Hi, 24M here, been reading novels since the age of 10.
I am finding myself at a very peculiar position, wherein I tried reading War & Peace – my first try at a classic, and got only up to 2/3rds of it before jumping on to lighter stuff for a while. Its been a year and I am yet to get back to War & Peace.
In the meantime, I have enjoyed reading ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles & Hannibal by Thomas Harris – neither classics but much more refined popular fiction.
And this year, I am trying my hand at Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe – I love historical fiction – and I am again struggling with the language, especially the biblical dialogues.
So, again I jumped to one of my favourites growing up – Jeffrey Archer’s Honor Among Thieves – and I am finding the writing quite shallow!! Something I have never thought about his books.
I don’t know where to go from here.
by ponniyinselvam
30 Comments
Modern literary fiction is a good choice
Modern classics are a nice in-between. Try some Steinbeck maybe
It sounds to me like you’re trying to read more difficult books because you think you should be. You don’t have to read classics just because you’re now “older” — you’re only 24! And you don’t have to read them at any age, actually.
If you like reading historical fiction, read some that were written more recently.
Read what you actually like rather than what you think you should be reading — reading is much more enjoyable that way 🙂
There’s a whole world of books between popular best sellers and hundred year old classics.
Literary fiction books span all sorts of genres and will mostly contain deeper writing than the best sellers, while still being written in a modern vernacular so easier to understand than something written in 1850 or whenever.
There’s a very big world in fiction that’s between best sellers and classics. Not every novel has been turned into a movie or a tv show. Check your local bookstores and ask for recommendations, specially less known authors. You’ll be surprised on how many good books you’ll find.
How is it possible outgrowing the classics? There is an almost endless supply.
Agree with modern literary fiction. But also the 1900s (modernism and onwards). Don’t choose tomes 150+ years old.
Here are some off the top of my head, very different, try them out and see what you like: Stoner and Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, Provinces of Night by William Gay, The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas, The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Light in August by Faulkner, Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan. The Eight Mountains by Paolo Cognetti. Very random but..
True crime! Popular AND classic! Start with Lobster boy!
Modern classics. Stuff like, Handmaid’s Tale, Left hand of darkness, even some murakami or banana yoshimoto.
If you like historical fiction, may i recommend Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter? 😛
I’m around your age. I found Crime and Punishment and The Idiot somewhat taxing to read due to the mental capacity needed to look up complex words and understand the deep plot thoroughly.
Meanwhile I breezed through Almond quite fast. The simpler grammar helped a lot as I didn’t spend every 3 pages googling a word. And it feels more relatable to modern times and not too country-specific to the point I have to read up on context alongside the novel.
Just take your time. I find Steinbeck to be more manageable (and I think it’s still considered a “classic” of sorts?). The Great Gatsby was more of a chore than Steinbeck, but also doable.
Currently tackling Nabokov’s Lolita, and while I’m not sure if people put it up on a pedastle like C&P or W&P, I am breezing through it fast-ish compared to C&P. Even though I am still googling words here and there.
Good luck and most importantly enjoy the novels.
Well you either develop a niche interest, read whatever looks interesting or you go for modern classics.
Eons ago when this happened to me I ended up talking to the people at the bookstore and got their favorite books to read.
‘Classics’ aren’t always equally difficult. War & Peace is definitely one of the harder classics and Ivanhoe isn’t the easiest either.
It’s probably best to start with writers like Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens…
I recommend buying (or borrowing) companions or annotated editions to help you understand the classics. It’s a skill like any other.
War and Peace is a bit tiresome due to its length, but I found Ivanhoe super fun!
I’d recommend older novels that used to be popular genre fiction in their time, but are only now considered literary due to their age: Dumas, Doyle, Poe, Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson,
Adventure, horror, detective etc. are all good places to start and get used to older styles.
Overall I think the skill of “soft reading” (which one learns in academia) is really underrated: if you can’t understand a particularily philosophical passage and don’t think you’ll be able to easily figure it out at the moment, there’s no shame in just reading through it at a steady pace despite not fully grasping it. Put a post it im there to get back to if you feel like it, but otherwise just let the flow of the narrative take you over any bumps in the road. Audiobooks are a great way to practice this style of reading too.
There’s no “being ready” for the classics, they’re just books. No one gives you a license, you don’t have to earn it. Pick something shorter if you’re finding war and peace a bit dry. “Classics” can be light and easy reading, too. The Three Musketeers is a quick and fun read if you’re into historical fiction. Or Wilkie Collins ‘The Woman in White’ for an entertaining ghost story.
Read some Vonnegut
I would also look into those who are short or long listed for various literary prizes. Man booker is one of my favorites for literature in English. Perhaps “classics” aren’t your style but maybe branching out into different ways of finding contemporary literature would help!
Caveat: I love war and peace so we may not have similar tastes at all, so take with a grain of salt! (Plenty of classics I can’t get into, though, like Dickens, which many of my best literary friends love.)
If the old stories give you a hard time and you don’t enjoy them, don’t force yourself.
