Help me become a great reader

[mikeweezer80]

Hey guys,
So I am 20 years of age and have realized in the last few months that literature is extremely interesting to me. I love reading, but honestly feel like i have never been a "reader". Sure, i have read books in my time but none that have expanded my mind to become the person i want to be. Perhaps i never read enough because i was too young, but now that I'm 20, the idea of sitting down and reading a great book is very appealing to my personality.

With that said, where should i start? I want to read fiction that is respected in literary communities, not crappy twilight/davinci code stuff my friends are reading. I want to make myself a list of beautiful literature and start a collection so one day i can have my own library. so far on my list:

alice in wonderland

Frankenstein.

Okay guys, please let me hear your opinions on these as starters, and also what you guys reccomend for the beginning of this journey.

[crisaor]

Those are fine for starters, if their arguments suit your tastes.

As a general rule, stick mostly to all-time classics or modern masterpieces and you'll never need to worry about suddenly encountering Da Vinci Code stuff.

I'll just throw some of my faves around, check them out to see if any of them strikes your fancy enough to add them to your to-read list:

Iliad
Oddyssey
1984
Brave New World
The Man Who Was Thursday
Catcher In The Rye
Hamlet
Macbeth
Lord of the Rings
Crime & Punishment
Dracula
The Name of The Rose
Paradise Lost
etc

There's a lot of good reading material out there, enough for several lifetimes, you'll have a hard time filtering it all. :D

[Hank Stamper]

jack kerouac 'on the road' got me started on my great literary journey... you'll get plenty of different opinions on here, but you'll soon work out what kind of books you like and what you don't... frankenstein and alice are good books to start with..

have a look at the sticky about lit net's top 100 books, the one's that keep recurring are probably a good indication of where to start

good luck!

[Tallon]

Maybe the best place to start would be great writers with simple styles, like George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene.

[JBI]

Just go to your library or bookstore and flip through the Penguins if you want classics. If you want contemporary works, well then that is more difficult, as you really need to guess before buying.

[tdahlke]

I would suggest going to a used book store or yard sale and trying to find some text books from a literature class. I have about five of them and am constantly finding good authors I've never heard of. By reading through them you can find authors you like. Most of them have a short biography and a list of other works for each author they include.

[Pecksie]

I'd suggest you start with contemporary, or at least not 'ancient', authors that are very good and easy, gripping reads at the same time. If you like science fiction, but want to steer clear of crap, Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. LeGuin would be good choices. If you like short stories with a twist, O. Henry and Raymond Carver might interest you. If you like horror, Horacio Quiroga or the great Edgar Allan Poe. If you like romance, Pushkin's or Turgenev's work might appeal to you...

There are hundreds of names, just go for it and don't be disappointed if you don't enjoy a book - just pick another, or else give it a chance and return to it after a time (and more books)!

[cipherdecoy]

Jane Eyre got me into literature. Actually, I think you should start with the classics and then move on to contemporary works, although you wouldn't want to start with anything too difficult because that might discourage you :P

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

Check out some H.G. Wells. Definitely a great Sci writer. Even though I've moved on, 'The Island of Dr.Moreau' is still one of my favorite books.

[mayneverhave]

Hey guys,
So I am 20 years of age and have realized in the last few months that literature is extremely interesting to me. I love reading, but honestly feel like i have never been a "reader". Sure, i have read books in my time but none that have expanded my mind to become the person i want to be. Perhaps i never read enough because i was too young, but now that I'm 20, the idea of sitting down and reading a great book is very appealing to my personality.

With that said, where should i start? I want to read fiction that is respected in literary communities, not crappy twilight/davinci code stuff my friends are reading. I want to make myself a list of beautiful literature and start a collection so one day i can have my own library. so far on my list:

alice in wonderland

Frankenstein.

Okay guys, please let me hear your opinions on these as starters, and also what you guys reccomend for the beginning of this journey.

I'm 20 as well. Glad to hear you're interested in actually reading something other than pop trash.

I started with The Great Gatsby, loved it, and then went on to Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. During this time, as you will have to do as well if you are truly interested, is turn largely to poetry in addition to novels, because most of the great work prior to the 19th century was in verse.

[bazarov]

Just go to your library or bookstore and flip through the Penguins if you want classics. If you want contemporary works, well then that is more difficult, as you really need to guess before buying.

My advice is to forget contemporaries and concentrate on classics.

[JBI]

My advice is to forget contemporaries and concentrate on classics.

Meh. contemporary literature is far more interesting in many ways. Still, one must throw in a read of the central classics, but when it comes down to it, the classics as we see them now only will last another 20 years, and then the list will be cut in half, and replaced.

[bazarov]

So classics have period when they are classics, and after that they are forgotten or replaced?

[JBI]

Sooner or later - the best will survive, but a canon of more than 1000 authors ends up being problematic, and eventually will cut itself to make room for new decisions.

No one can read everything - well almost no one. If a canon is to survive, it must keep only the best. Being that the best - which used to be only major European languages - is now somewhat up to debate, there is no doubt that the list will be butchered severely, to make room for eastern voices, as well as western ones, and not to mention contemporary ones.

Sorry to say, but I think the first to go will be the minor canonical figures, then people will start rethinking bigger ones.

As it is, the concept of the Western Canon is too dated - there shouldn't be a fear of reading contemporary novels, as those have as uncertain a future as many classics.

But on the point - tastes change. I don't think people will take well to, for instance, Enlightenment writers in the following centuries (though they haven't for two hundred years now), and we will probably see the dropping of those quickly.

The point is though, with the exception of a few voices, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Pushkin, etc. there is nothing to say that such a classic text is really worthwhile. Is George Herbert, lets say, more essential to the tradition than, for instance, Anne Carson?

