Random Ramblings challenged readers to create a list of ten books that have been most influential in their lives and to provide no explanation of why (thus giving you the reader an opportunity to be influenced or not in your own way). Roof Beam Reader and Brona's Books compiled lists.
Here is mine (in no particular order):
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Illustrated Treasury of Poetry for Children edited by David Ross
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- Getting Things Done by David Allen
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
For the record, just because I think a book influenced me it doesn't mean I liked it or even that I finished it.
The Classics Club Meme for October 2012 is "Why are you reading the classics?"
"One loses one’s classics. Oh not all. That is what I find so wonderful. A part of one’s classics remains, to help one through the day." --Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days
I am reading the classics because I think they provide a context for other reading (and for movies, and plays, and talking to people). I have read quite a few classics, getting a degree in English Literature made it very hard to avoid them. Some of them I loved and thought were amazing books that I enjoyed reading (The Great Gatsby, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Mrs. Dalloway). Others I didn't really enjoy much (Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans, The Red Pony). But whether I liked the books or not, I feel like reading works that are considered classics gives me the ability to have a deeper understanding of the world, of myself, and of the things--classic or not--that I read. When a novel or a movie makes a reference to something from one of the classics I have read I know what they are referring to which gives me a more complete understanding than I would have otherwise. The more classics I read, both in general and in specific genres like mystery or science-fiction, the more I will be able to appreciate the other things I read.
The other reason for reading the classics is that they speak to a universal experience that, as Winnie points out, can help on through the day.
