Classics

[BJ Swabb]

So I been reading a lot of classics like The Grimm Fairytales, The Wizard of Oz, Oliver Twist, War And Peace, Treasure Island, and many others. I love the classics as they tell great stories and keeps you interested till the very end. I place classics in the fantasy section in my head as most are Fiction and Fairytales that deals with what we all write. My all time favorite Classic would be Les Miserables, and Peter Pan & Wendy. What are yours and why?

 

[Rexenm]

I got completely obsessed with a Rudyard Kipling short story, called An Habitation Enforced. It seems to be about black people. They travel far, after George sustains an injury, presumably his back, and Sophie looks after him, and a woman follows them across the world and tells them about this special place, after supplying them with drugs. They move to the Rockett’s farm, and the prospector dies, so they take over. I usually read it in one sitting, but the quote at the start says something about how it is written, something about a robin.

 

[Finchbearer]

My favourite classics include Treasure Island, The Hobbit, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Secret Garden, The Wind the Willows. I used to read lots of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl as a child, but I suppose they’ve been cancelled now they’re a product of their time, but I loved The Famous Five.

It’s nostalgia for me for those books. As an adult I’ve read lots of Jane Austen and actually only recently started reading work of the Brontë sisters.

Wind in the Willows and Persuasion are my rainy autumn day reads, they’re cosy and I love getting lost in those worlds.

 

[pmmg]

Ive much more recently in my life taken to classics. I would have never thought it knowing my younger self. I think i have enjoyed all but one so far.

At present i am enjoying the epic og gilgamesh. I am surprised at how smutty it is. But also not surprised.

I dont know which one is my fav. I usually say watership down. I have very much enjoyed: huck finn, to kill a mockingbird, scarlet letter, lolita, illiad and oddysey, 1984, jane eyre, red badge of courage, and a whole lot of others.

I like that they reveal their values, are like a time capsule in a way, and speak to something timeless.

 

[Finchbearer]

I found Homer hard going, maybe I need to give Iliad and odyssey another go.

 

[Rexenm]

I also like Lilith. That is a bizarre book. I lent it out often, because it was so endearing. It has a fantasy world of existential horror that the MC explores, that makes its way through the forms and vices of the reader and writer, both. It is short, but it seems like a place one could go, to disappear entirely.

 

[pmmg]

I dont remember much the voice of the Iliad anymore.

What was interesting to me was first, that it was not what I expected. I thought it would be a tale to showed much of the war as it has been portrayed in media, and include the events we all would recognize, and be mostly Greek are good and Trojans are bad. It was not that. It was very sympathetic to the Trojans and presented them as heroes. It ended right after the death of Hector, and never had the arrow to the heel scene even in it.

I was also impressed with the level of detail. There was not just fighting and some people died, but Greekne threw his spear, hitting Neslor above the left nipple and piercing out his back as his father Brentlor, the wool merchant, and his brother, in his fish scale armor, stood beside him.

Reading all the added detail had me believe this was not really a work of fiction, but was somewhat a historical account. Certainly seemed to know every one and their lineage, and the specific manner in which they fought and fell.

 

[pmmg]

Well, you might not like it, but for story voice, I thought Lolita did the best job of that. It was poetic, and well suited to the narrative and character. And through its window, we got see how one perspective can be so twistingly delusioned.

There are many I like for their story voice, Robert E Howard, Charles Dickens, GRRM, Edgar Allen Poe, Dostoevsky... But not all them really get that quality so it equally as important. Some, I really did not like the story voice, but...they still made it.

 

[BJ Swabb]

I like Jules Vern as well. She has some good details in her books.

 

[Finchbearer]

Russian classics are in my list including Lolita, although I can’t imagine it being an enjoyable read, but more thought provoking. Anna Karenina is also on the list which I began reading but DNF for whatever reason.

