true. Even some longer picture books, such as The Snow Goose.

[@bb_reads]

@@crackle6875 I've never heard of that one before, what's it about?

[@crackle6875]

@@bb_reads A lonely (?) girl becomes friends with a somewhat shunned artist over their shared love of an injured goose that's recuperating in the light house the man lives in. The story spans several years. After posting the above comment I found out it was originally a short story Gallico had published in a magazine & then expanded into a novella to be published as a book. The original story did have some drawings, but I'm not sure if the original run of the novella did. I've picked up two of the three illustrated editions before, the ones with pictures by Angela Barrett & Beth Peck.

[@bb_reads]

@@crackle6875 sounds fun, will check it out. Thank you!

[@rosierodrgiuez8179]

Good idea

[@marianamauricio]

ayyyy thanks for the recs!!! also you look so pretty (as usual)

[@TheOwlie]

Thank you so much. I need some books to read and I already read a Christmas carol after watching this video I never thought to read it as the movie is just so part of my childhood. But I loved it I’ll watch the movie with new eyes now. Thank you so much for the recommendations. Now I’m going to give Brave New World a go.

[@behjatyazdi]

Thanks for your recommendation Daria .Lovely and helpful video.👌🙏🏽💚

[@karinde7985]

I honestly can't remember how I got into classics, so it's quite hard for me to recommend anything for beginners. Good thing I can refer them to your video from now on :D

[@JessBookgirlTV]

Hi! I am new here. I have 'The Picture Of Dorian Gray,' on my bookshelf. I can't wait to read it.

[@moretyquira]

Was literally just talking about this exact problem with a friend of mine! Lovely video, thank you 💜❤️♥️

[@probablyhyperfixating]

I had to break up Anna Kerenina into 4 separate books lol and draw a character map! 😂🤦😂

[@leannj.3706]

loved the video💜💜

[@annaleeta]

Great video. Oscar Wilde…such a beautiful writer, such a tragic life.

[@annaleeta]

One other thing. Do you ever step out of your usual reads and go for other genres? I put down Little Women for a supernatural trilogy, called All Souls Trilogy. Witches, vampires, mystery and time travel. The books downside are the length. I think they’re longer than the Bible. I was just wondering how if you read other genres.

[@valeriavalentinazaratecard7767]

❤❤👌 Thank you

[@K.Marie119]

I laughed out loud the first time I read that the drug was called "Soma." Someone at Mylan (a real world pharmaceutical company) is well read and has a sense of humor. "Soma" is also the Brand Name for a musculoskeletal muscle relaxer, generic name Carisopradol.

[@CarlaGReads]

YES TO THE "Passing" ADAPTATION ANALYSIS!!!!