Classics

I Was Late to the Classics Party

Jeremy Anderberg

Staff Writer

Jeremy writes and edits for The Art of Manliness during the day. By night he writes a little more, reads a lot more, and endlessly watches How I Met Your Mother with his wife, Jane. Follow him on Twitter: @JeremyAnderberg

gatsbyI’m a bit of a late bloomer as a serious reader. I’ve been a reader all my life, but up until about a year ago I stuck mostly with cheap thrillers and a lot of non-fiction. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. I haven’t abandoned those types of books. I just finally discovered, at the quarter-century mark of my life, that there’s more to books than Clive Cussler and Michael Crichton and David Baldacci. While I’ll always love those guys for really making me a reader, after the last year or so of reading mostly classics, I have a hard time picking up the latest thriller.

So how did I get here? What turned me on to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway? In high school, I even took AP English and Lit classes, I just didn’t read any of the assignments. The Scarlet Letter? Didn’t even take a copy of the book. Even something I probably would have thoroughly enjoyed as a 17-year-old, like The Things They Carried, didn’t make it into my tough schedule of playing video games and chatting with friends on AOL instant messenger after school. In college, I majored in journalism and religion, so didn’t get many classics even assigned in those four years.

Since about the middle of high school, I had a goal of reading 50 books a year. It’s pretty easy when you’re reading thrillers where the pages practically flip themselves. So I did that for about 6 years with no trouble. And then, I just got bored. I felt like I was reading the same stories, with the same fairly racist and sexist writing, and I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So I had to come up with a new book goal. 100 books? Only books that are 1,000 pages long? Stick to a single genre for an entire year? I needed to mix it up. While those goals would be fine, and certainly a challenge, I felt drawn to make my way through a list, like a proper book nerd would. But then the question was which list to go with? Something like the Best 100 Books would be perfect, but there’s about 100 of those. I had to get over my obsession with finding a perfect list and just pick one. I had recently started working for the Art of Manliness, where one of our most popular articles of all time is The Essential Man’s Library: 100 Must-Read Books. Granted, it’s certainly a bit dude-heavy, and a bit white as well, but I went with it. Again, no list will be perfect. Book lovers around the world just have to realize that fact and get over it.

I decided to only try to tackle one book off the list per month. That gives me about 8+ years of reading. It also gave me room to read other stuff on the side instead of being totally overwhelmed. Bear in mind, I’d not read really a single work considered to be a “classic.” So, I dove in, and haven’t looked back.

I started with The Great Gatsby, and loved it. In fact, I read it again just six months later, and I already feel an itch to pick it up for the third time come the new year. I could hardly believe that language could be so beautiful and form an incredible story at the same time. I thought pretty words were reserved for poems. And then I read Don Quixote. And then Frankenstein. And some Hemingway. And I can’t get enough. In fact, I’ve ended up going with far more than one per month lately because it’s all I want to read. I feel like I’m playing catch up with the great works of literature that I so foolishly passed over in high school and college.

While I admittedly don’t love everything I’ve read in the last year (Brideshead Revisited, A Confederacy of Dunces), I’m still glad I read them. Reading the classics has made me a better writer, a better conversationalist, has given me a greater understanding of humanity…but most importantly I really believe it’s made me a better friend, husband, and person.I’m a firm believer that the best books are the ones that teach us something about ourselves and the people around us. And that’s what truly makes a classic, in my opinion. When I look at Top 100 lists, while I certainly won’t agree with everything, I can pretty easily say that I can learn something from every one of them. And that’s the best gift that reading can give — the ability to open our eyes, expand our minds, and help us grow in understanding.

While I’m a little late to the party (I know, I’m only 25, but I can’t help how I feel, yo), I’m glad I joined in when I did. I’ve seen the best that reading has to offer, and I can’t wait to read the Dickens, Melville, Heller, and much more that sits on my bookshelf.

How did you discover the classics? Or maybe you haven’t yet? I want to chat about this with all of you, so please chime in! 

_________________________

Sign up for our newsletter to have the best of Book Riot delivered straight to your inbox every two weeks. No spam. We promise.

To keep up with Book Riot on a daily basis, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, , and subscribe to the Book Riot podcast in iTunes or via RSS. So much bookish goodness–all day, every day.