There are other modern American classics I have enjoyed including Catcher in the Rye, although Holden would annoy me now, To Kill a Mockingbird, and a few John Steinbecks - I found The Grapes of Wrath to be so heartbreaking, and it actually one story that has stayed in my mind for a long time.

 

[Finchbearer]

There was also a time in my early twenties when I got into Richard Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar was immensely enjoyable, but the one that stuck with me was So The Wind Won’t Blow it all Away, semi-autobiographical apparently, but we all know how that ended.

 

[BJ Swabb]

Then of course you got Tolkien's works which are very well done. There are no books like it. They are my all time favorite fantasy series. Then you got Don Quiote, Dracula, The Tale of Two Cities, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Moby Dick, the wacky Lewis Carrol Alice In Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass.

But then if you want to do more of modern classics that became popular over the last several years you got The Hunger Games, Divergent Series, Harry Potter, and recently though not really a class series yet (although I have always heard of it alot before I read them) are the FableHaven / Dragonwatch series by Brandon Mull.

 

[pmmg]

Well...I haven't read all the classics Some I dont know, and Watermelon Sugar is one I dont know.

I read both To Kill a Mockingbird, and Go set a Watchmen. I liked them both. Both are something I would have not wanted to read in my earlier life.

One I was really off put by, was Huck Finn. Southern river and sticks culture does not appeal to me. But Wow, I liked that book. Least until Tom Sawyer showed up. The language, and underlying development of the characters is just done so well.

Still, I thought Watership down was a little above them all. It just pulled in so much more than the others. Made up a language, a mythology, and captured the life of rabbits, while giving a very well crafted story.

 

[Finchbearer]

This is the general description of Watermelon Sugar…

Set in an imagined future where civilisation has been largely destroyed, a group of people inhabit a commune called iDeath and make everything out of Watermelon Sugar. An eccentric and bohemian take on the second coming for Adam and Eve, this eery yet beautiful novel is sparse, dystopian and strange.

It’s only just over a hundred pages long but it packs a punch, written in a style that I had never seen before, and was mind expanding to read.

 

[Ned Marcus]

I love the classics too. Ones that feel like fantasy to me include Milton's Paradise Lost (this really reads like a crazy epic fantasy) and Kim by Rudyard Kipling, which influenced some of Poul Anderson and Robert Heinlein's work. It has elements of fantasy. I also love the use of languages: Kipling grew up speaking Hindi (and Portuguese) as well as English, and Kim can slip between them easily.

 

[Mad Swede]

I think it was the late Sir Terry Pratchett who said that the very first stores were fantasy and that all other genres came later. But the classics, what are they? Do we mean the Greek and Latin classics? I loved Homer, especially the Iliad, but reading it was hard work. Or do we mean later European classics? I like Shakespeare, but I also enjoy some of von Goethe's work.

 

[skip.knox]

Years ago I started a reading list for my three children. It's over five hundred lines long; I doubt anyone wants to see that!

But I'll mention one work of genuine fantasy that hasn't been mentioned here, somewhat to my surprise. It's a marvelous work.
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White

 

[Mad Swede]

Years ago I started a reading list for my three children. It's over five hundred lines long; I doubt anyone wants to see that!

But I'll mention one work of genuine fantasy that hasn't been mentioned here, somewhat to my surprise. It's a marvelous work.
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White

Most people will only have heard of the first book, The Sword in the Stone, and then only as an animated film. But yes, the full story is very good.

 

[skip.knox]

The other two, as I'm sure you know, form the basis for the play Camelot.

 

[BJ Swabb]

I think it was the late Sir Terry Pratchett who said that the very first stores were fantasy and that all other genres came later. But the classics, what are they? Do we mean the Greek and Latin classics? I loved Homer, especially the Iliad, but reading it was hard work. Or do we mean later European classics? I like Shakespeare, but I also enjoy some of von Goethe's work.

Just classics in general. Anything from nowaday's classics such as Harry Potter to The Odyssey, to Peter Pan, to Les Miserables.