Book Club Classics -Classics Meme!

In order to promote her new site, LitGuides.com (a site dedicated to helping teachers/students navigate classic lit), Kristen over at Book Club Classics has started her first meme – and S. Krishna has tagged me for it! The questions are below, and I’m tagging: Katleen, unfinishedperson, meghan, Mrs. Hall, and Traci.

1. What is the best classic you were “forced” to read in school (and why)?
2. What was the worst classic you were forced to endure (and why)?
3. Which classic should every student be required to read (and why)?
4. Which classic should be put to rest immediately (and why)?
5. **Bonus** Why do you think certain books become classics?

What is the best classic you were “forced” to read in school (and why)?

The best classic I was “forced” to read was The Pearl by John Steinbeck. I was in 7th grade, and this book was my introduction to critical reading. It was the first time I was taught I could think for myself, not just espouse my parents’ ideas. When I started teaching my daughter to read the same way, The Pearl was our first book. The school’s no longer seem to be teaching logic and reason, only sheep-think.

What was the worst classic you were forced to endure (and why)?

Oh gawd! That would be Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I seriously do not think most teenager have the patience for this largely philosophical book. It bored me to tears, and most likely went over my head. I should try to reread it, but I’m just not that masochistic!

Which classic should every student be required to read (and why)?

To be honest, and I’m sure this will offend a few people, The Bible. My reason for saying this is, in our Western society, so much of our collective conscious comes from this classic. Shakespeare took from Solomon’s writings, the moralities many books are built around are Judeo-Christian ethics, and most social structures stem from it. We would not be the society we are without The Bible.

Which classic should be put to rest immediately (and why)?

I really don’t know of any that should be put to rest. Maybe some should be saved for older ages, but a classic is a classic because it is always relevant.  Even Harry Potter is relevent for all ages (though I don’t think I’d count it as a classic yet.  We’ll have to see how it goes).

Why do you think certain books become classics?

As I said above, a classic is always relevant. It’s not restricted to it’s own time or place, but speaks to everyone, everywhere, at any time. It reveals something of humor nature, whether it’s arrogance and assumption as in Pride and Prejudice, or the desire to be important and matter as in Vanity Fair, or the evils of the pursuit of power and control as in Animal Farm and 1984. Sometimes they warn us not to give up our power because of fear as in The Giver and Fahrenheit 451, and some mock society to reveal it’s failings as we read in Candide and Le Tartuffe. They challenge us to think and act, and broaden our views of the world around us.

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LibraryThing’s Top Unread Books

I ran across an interesting post by LunarEclipse and thought, with all the LT lists that’s been done, this one would be fun to do, too.

These are the top 103 (was 106, bu I guess I lost 3 somewhere) books most often marked “unread” (or the equivalent) by LibraryThing’s users. The rules are: BOLD the books you have read, italicize the books you started but did not finish (DNF), *STAR* the books you’ve read more than once, underline books that are on your TBR pile, and cross out books that you hated.

Here is my list:

