Holy cheerful reading lists, Batman!

[primsong]

My college age daughter was saying she felt she needed to read more classics so she could be better versed in what 'everyone' is supposed to have read.  We looked up a number of those 'top 100' reading lists that are published online and going through them one thing was very evident:  they were horribly depressing!  Seriously, anyone who sat down to read through these lists would delve into the depths of cynical depression by the time they were halfway through.  "Why," I asked, "don't any of these lists have a genius like P.G. Wodehouse on them?  Why do they have multiple titles by Depresso-Man Steinbeck but nothing featuring Bertie Wooster?"

So, after seeing multiple depressing, dystopian, cynical and dysfunctional title lists being thrust at tenative exploratory readers who then conclude they "don't like the classics" and wander off to youtube videos how about a list of GOOD books for a change? 

I'll start it off with pretty much the entire works of P.G. Wodehouse, add some Dorothy Sayers and C.S. Forester and say - tell me more!  Classic writers that are witty and funny and upbeat?  yes!!

Also, if any of you happen to know the whereabouts of a reading list that isn't half 'oh no, we're all gonna die' and the other half horrible titles people are forced to read in school programs because the reading lists were assembled in the 50s and never updated, please please show me the way.

Comments

[ex_2d96]

I couldn't agree more about P G Wodehouse, but even he admitted, in the preface to one of his books, that, as a writer of "light" fiction, he was looked down upon by some people. Presumably these were the literati, the nerglers who decide what ought to go on these lists.

There's also Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, but reading plays is not everyone's cup of tea. Acting them out with friends would be fun, though.

[primsong]

Ah yes, the nerglers. I've never understood the stuffy assumption that in order for something to considered seriously good, it has to be serious and depressing. Yes, we do realize reality includes things not always having happy endings, but to deliberately take moodly, impressionable adolescents and force them to read works about insanity, pointlessness, rape and murder without relief? Pbbbt!

Oscar Wilde can be good fun, not a bad idea, really. Thanks!