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One of my friends once said that the reason people don't like classical books is because we don't fully understand it. Like for a reading assignment we had to read Far from the madding crowd, the first time round I hated it, but second time round I grew to like it
| Yes | 40 | |
| Maybe | 18 | |
| No, not really | 11 |
I love Classic books, they're classic or a reason! But I definitely agree that if you don't fully understand the book then you can't get the same result from it!
I completely agree. I tried reading Shakespeare when I was 12 or 13 and found it largely impenetrable. At 14, we did Julius Caesar and the teacher picked each member of the class for a character in the play (based on our personalities) and we had to read our lines aloud. After each line that could be confusing, he stopped and explained what it meant, and why it meant what it meant.
Without that, I may still not understand Shakespeare. And I would be missing out on so much.
Sinuhe is a classical Finnish book. Critics loved it. But I think it's one of the worst books I have ever read... Just so boring.
And I don't think it's because of me not understanding it. It's a simple story. Even if there was a deeper meaning to the story, it's still a fact (to me) that the story was boring.
I think a lot of it needs explained but once you get over that, you can relax and enjoy it. I thoroughly enjoyed Chaucer but I was one of the very few who understood the language.
I have no problem enjoying a Pratchett but older books take longer to read. Sometimes we have trouble relating to a generation centuries before ours.