They may have been “bestsellers” in their own time but nobody will force a person to read Twilight in 2124 😉
You really did try jumping in at the deep end with War and Peace, didn’t you? Try something shorter and maybe funnier – Three Men in a Boat
I suggest The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. It’s my favorite book but I’ll warn you that readers here hate it and don’t think it should’ve won the Pulitzer.
I love it and read it every couple of years. I prefer the audiobook for this one. The main character is around your age and the story is beautiful.
I think it might be also partly due to translation and indeed the time difference between them and current way of writing. It could also be, because they’re very serious without any sense of humor.
Maybe try some easier “classics”, like Martin Eden or Don Quixote, those were written on a lighter tone with some selfspot from the author. Or indeed, as suggested above, Alexandre Dumas (just don’t read Monte Cristo, anything else is fine).
Try some John Le Carre
It may be time to just explore. I recently retired and it had been decades since I’d been able to read for fun. I had many years that I was so busy with the family that I didn’t read much then once they got older I changed careers and spent any time I had reading nonfiction to improve my business. When I was younger I loved horror, but don’t enjoy it now.
I decided to take a year to just explore a variety of genres so I joined a book club that had a genre of the month challenge which gave me a new genre each month and 4 prompts to complete during that month. I also selected 6 fiction and 6 nonfiction genres and set a goal to read 2 books from each. Since I get most of my books from the library and I had to read the books the same month I learned what the genre was I rarely got a new release or best seller. It was a fun year, I found a couple of amazing authors and I learned all about subgenres.
I think going into the year as an experiment and choosing books I knew little about really opened my reading horizons. I didn’t have high expectations from the books and was thrilled at how often I was pleasantly surprised. At the end of the year, I had a good list of genres I wanted to explore more and a much better idea of how to interpret book descriptions
Everyone has really great suggestions here already, but I just want to stress how important it is to read reviews of translations before you ever try to pick up an international classic.
Tempting to buy that really sick looking miscellaneous copy of The Brothers Karamazov from the thrift store or a garage sale. But if you actually try to read it, you’re probably going to have a bad time.
Unfortunately a lot of 19th Century writers felt like they needed to open with a lot of dull exposition, or a bunch of pontification that isn’t really relevant to the story. Classics got much easier for me to read when I realised that if you ploughed through the first chapter, the book would significantly improve.
Maybe try some of the lighter classics. The Three Muskateers is a fun romp, The Count of Monte Cristo is a gothic adventure/revenge story. They’re both by Alexandre Dumas.
I’d suggest Dickens as well, though he also suffers from boring first chapter syndrome. David Copperfield is one of my favourites. It’s a series of interconnected adventures and incidents in David’s life, so there isn’t one big grand plot. As a result, I feel like it moves faster. It’s also among his funniest, in my opinion. If you want a tighter plot, Great Expectations is one of the best.
Lastly, if you’re not allergic to female protagonists, Jane Austen is quite accessible/readable and also hilarious.
I know it’s lazy to recommend one’s favourite novel in every thread, but I think the Thursday Next series could protect your love for literature and carry you forward from where you are. It’s sci-fi or modern fantasy in an innocently mature, eloquent, but still light writing and playful style. The theme is…love for literature. There’s no other way to say it without giving away too much of the plot reveals across the first 2 books.
It’s a long series, but it can be a complete experience just to read the first 2 or 3 novels, so you don’t have to feel like it’s a long endeavour. You can be done after 2×400 pages.
**By the time you’re done, you’ll have gained an appreciation for notable characters from fiction from Shakespeare to Stephen King;** and you’ll feel much more curious to discover their stories – from the dense ones to the light ones, depending on how you’re feeling at that time.
As for your general reading strategy, I’d say just keep it balanced. For every 4 highly recommended intellectually stimulating but non-dense novels, read 1 non-fiction (potentially biography or letters – letters can be an amazingly intimate read), 1 classic, and 1 easy-to-read melodramatic YA novel (or more, if you’re in a rut; can be really useful for keeping up the habit), as you see fit.
>War & Peace
If you’ve never read classics before, don’t start with War and Peace. Go with Jane Austen or Robert Louis Stevenson. If my 9 year old self can read Treasure Island, so can you.
If you like Thomas Harris try Graham Greene’s incredible thriller Brighton Rock also there is some really excellent American Noir from the 30’s that is really worth reading. James M Cain is rarely talked about except in connection to the classic movies based on his novels but I think he is an excellent writer. The Postman only rings twice and Vera Drake are fantastic.
Barbara Kingsolver is a writer ,who for me, bridges the gap between genre fiction and literary fiction. I recommend her to anyone who is yearning for something more than bestseller level but still wants a good story.
Graham Greene, E.M. Forster, Kipling, Vonnegut may all capture the middle ground.
Pride and Prejudice is the most readable book ever, and one of the best novels ever.
I found myself in a somewhat similar place not too long ago, but maybe you’ll like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Bryce Courtney is a brilliant author, especially enjoyed his book Persimmon Tree. Great in between regarding the time lines and style of writing.