s/o how to work through progressively more challenging works

[Critterfixer]

Well, I figure, if nothing else, I'll learn something out of it. 

[stripe]

I agree about books like Trixie Belden (Happy Hollisters, Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Mysterious Benedict Society, Imaginarium Geographica,  Percy Jackson....... or any other fun kids books) for them to read for pure enjoyment.   (not a Nora Roberts fan, though!  ;) )   It is why I explicitly stated I do not control at all what they read during their own personal free-time.   We do have a distinction between school requirements and their own time.    
 

I also think it's wise to be acquainted with popular culture, which helps understand any number of things including participating in conversations with other kids. I mean, it was funny when they thought Sponge Bob was a piece of cheese, but as they got older, I thought it would be wise if they actually knew what some of these things were so as not to look utterly idiotic. And there are a surprising number of references to "classical" and other such things in pop culture; my son receives the Lego magazine, and the latest issue has a bit about The Hobbit in Lego form.

[stripe]

one other thing...

Second, I don't ever let them read anything but classics. 

The problem I have with the "only classics" stuff is that it is very culturally biased. I cannot tell you how many famous and highly regarded children's books I have encountered, that have the word "nigger" in them. And virtually none of them are about non-white children, many contain distinctive perspectives of females (or more to the point, are very male-dominated), few of them contain children whose parents actually interact with them (they are either orphans, have a nanny, or go on extended kids-only romps) and most take place in the countryside. I think it's all very well and good to read those sorts of books, but to me, that can't be everything they read. Even if the use of language is exceptional.

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said: 

 

I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. 

... Things changed when I discovered African books

.....So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are.

 

 

**Reduced for copyright concerns please visit http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcript?language=en

Edited September 10, 2014 by stripe

[ktgrok]

 

one other thing...

The problem I have with the "only classics" stuff is that it is very culturally biased. I cannot tell you how many famous and highly regarded children's books I have encountered, that have the word "nigger" in them. And virtually none of them are about non-white children, many contain distinctive perspectives of females (or more to the point, are very male-dominated), few of them contain children whose parents actually interact with them (they are either orphans, have a nanny, or go on extended kids-only romps) and most take place in the countryside. I think it's all very well and good to read those sorts of books, but to me, that can't be everything they read. Even if the use of language is exceptional.

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said: 

 

I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader, and what I read were British and American children’s books.

I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.

My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire to taste ginger beer. But that is another story.

What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Things changed when I discovered African books.  There weren’t many of them available, and they weren’t quite as easy to find as the foreign books. But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the colour of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized. Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are.

 

 

I heard that interview on NPR, wonderful stuff! 

[stripe]

I think that last sentence is the crux of what we're discussing on multiple threads. Not because the color of the skin of the characters matters, or what they eat or drink. We talk about wanting to cultivate beauty, truth and virtue in our children. Children are impressionable and vulnerable, "in the face of a story." So it is important to build that appetite in them for truth, beauty and virtue by reading (giving to them to read) stories that contain those qualities. So like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie craving ginger beer, our children will crave what is true, beautiful and virtuous.

But I think it can also be seen as a cautionary tale about how reading things can make us believe our ways, or we ourselves, are somehow utterly wrong, because we, or people like us, don't appear in stories, and lead to self-loathing. In the case of beauty, for example, that beauty must be one sort: the pale English rose. Or that delicious food must be steaming piles of roast beef. Or that no one alive today is worth reading, or no woman is worth reading, or no one not from England is worth reading. I just think it's an area of concern.

 

She goes on to say:

 

I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family......  It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.

 

Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. ..... What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe.

 

...This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature. ..... And so I began to realize that my American roommate must have throughout her life seen and heard different versions of this single story, as had a professor, who once told me that my novel was not “authentically African.”

 

{reduced due to copyright concerns, please visit original site to read entire thing}

Edited September 10, 2014 by stripe

[justamouse]

 

But I think it can also be seen as a cautionary tale about how reading things can make us believe our ways, or we ourselves, are somehow utterly wrong, because we, or people like us, don't appear in stories, and lead to self-loathing. In the case of beauty, for example, that beauty must be one sort: the pale English rose. Or that delicious food must be steaming piles of roast beef. Or that no one alive today is worth reading, or no woman is worth reading, or no one not from England is worth reading. I just think it's an area of concern.

