Desperately Wanting Wednesday: The Classics Edition

 

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What I'm Desperately Wanting:

So, I don't know if any of you have ever run across one of those lists, you probably have, that list books you should read before you die. My sister gave me a stack of books to read. She's heavy into reading the classics. You don't find her often with her nose in a vampire book or a young adult romance. I don't mind too much, since she reads in general. On this list, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, I have found I've read quite a few already. But I'm nowhere near 50%. Here are my picks of the classics I've been meaning to read for years.

I don't know what it is about the classics, but I have a hard time picking them up. I don't have a hard time loving them and devouring them, but for some reason, I will let a book sit on the shelf for months before finally picking it up. And then I will proceed to kick myself for doing so.  Some, like The Count of Monte Cristo, I have seen the movies, but never read the books. I am hoping to read the books at some point.

 

1984 by George Orwell

Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories—particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme—With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is fully of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps."

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmond Dantes is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of the Château d'If. Having endured years of incarceration, he stages a daring and dramatic escape and sets out to discover the fabulous treasure of Monte Cristo, and to catch up with his enemies.

A novel of enormous tension and excitement, The Count of Monte Cristo is also a tale of obsession and revenge. Believing himself to be an 'Angel of Providence', Dantes pursues his vengeance to the bitter end, only then realizing that he himself is a victim of fate. One of the great thrillers of all time, The Count of Monte Cristo has been adapted for film and television many times.