Leaving the New and Going With the Old – Classics I Own

Reading classics is one of those things that does come up in everyone’s reading life. Either school forces you or someone might comment that you should read your classics. Here is the thing though. Classics aren’t a must to be a reader, and don’t let anyone ever make you feel like that. And like all books, I don’t think the majority of these are for everyone.

Having said that, I personally do want to read classics now and then. I am interested in certain stories by the movies, tv shows and other books that are being inspired by these stories. A prime example of that has to be Pride and Prejudice. Who hasn’t heard of that Jane Austen book? I ended up liking it, actually. But I haven’t had luck with all classics that way. Frankenstein for instance missed its mark on me completely.

Even though I do want to read classics, I struggle picking them up to actually read. A lot of the classics aren’t that easily aproachable in writing style and language, even if the story can be a compelling one. This is what keeps me from picking them up on a whim. It is why I have made so little progress with my loose goal for the year when it comes to reading classics. Up until the end of August I had read zero.

And yet at the start of September I suddenly read 3 classics in a row. Granted, they weren’t the longest books. But all of a sudden there was this itch and I went with it. I read The Wizard of Oz, Treasure Island and Frankenstein. I have to say that the children’s classics are a lot more easy to get into. I quite enjoyed the simplicity to the writing of The Wizard of Oz.

Having picked up these three I realized how many classics I really own though (and those really aren’t counted along my tbr goal…). I like buying the pretty or cheap small editions of classics. As I am interested in some of them, I feel I want to have them on my shelf so I can pick them up whenever. And some of the pretty editions truly help with that. I also want to get to Roald Dahl’s books. I have read some of them, and maybe more as I can’t remember a lot of the books I read during primary school, but he wrote an awful lot.

So I made a list with all of the books I deem classics that I own in some way. There are some Dutch children books that are a bit on the border of being classics I think at the moment so I haven’t added those right now. Striked means I have read them.

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Classics – Read 8/32

1. Beauty and the Beast
2. A Tale of Two Cities
3. The Complete Sherlock Holmes
4. Alice in Wonderland
5. The Hobbit
6. Lord of the Rings
7. Tolkien, a Dictionary (not technically a classic it self but as it deals with Tolkien I’ve added it)
8. Around the World in 80 Days
9. King Solomon’s Mines
10. 20.000 Leagues under the Sea part 1
11. 20.000 Leagues under the Sea part 2
12. Great Expectations
13. Snow White (Illustrated)
14. The Time Machine
15. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
16. Irish Fairy Tales
17. Tales from the Arabian Nights
18. English Fairy Tales
19. Rip van Winkel, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
20. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
21. Pride and Prejudice
22. Northanger Abbey
23. Emma
24. Jane Eyre
25. The Lost World and Other Stories
26. The Three Musketeers
27. The Man in the Iron Mask
28. Madam Bovary
29. Wuthering Heights
30. Robin Hood
31. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
32. Winnetou

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Children’s Classics – Read 12/20

1. Treasure Island
2. The Wizard of Oz
3. Matilda
4. The Wind in the Willows
5. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (Narnia)
6. Prince Caspian (Narnia)
7. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Narnia)
8. The Silver Chair (Narnia)
9. The Horse and His Boy (Narnia)
10. The Magician’s Nephew (Narnia)
11. The Last Battle (Narnia)
12. The BFG
13. The Witches
14. Nobody’s Boy
15. Peter Pan & Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
16. Jungle Book and the Second Jungle Book
17. The Secret Garden
18. Boris
19. Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter
20. The World of Pooh

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Audiobooks (Children’s Classics) – read 2/6

1. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
3. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
4. George’s Marvellous Medicine
5. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
6. The Enormous Crocodile

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Ebooks – read 4/7

1. The Count of Monte Christo
2. Les Miserables
3. Sense and Sensibility
4. Grimm’s Fairy Tales
5. Frankenstein
6. The War of the Worlds
7. Dracula

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So how is reading classics for you? Do you own many classics? Would you like to?