Classics R Good
Feb. 16th, 2009 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primsongJust thinking on how pleased I am that my three teens are reading at this time
Pride and Prejudice, (with plans for Sense and Sensibility)
The Three Musketeers (he just finished the Count of Monte Cristo), and
The Scarlet Pimpernel (she's going for 'The Elusive Pimpernel' next)
There's something that just fluffs my feathers about that. I grew up with an emphasis on books being classics 'for a reason' and usually being well worth a read, and they have rarely been disappointments.
A boy at my son's school sniffed at Musketeers and told him if he wanted to read a "real hard book" he should be reading Twilight - proof being when he held up his copy it was 'thicker' than Dumas' masterpiece. Heh. Of course, the effort to point out little details like size of type and width of margins was pushed aside. Oh well. I was pleased to find that class starting in on Kipling's Captains Courageous next - it has some gnarly, intense moments in it but I think those boys might enjoy a taste of a good, gritty sea story if they've been reading vampire fluff.
Pride and Prejudice, (with plans for Sense and Sensibility)
The Three Musketeers (he just finished the Count of Monte Cristo), and
The Scarlet Pimpernel (she's going for 'The Elusive Pimpernel' next)
There's something that just fluffs my feathers about that. I grew up with an emphasis on books being classics 'for a reason' and usually being well worth a read, and they have rarely been disappointments.
A boy at my son's school sniffed at Musketeers and told him if he wanted to read a "real hard book" he should be reading Twilight - proof being when he held up his copy it was 'thicker' than Dumas' masterpiece. Heh. Of course, the effort to point out little details like size of type and width of margins was pushed aside. Oh well. I was pleased to find that class starting in on Kipling's Captains Courageous next - it has some gnarly, intense moments in it but I think those boys might enjoy a taste of a good, gritty sea story if they've been reading vampire fluff.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 07:41 pm (UTC)This was one of the best decisions I ever made: so followed the Brontes, more Austen, Wilkie Collins (who I adore), Dickens, Hardy, Trollope... And I have a special place for The Three Musketeers. It's one of the core references in Fire and Hemlock, my favourite teen novel of all time. I was also intriguied because I guessed it wasn't quite like the cartoon... :lol:
Librarian. Don't get me started on books... ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 09:00 pm (UTC)I haven't read Collins or Trollope yet, but am now moving them into the queue on your recc, a bit of reading up on them does make them look intriguing. I went through a Dickens phase in college and literally read everything he wrote - there was the most magnificent set of his works in the college library, leather-bound 1890s with tissue insets over the illustrations. I had to separate some of the pages, they'd never been read! Ah, things that warm a booklover's heart.
I never cared much for Kipling either, but I did like this particular sea-tale. Then again, I very much enjoyed Horatio Hornblower's adventures and Patrick O'Brian's works so well-done sea stories seem to be to my taste.