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina (a long time ago in high school… should reread)
3. Crime and Punishment
4. The Silmarillion
5. Life of Pi : a novel
6. The Name of the Rose
7. Don Quixote * (in English and the original Spanish)
8. Moby Dick
9. Ulysses
10. Madame Bovary (read it in high school and I want to reread it.)
11. The Odyssey
12. Pride and Prejudice *(read it in high school, and just reread it a couple weeks ago, review is here)
13. Jane Eyre (read in high school and want to reread)
14. A Tale of Two Cities
15. The Brothers Karamazov
16. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
17. War and Peace (read in high school, but need to reread)
18. Vanity Fair
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife
20. The Iliad
21. Emma (next up on my Jane-a-thon)
22. The Blind Assassin
23. The Kite Runner (one of my top 5 this year)
24. Mrs. Dalloway
25. Great Expectations (loved it! Read in high school, and want to reread)
26. American Gods
27. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
28. Atlas Shrugged (got to the sex scene, got side tracked by school, haven’t gotten back to it)
29. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
30. Memoirs of a Geisha
31. Middlesex (one of my top 5 this year)
32. Quicksilver
33. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
34. The Canterbury Tales
35. The Historian : a novel
36. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
37. Love in the Time of Cholera
38. Brave New World
39. The Fountainhead
40. Foucault’s Pendulum
41. Middlemarch
42. Frankenstein
43. The Count of Monte Cristo
44. Dracula
45. A Clockwork Orange
46. Anansi Boys
47. The Once and Future King
48. The Grapes of Wrath
49. The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
50. 1984
51. Angels & Demons
52. The Inferno
53. The Satanic Verses
54. Sense and Sensibility *(read in high school, reread a couple weeks ago, review here)
55. The Picture of Dorian Gray
56. Mansfield Park (read it last week, review is here)
57. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
58. To the Lighthouse
59. Tess of the D’Urbervilles *(read in HS, reread at the beginning of this year)
60. Oliver Twist
61. Gulliver’s Travels
62. Les Misérables
63. The Corrections
64. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
65. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
66. Dune
67. The Prince (I’ve been reading this one for about 6 or 7 months now.)
68. The Sound and the Fury (read in HS, could probably do with a reread, but I didn’t really care for it the first time so it’s hard to force myself to do it again)
69. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
70. The God of Small Things
71. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
72. Cryptonomicon
73. Neverwhere
74. A Confederacy of Dunces
75. A Short History of Nearly Everything
76. Dubliners
77. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
78. Beloved
79. Slaughterhouse-five
80. The Scarlet Letter
81. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
82. The Mists of Avalon
83. Oryx and Crake : a novel
84. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
85. Cloud Atlas
86. The Confusion
87. Lolita
88. Persuasion
89. Northanger Abbey
90. The Catcher in the Rye **(I’ve actually read this one three times, hated it at 14/ loved it at 15/ hated it as a mom)
91. On the Road
92. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
93. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
94. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
95. The Aeneid
96. Watership Down
97. Gravity’s Rainbow
98. The Hobbit
99. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
100. White Teeth
101. Treasure Island
102. David Copperfield
103. The Three Musketeers

don’t forget to enter to win FRE BOOK MONEY! a $20 Borders gift card at MY FIRST EVER GIVEAWAY!! Deadline for entry is July 31st, details in post.

Politcs VERSUS Oprah… the showdown

In today’s Shelf Awareness newsletter, all the way at the bottom… just before clicking delete… a list caught my eye.  I love book lists, I don’t know why, possibly because the idea that all the world’s giant Mt. TBR could be organized and conquered makes the challenge do-able.  This particular list is: 

 

The top 10 bestselling books on AbeBooks.com during June

1. Big Russ and Meby Tim Russert
2. Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert
3. Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Daniel Amen
4. Dreams of My Fatherby Barack Obama
5. The Pillars of the Earthby Ken Follett
6. The Red Car by Don Stanford
7. A New Earthby Eckhart Tolle
8. Three Cups of Teaby Greg Mortenson
9. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Culinary and Menu Terms by Rodney Dale
10. Night by Elie Wiesel

 

So I’m looking at this top 10 list.  The first two do not surprise me.  Tim Russert’s death was a shock.  Anyone who has watched MSNBC primary returns this year knows how excited and vibrant he was.  He was in his element, and the look in his eyes made us think he’d be around for a long time to come.  I loved watching Tim Russert on both MSNBC and Meet the Press.  He was lively, at times fierce, and never passed up the hard questions.  I, for one, will miss him very much.  Sunday mornings aren’t the same without him.

What this list tells me is that I’m not alone in my appreciation for Russert.  Though I do not have them now, and can’t get them because of the Ye Olde TBR(e) challenge, I do want to read them someday.   Number 4 on the list doesn’t surprise me, either.  As we are going into a fall election with new candidates (not an incumbent), as responsible citizens (USA), we should take the time to learn about our candidates.  Obama’s Dreams of My Father is an opportunity for us to get to know the man first hand, not just from the FWD: fwd: fwd emails saying he said this or that.  A chance to read the quotes in context.

The thing that did surprise me is that there are three Oprah books on the list, tying with the US politically related books.  And if you figure Oprah’s campaigning for Obama, Dreams of My Father might have to straddle the line.  Three Cups of Tea is also a political book of sorts, but in a humanitarian, geopolitical way, so we’ll throw it on the left side of the ledger. 

That leaves self-help, cooking and a children’s book in the balance.  I’m going to say the brain book will side with Oprah… something tells me it’s in the Oprah-anity vein.  And the cooking book would probably be an O book, too… she likes to eat.  So that leaves The Red Car all alone.  Where is he going to park?

4 books for politics (or 3 1/2 if you think about it) and 3 definitely, 2 1/2 most likely, in the Oprah camp, with a scarlet auto abstaining.  I guess that means Oprah wins.