 

 

But that's not why we're reading. It's almost the exact opposite. Intent and teaching matter here. 

Did she look at her parents and say, "Why did you let me think that Fide was so poor he couldn't make a basket?" Which, by the way, is an expression of beauty. 

 

[Critterfixer]

I think I'll take my chances. 

At least in my personal experience I didn't find that reading classic children's literature hampered my imagination in the slightest. It just gave me more to draw from in the way of characters, drama and exceptional language. Did make me a bit "weird" but I hope it was in a good way. I don't think it made me consider anyone to be a "flat character." I think it made me more anxious to get to know people who were not like me so that I could dig much deeper into what they were really like. That was very essential for me, because I'm not a natural people person, and prefer to be left alone on the whole. So being interested in books actually helped me to become interested in people, the places they came from, the languages they spoke and their life stories.

 

I'd add, however, that there is a very good reason to read through books with your children, and to discuss things that come up like that.. the boys and I recently read Tom Sawyer and that was the first they had heard the word "nigger". We ended up having quite a discussion about that and what it meant in the context of the book and what the point Twain was making.

 

[Lb20inblue]

I make a conscious effort to seek out multicultural works to complement the classics, as defined in this thread.  For instance, right now my kids are very young, so I make a point to make sure that the picture books I take out from the library represent diversity.  Maybe that means, I check out a Caribbean take on the the three billy goats gruff and a Brazilian version of the ugly duckling.  

 

I identify strongly and think for me, it is essential that my kids can seem themselves in the story, or else, we can run into identity issues.  It's hard enough to be perceived as different  and then to have to read books where there is no other representation.  I can't in good faith tell my kids that we are in the pursuit of truth, beauty and excellence and have my books list show that I do not think they posses these qualities.  

[stripe]

I'd add, however, that there is a very good reason to read through books with your children, and to discuss things that come up like that.. the boys and I recently read Tom Sawyer and that was the first they had heard the word "nigger". We ended up having quite a discussion about that and what it meant in the context of the book and what the point Twain was making.

Somehow I think Tom Sawyer is kind of a special case, compared to the other books I have come across, because it actually is about race, rather than just having a book about all white people with a random racist epithet thrown in, or the word used as to mean the color black. E. Nesbit's books have several surprises of that sort ("So we made nine holes in the ceiling with the poker, and put pails, baths and tubs under, and now there was not so much water on the floor. But we had to keep on working like niggers, and Mrs Pettigrew and Alice worked the same" in the Woodbegoods, and a character in black face + turban, described with the same word, in The Enchanted Castle). I bought a copy of Dr. Doolittle at a booksale that ended up being the original/pre-censored version, and Mary Poppins originally had a segment with "piccaninnies" in it, which has also been removed. These are all just plain offensive, with really nothing really to discuss or redeem. There are tons of books with an implicit acceptance of racist and/or colonial perspectives, such as the beginning of The Secret Garden, and a fake Chinese "accent" in A Cricket in Times Square. Ah well, at least Long John Silver wasn't against a little miscegenation. ;)

[lewelma]

 

one other thing...

The problem I have with the "only classics" stuff is that it is very culturally biased. I cannot tell you how many famous and highly regarded children's books I have encountered, that have the word "nigger" in them. And virtually none of them are about non-white children, many contain distinctive perspectives of females (or more to the point, are very male-dominated), few of them contain children whose parents actually interact with them (they are either orphans, have a nanny, or go on extended kids-only romps) and most take place in the countryside. I think it's all very well and good to read those sorts of books, but to me, that can't be everything they read. Even if the use of language is exceptional.

