In creating my Library Thing online list, it was quite obvious that I read way too many murder mysteries. If (hypothetically speaking) I wanted to become 'well read', what are some of the 'must reads' to begin with? I did a search for 'literature classics' and discovered many lists by many different people with many different opinions, such as:
Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck
David Copperfield by Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Some of these sound very stuffy and boring, but look what I came across at Amazon when searching "American literature classics":
You're no idiot, of course. You know that Samuel Clemens had a better-known pen name, Moby Dick is a famous whale, and the Raven only said, "Nevermore." But when it comes to understanding the great works of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, you'd rather rent the videos than head to your local library. Don't tear up your library card yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Literature teaches you all about the rich tradition of American prose and poetry, so you can fully appreciate its magnificent diversity.To read, or not to read (the classics), that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
Through the sedative effects of dusty tomes,
Or to set upon a quest for same celluliod chronicles,
And to die not well read but well viewed.