If a canon is to survive at all, it will simply be cut down, and rebuilt. I think the first to go will be books that require too much additional reading, and aren't very essential, such as the most of the Enlightenment writers in English.

It's only a matter of time before translations from the east start coming. Combined with the fact that there are more good writers than ever now, it won't be long until the traditional canon is reduced to a slim fraction. The whole Dead White Man canon won't be beaten by culture critics, but simply because Aesthetic tastes now include a wider range of literature.

[DisPater]

no one can make you a great reader. it is only up to you and it is up what you read. while reading fiction you must also read criticism. just read and read various; read good books and read bad books. read from alexandre dumas to cortázar and rushdie.

[optimisticnad]

What's a 'great' reader? That will be a fearsome thing to behold!

If you google something along the lines of great books to read you'll get plenty of lists. I like what Tallon said the best - that maybe if you start with great writers with simple styles.

As for the struggle over classics or contemporary - both. I don't see the problem, you need both, without classics you can't understand contemporary fiction, you won't pick up on the allusions and other significant details. However your reading of a classic will inevitably be influenced by present circumstances, what contemporary fiction is often 'about'. And contemporary fiction can be a classic.

My recommendations
'old' Classics - Orwell, Bronte, Austen, Joyce, Samuel Johnson - ESPECIALLY PRINCE OF RASSELAS WHICH OFFERS TIMELESS ADVICE AND INSIGHT, CHARLES DICKENS!!!

Contemporary fiction - Auster, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, Martin Amis etc.

I think reading is a very very personal affair. For example I can wax lyrical till the cows come home about writers like Auster and Dickens but you may not like them. Which is fine by me. You need develop your own taste buds.

Best of luck

[JBI]

This isn't modernism - the collage of allusion style is somewhat out of favor - to some extent. We no longer see the pilings in the T. S. Eliot sense to such a high degree. Most contemporary poets I find like to write reflexive poems that turn onto themselves, not exterior sources.

The notion that you need to read the classics first only applies to a number of books - not all. Post-modern poets and novelists try, I think, to ignore classical references, such as to the Greeks, and build things on contemporary mythology more.

[promtbr]

Hey guys,
So I am 20 years of age and have realized in the last few months that literature is extremely interesting to me. I love reading, but honestly feel like i have never been a "reader". Sure, i have read books in my time but none that have expanded my mind to become the person i want to be. Perhaps i never read enough because i was too young, but now that I'm 20, the idea of sitting down and reading a great book is very appealing to my personality.

With that said, where should i start? I want to read fiction that is respected in literary communities, not crappy twilight/davinci code stuff my friends are reading. I want to make myself a list of beautiful literature and start a collection so one day i can have my own library. so far on my list:

alice in wonderland

Frankenstein.

Okay guys, please let me hear your opinions on these as starters, and also what you guys reccomend for the beginning of this journey.


I have quoted this because your OP was somewhat Hijacked and turned into a debate by a poster as to what constitutes "Classics" and what is accepted as a literary Canon, the mutability of the concept of a Canon etc...

I REALLY, REALLY envy you, as you have a FRICKIN' AMAZING adventure in store for you! ( I was where you are ab. 30 yrs ago).

I am going to give you some links to lists as a starting point to build a Literary Fiction libary. The lists is BY NO MEANS definitive. It is a starting point of SOME (and I empahsize only SOME) consensus of academics in the field as to what works you may want to add to your library. As others have pointed out, there are fore sure overated books in these. PM me if you want a personal opinion list of default WAY overated novels that time and again end up on lists like these..

But your library / reading selection is is a BIG part of your adventure!

One question I have is are you a student now? Have you had any intro Lit classes? Not trying to sound like an "educationist" or anything, but an apprecation of Literary Fiction IS enhanced if you have some basic tools.
(and no, I am not refering to the boring "Can You Name the conflict's" , "are the character's "flat" or "round" High School crap...)

If nothing else I am going to suggest a copy of The Rhetoric of Fiction by Wayne Booth. One can buy it used on Amazon for $9. It is NOT boring reading it is EASILY understood and a great spring board into giving a reader some insight into narrative techniques and their functions..

As a couple of astute posters have mentioned, DO think Globally!
Do NOT limit yourself to only writers in English! So take the two lists below of ONLY English novels as a suggestion toward possible titles as PART of your library/ reading list.

Lists of English Novels:
http://http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html (http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html)

http://http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E4DC1030F933A15754C0A96E9582 60 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E4DC1030F933A15754C0A96E9582 60)

I agree with the input you have received that not all the 20th Century works suggested have to have as a requirement to fully appreciate them a background in Older Classics: ie. Dante, Shakespeare, The Greek Tragedeans. A fair amount of Modernist works are so filled with allusions that their full understanding hinges on that familiarity (Joyce's Ullysess, for ex.)

You can easily find out from other references (internet or a library) which works are dependant on this context and which are less so. I agree, I would not begin your journey on a novel like Ulysses, but can you read and appreciate an earlier Joyce work like Dubliners ? ABSOLUTELY!

Here are two more lists that are more encompassing:

http://http://www.adherents.com/people/100_novel.html (http://www.adherents.com/people/100_novel.html)

The following two, in my opinion, are the better starting points, AS A FRAME OF REFERENCE :

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/may/08/books.booksnews (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/may/08/books.booksnews)


http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction)

Lastly, I would suggest the following forum. It is not as beginner friendly as this "Lit Lite" one. The community is one of truly global citizens and a little older average age (and a more informed -some are writers, translators, academics themselves...;) )

http://http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/ (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/)

[JBI]

Just so you know, your links are all dead.

[promtbr]

Just so you know, your links are all dead.

Edited and fixed them. Thanks for the heads up.