 

 

I totally understand what you are saying.  I have been much less worried about racism than sexism.  My older son and I read Great Expectations, and all that Estella has going for her is that she is beautiful.  She is mean, proud, and heart-less; and Pip falls for her?  What?!?!?  So I have had many a long think about the implications of old fashioned ideas percolating into my sons' perception of themselves, others, and society, and this is how I have mitigated it:

 

1) My kids read as many genre's as I can find so that they don't get just one story. (a diet of historical fiction of white people is not good enough.  Throw in Sci Fi, distopians, humor, myths/legends, histories, plays, poetry, etc)

 

2) I use animal books to help deal with the injustices of the world (call of the wild and black beauty come to mind)

 

3) We read biographies because they are about real people with real problems:  The autobiography of Fredrick Douglas, The story of my life by Helen Keller, and some modern ones (The land I Lost comes to mind)

 

4) We link classics with our history studies so that we can place the author in a time period, and discuss how it affected the story.  We do this from a very young age with all read alouds.

 

5) I also think that you don't have to just use fiction. We read about other cultures using nonfiction.  My kids read National Geographic which is full of the beauty of other cultures as well as the injustices. 

 

6) And I will come clean, that my definition of 'classic' includes 'classics-to-be' so we read authors like Kurt Vonegut, Harper Lee, etc who are more modern.  And I have started to include modern *adult* award winners, like the Luminaries.

 

7) And of course, I talk to my kids enough that I have never seen them influenced by what they are reading.  Because I read so many of the books that they read, I can head off problems early and often.

 

Ruth in NZ

[lewelma]

Somehow I think Tom Sawyer is kind of a special case, compared to the other books I have come across, because it actually is about race, rather than just having a book about all white people with a random racist epithet thrown in, or the word used as to mean the color black. E. Nesbit's books have several surprises of that sort ("So we made nine holes in the ceiling with the poker, and put pails, baths and tubs under, and now there was not so much water on the floor. But we had to keep on working like niggers, and Mrs Pettigrew and Alice worked the same" in the Woodbegoods, and a character in black face + turban, described with the same word, in The Enchanted Castle). I bought a copy of Dr. Doolittle at a booksale that ended up being the original/pre-censored version, and Mary Poppins originally had a segment with "piccaninnies" in it, which has also been removed. These are all just plain offensive, with really nothing really to discuss or redeem. There are tons of books with an implicit acceptance of racist and/or colonial perspectives, such as the beginning of The Secret Garden, and a fake Chinese "accent" in A Cricket in Times Square. Ah well, at least Long John Silver wasn't against a little miscegenation. ;)

 

In Journey to the Center of the Earth, as you head into the center, the people get darker and more evil.

 

I threw Dr Doolittle in the trash can. 

 

My husband read Cricket in Time Square outloud to them so he could lose the accent. 

 

He also read Tarzan outloud and changed the words on the fly to native/ european from savage/ can't-remember-what.  But then he talked long and hard about the implication of colonialism.  I think kids can understand the injustices in the world so much better if they *feel* them, and for my kids they feel them through fiction not nonfiction.  Yes, a picture is worth a 1000 words, but my younger can't even stand to look at some of the pictures in National Geographic.  But he will listen to his daddy tell him about Tarzan and how the world was then and how it is still so similar now. 

[justamouse]

In Journey to the Center of the Earth, as you head into the center, the people get darker and more evil.

 

I threw Dr Doolittle in the trash can. 

 

My husband read Cricket in Time Square outloud to them so he could lose the accent. 

 

He also read Tarzan outloud and changed the words on the fly to native/ european from savage/ can't-remember-what.  But then he talked long and hard about the implication of colonialism.  I think kids can understand the injustices in the world so much better if they *feel* them, and for my kids they feel them through fiction not nonfiction.  Yes, a picture is worth a 1000 words, but my younger can't even stand to look at some of the pictures in National Geographic.  But he will listen to his daddy tell him about Tarzan and how the world was then and how it is still so similar now. 

The big theme about Tarzan, though, is what is man. What makes him man? I thought that was well embodied in that book. 

[lewelma]

The big theme about Tarzan, though, is what is man. What makes him man? I thought that was well embodied in that book. 

 

Yes it was, but what my 8 year old noticed was how the natives were depicted as evil people and that their culture was badly distorted in the book.  *This* is what needed to be discussed.

[Critterfixer]

I'll still take my chances.

And I like Great Expectations. I felt that if Pip could love Estella, then maybe, just maybe there could be something to love in her. Maybe only he could see it.

 

One thing I keep in mind when reading fiction that disturbs me on some level (and there is plenty that does--even my own writing disturbs me sometimes!) is that in some way, it's reminding me of the fullness of humanity. All the terrible and beautiful things people do to other people seem to find a voice in fiction that can be an unearthly scream at times. Other times it's just a painful reminder of where we have been and where we may return if we are not careful.

 

Sometimes I think that the best thing we can do with fiction is not to try to present a great deal of viewpoints, but to try to show that there is one over-reaching viewpoint we should gain. People are people. And we have moments of greatness and moments of great darkness. And fiction can help with that, because it tends to come out of the things we long to say but can't say for ourselves.

 

Somehow that sounded so much better when I was composing it. Probably errant nonsense. I need more tea and chocolate.

[justamouse]

Yes it was, but what my 8 year old noticed was how the natives were depicted as evil people and that their culture was badly distorted in the book.  *This* is what needed to be discussed.

 

There were also evil animals too, and evil natives and good natives? They were evil because they had a disregard for human life and animal life. Not because they were native. Tarzan was just as native (which was the purpose of the book?), what made him more fully man was his respect for the animals and the natives. 

[lewelma]

There were also evil animals too, and evil natives and good natives? They were evil because they had a disregard for human life and animal life. Not because they were native. Tarzan was just as native (which was the purpose of the book?), what made him more fully man was his respect for the animals and the natives. 

 

Absolutely.  Actually, given that my dh does our read alouds and the related discussions, I don't actually know what else he talked about with them as it was 2 years ago.  I love outsourcing to a trusted individual!

[stripe]

Yes it was, but what my 8 year old noticed was how the natives were depicted as evil people and that their culture was badly distorted in the book.  *This* is what needed to be discussed.

Not to mention the long history of regarding brown people as being somewhere between animal and human, if not firmly in the animal camp. I started to read a new translation Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) and it starts off with the ever-devoted and merry (aren't they all?) brown servant/slave -- here is from an older translation via Gutenberg

 

The two Americans had from the first determined to seize every chance; but although they were allowed to wander at liberty in the town, Richmond was so strictly guarded, that escape appeared impossible. In the meanwhile Captain Harding was rejoined by a servant who was devoted to him in life and in death. This intrepid fellow was a Negro born on the engineer's estate, of a slave father and mother, but to whom Cyrus, who was an Abolitionist from conviction and heart, had long since given his freedom. The once slave, though free, would not leave his master. He would have died for him. He was a man of about thirty, vigorous, active, clever, intelligent, gentle, and calm, sometimes naive, always merry, obliging, and honest. His name was Nebuchadnezzar, but he only answered to the familiar abbreviation of Neb.

When Neb heard that his master had been made prisoner, he left Massachusetts without hesitating an instant, arrived before Richmond, and by dint of stratagem and shrewdness, after having risked his life twenty times over, managed to penetrate into the besieged town. The pleasure of Harding on seeing his servant, and the joy of Neb at finding his master, can scarcely be described.

 

 

...so I had to put it down. Maybe one day I can take it up again. Who knows.

 

Even today, when a substantial portion of children are non-white, the vast majority of book characters are. It's just not my wish to have my children read only books whose characters are wealthy British boys on a country estate (or ordering around servants in the colonies). But then I also got a lump in my throat when reading the part in To Kill A Mockingbird about how mixed kids "don't belong anywhere. Colored folks won't have 'em because they're half white; white folks won't have 'em 'cause they're colored, so they're just in-betweens, don't belong anywhere."

 

Anyway, I think I'm leading your thread astray, but thanks for coming back and writing about how you address those issues. When you said that you only let your kids read classics, I thought you were saying one thing, but clearly, your method is very complex and your children read a lot, more so that you initially indicated, if they are reading more current books and loads of non-fiction.

[justamouse]

I really hate when old books start getting slammed because people had a different mindset and are't as PC as we'd like them to be. I am not here to push my own modern interpretation on an old book. And, FTR, I have AA in me, as well as South American Indios. 


 

[scrapbabe]

I really hate when old books start getting slammed because people had a different mindset and are't as PC as we'd like them to be. I am not here to push my own modern interpretation on an old book. And, FTR, I have AA in me, as well as South American Indios.

I agree. If we change old books to meet our modern mindset what do we learn about the people and places of the past? It kind of defeats the purpose.

[quark]

nm

[stripe]

I really hate when old books start getting slammed because people had a different mindset and are't as PC as we'd like them to be. I am not here to push my own modern interpretation on an old book. And, FTR, I have AA in me, as well as South American Indios. 

? I wasn't "slamming" old books. I was saying why I have difficulty reading them, and providing them to my children. At this stage in their life, I am trying to protect them from self-loathing, not to mention the idea that there is no place for my children to belong to in this world. Racism isn't something that I want to throw at them casually, like saying "nigger brown" is a color. 

[raptor_dad]

In Journey to the Center of the Earth, as you head into the center, the people get darker and more evil.

 

I threw Dr Doolittle in the trash can. 

 

 

The illustrated Books of Wonder version of Dr Doolittle lightly edits so the king wants to be a lion instead of a white man... this makes it acceptable for our family. The king is still vain and foolish but that is a common folklore trope...without the racist overlay.

 

However, I *completely* understand. A major bugaboo of mine is "Babar" which has encourages colonialism, racism, child marriage, aristocracy, etc etc... Perhaps the worst children's picture book of all times.

[idnib]

I'm a brown person who loved Great Expectations when we read it in high school. In fact, I was able to use it extensively in my MCAT essay because it dovetailed so nicely with the prompt.  :thumbup:

 

Going through high school In the U.S. we rarely read literature by non-white people and if we did, it was related to black people in the U.S. I don't recall reading anything African, Asian, etc. (Once I reached college that changed right in the first week, when we were assigned Maxine Hong Kingston.)

 

My parents immigrated here and I learned a lot of their culture from them and our community. I can't recall anyone of my friends from that community being offended about what we read. It could be true we were done a disservice because we thought of that literature as being representative of  this country, when in fact much of the melting pot was not represented. But we understood the context in which these stories were written and that the world was different then. (Our parents had been born in intact British colonies!) All it took was some explanation from the adults; we weren't idiots.

 

Seeing what an author wrote during their time and place offers a lot of insight into that milieu, a deeper level of understanding than the plot or symbolism. If someone can write casually about slavery or "merry slaves" we learn something about the environment in which they lived. Brown people understand that too and it's patronizing to think otherwise. (I'm not saying anyone here is doing that. But really, we understand times and cultural standards change.)  Maybe it's harder for white people to read it to their kids because they associate themselves with the offenders? If I try to imagine myself reading to my children something offensive or oppressive generated by my own people, it's feels yucky to me. I'm used to being on the other side, which is rather more comfortable, at least for me.  ;)

 

I'm not ranting, just procrastinating. They can look the same for me.

 

Getting back to the original topic, I picked up A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and DS is really excited. He's going to get to it right after Heinlein's juvenile books from Ruth's list.  I haven't had time to do the psyops Ruth uses, so it was more like, "Here. Read this. When you're done, read these." "Uh, okay." 

[ElizabethB]

We just finished your phonics program and the change in my daughter's reading ability was amazing. We were using McGuffey's first primer and had reached a point where she was just guessing at words. We stopped and used the Phonics Page lessons. She started reading the McGuffey reader right where she had left off and is flying through. Thank you!

😃

That is great!! You're welcome!

[justamouse]

? I wasn't "slamming" old books. I was saying why I have difficulty reading them, and providing them to my children. At this stage in their life, I am trying to protect them from self-loathing, not to mention the idea that there is no place for my children to belong to in this world. Racism isn't something that I want to throw at them casually, like saying "nigger brown" is a color. 

I didn't toss anythign at them casually, but I don't protect them. Not from fiction. Fiction is where they get to sort this stuff out, with me, right here to help them. 

[PeterPan]

bump

[Critterfixer]

I don't think Stripe is slamming old books at all. She's expressing the same sentiments that kept me from a good deal of literature for a long time. There are frankly, some classics that I actually should read again, because when I read them the first time, my outright dislike for certain characters kept me from any sort of enjoyment of the story. I am so glad that I didn't read Tolstoy until I was an adult. I would have hated Anna as a shallow, weak-minded, annoying woman. I know, because I felt the same way about Chopin's Awakening in college. Weak, silly, foolish women drive me NUTS in fiction. And don't get me started on Madame Bovary. I'm probably the only woman alive who felt it served her right to die the way she did. I had no use for them.

 

But I'd been through depression now. I've been helpless. I've been to places where I didn't feel there was a way out for me. I've felt that life was stale and worthless, and that if I didn't make my own adventure I'd go crazy. I think I'm in a better place now to tackle those works again, and sort out why this particular type of character makes me furious inside. (And it's not a stereotype, it's an archetype, which is different from what Stripe objects to, but it still makes me very uncomfortable.) 

I guess I'd suggest confronting what makes one uncomfortable in fiction by taking a single book that just bothers you deeply and working through it. I really must do that with this particular character. I've got one I'm working with in a story, and my dislike of her really makes it hard to write for her.

 

And I've also got dislikes of certain themes. I don't like dystopian fiction. it sort of goes against my grain of "if you don't like it, do something about it!" motto. (Which admittedly doesn't always work out so well...)

I get to sort out a lot of things for myself through fiction. It's not just for the kids.

[ktgrok]

I don't think Stripe is slamming old books at all. She's expressing the same sentiments that kept me from a good deal of literature for a long time. There are frankly, some classics that I actually should read again, because when I read them the first time, my outright dislike for certain characters kept me from any sort of enjoyment of the story. I am so glad that I didn't read Tolstoy until I was an adult. I would have hated Anna as a shallow, weak-minded, annoying woman. I know, because I felt the same way about Chopin's Awakening in college. Weak, silly, foolish women drive me NUTS in fiction. And don't get me started on Madame Bovary. I'm probably the only woman alive who felt it served her right to die the way she did. I had no use for them.

 

But I'd been through depression now. I've been helpless. I've been to places where I didn't feel there was a way out for me. I've felt that life was stale and worthless, and that if I didn't make my own adventure I'd go crazy. I think I'm in a better place now to tackle those works again, and sort out why this particular type of character makes me furious inside. (And it's not a stereotype, it's an archetype, which is different from what Stripe objects to, but it still makes me very uncomfortable.) 

I guess I'd suggest confronting what makes one uncomfortable in fiction by taking a single book that just bothers you deeply and working through it. I really must do that with this particular character. I've got one I'm working with in a story, and my dislike of her really makes it hard to write for her.

 

And I've also got dislikes of certain themes. I don't like dystopian fiction. it sort of goes against my grain of "if you don't like it, do something about it!" motto. (Which admittedly doesn't always work out so well...)

I get to sort out a lot of things for myself through fiction. It's not just for the kids.

 

Same here. I read the Awakening in High School, then College, then again after a bad marriage. Only then did it make some kind of sense. 

[Critterfixer]

Well, perhaps that adds yet another dimension to reading the classics, even ones you really don't like. Knowing where they are, and what they were, one can come back to them later and life and read them and find new meaning. But you won't be able to do that if you don't confront them in the first place.

Anyway, I know which classics I must pull off the shelf on my library run this coming weekend, don't I?

[sunnyday]

Well, perhaps that adds yet another dimension to reading the classics, even ones you really don't like. Knowing where they are, and what they were, one can come back to them later and life and read them and find new meaning. But you won't be able to do that if you don't confront them in the first place.

Anyway, I know which classics I must pull off the shelf on my library run this coming weekend, don't I?

 

Yes! One of my favorite definitions of a classic is a book that unveils more meaning with every re-reading. :)

 

FWIW I wrote a paper in college about how weird it was for Flaubert's language and word choice to urge the reader to sympathize with Madame Bovary despite her obvious weakness and deservingness of all that befell her. ;)