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Yes, but also no. Let me explain. Reading is one of those things that sounds nice in theory, but that quickly devolves into social media scrolling in practice. There are plenty of reasons why this happens, and I wouldn't say the reader is necessarily to blame for any of them. Smartphones have obliterated our attention spans and are always within reach, so it's unsurprising that our minds instinctively claw for another dose of dopamine whenever they sense a dip in stimulation. And let's be honest, despite reading being one of the most rewarding pastimes, it isn't exactly the most immediately stimulating one available.
But this isn't going to be about the scientifically proven stress-reducing, empathy-enhancing, brain-training effects of reading. It's not even going to mention—more than once, I promise—that avid readers are 32% less likely to develop Alziemers due to increased neural plasticity. There are already plenty of those pieces online, and what's interesting is that pretty much everyone agrees with them and tries to change accordingly.
For a little while, anyway. Because that's the thing, like exercise, everyone thinks that reading is a more valuable use of their time than short-form videos. They're right, too. But, damn, is reading supposed to be so tough?
We all feel as though we know how to read; we are, after all, technically literate. But making it beyond the character limit of most status updates and posts is a muscle that atrophies and stiffens and then strains to breaking point when finally pushed back into action. If you've got nothing else to do - like literally nothing at all - maybe you'll keep it up. But suppose you happen to live in the current century. In that case, there is always something else to do, most of which is, more or less, completely meaningless but instantly gratifying. We are surrounded by a bottomless buffet of distractions, our plates heaped high with new movies, television shows and video games. Not to mention the slimy dollops of mostly meaningless content our phones spoon over the slop. Most of what's on offer is cheap, greasy, unfulfilling and usually leads to starvation via choice paralysis. Then, nostalgia beckons to a well-worn spot on the couch, and we plop down in our comfort zones anyway.
But what if, like many people, the only books new readers have picked up in the last few years were for education? There are plenty of potential new readers who were once broken on the rack of required reading, whose teachers started them with Hamlet at age thirteen or who really liked young adult fiction until they had to analyse Finnegans Wake on day one of university.
Glancing back at my initial struggle with reading as a pastime, I see avoidable hurdles that would have made it much easier to take this marathon at my own pace. I hate to say it, I really do, but avoiding the classics, at least for a little while, is one such hurdle to sidestep. I know this may raise a few eyebrows, and I promise to defend the classics and the spectrum on which they exist, but just hear me out for now. Okay?
One of the first problems new readers will face is that many books that have bled into their awareness are likely to be the classics. We're talking about the big dogs, the 800 pagers, the densely packed and nuanced dust collectors like War and Peace and Moby Dick. But here's the Catch-22 (lol): most of these are books are on the tough end of the classic's spectrum, ones that even veteran readers often claim to love despite hitting the same walls as everyone else.
Personally, I only finished Moby Dick this year after over a decade of false starts. This was one of the first books I naively decided to read after literally not touching a page since high school. Herman Melville is hardly to blame for what happened. Moby Dick is one of those classics that even its contemporaries found inscrutable. But everything you see about it online says it's a staple of modern literature and a real big-brain thing to be seen reading, so by definition, it means you don't belong to this apparently exclusive club if you can't keep up. I nearly abandoned recreational reading entirely, and despite being really determined to stick with it - and, plot twist, actually write a few books myself - I'm not sure I would have come back if the attention-sucking features of smartphones were as realised then as they are today.
This is my main reason for cautioning new readers away from the classics. There's no gatekeeping involved here or any literary pretension, just the reality that some of these books are intimidating to literally everyone. Once you're ready, though, you'll find that many of the classics have aged surprisingly well and are worth untangling. (Not The Scarlet Letter, though, an incredibly tedious story even if Nathanial Hawthorne was totally a pioneer, and no, actually, it is bad and I will die on this hill.)
Anyway, just to torture the exercise analogy some more, you wouldn't go from bench pressing the bar at the local gym to lifting twice your body weight at the Olympics. Whether it's the language, the style or the context, the classics are generally very hard and sometimes slow-boiling books. In recent years, I would even say that the classics have pushed far more people away from reading than those they have managed to welcome. These are the classics, after all. Everyone totally loves these books and agrees that only smart people are capable of liking them, right? So, maybe reading just isn't your thing, huh?
Wrong. Chances are that the classics simply aren't your thing… yet. Maybe once you've trained those reading muscles on something a little more accessible, then the classics will totally be your thing. Then again, who knows, maybe they never will be, which is also fine. Even modern classics that have shaped society, like Divine Comedy, for example, aren't what we would call modern page-turners and may sit half-finished on your reading list for years. That's okay; they're not going anywhere, let alone out of print. This, incidentally, is another reason many new readers may gravitate towards the classics. Thanks to publishers like Penguin and Vintage, the classics have achieved iconic visual status (yum, orange!) and remained comparatively affordable (yum, cheap!).
Speaking of companies, I'm going to take a very quick aside here to mention that books are one of the few ad-free bastions available to us in our spare time. Everyone involved in keeping them that way deserves a huge amount of respect for not printing a Mark Walberg crypto scam in the middle of Little Women.
Anyway, this is all very much my experience, and I've found that there are simply too many instantly gratifying yet hollow temptations while you're recalibrating your attention to reading's worthwhile demands. Then again, you are also likely much smarter than me and might have more initial success with the classics. So, if you're a new reader tempted to persevere with the classics, here is some earnest advice from one who nearly failed.
Here's a big one, you should be reading the intros. Crazy, I know. I'm advocating for this pastime by telling you to read what many see as the skippable section, the cheat pages that allow you to feel like you've made more progress than you perhaps have. But context is often the key to unlocking the classics. Knowing why a book was important or innovative and why the author was glorified or ostracised often opens up shortcuts to appreciating the story.
Likewise, and this is going to deeply offend some readers, I would even recommend reading plot synopsis and spoilers before the actual classics themselves. That's because…
No, let me finish!
That's because the classics are notoriously meandering in sections and outright confusing in others. There are good reasons for this. For example, both Great Expectations and War and Peace were originally published episodically. Even a comparatively tiny classic like To the Lighthouse is exceedingly tough to follow, and knowing the scene structure of each page frees the reader up to actually enjoy the insanely impressive writing.
On this, new readers interested in such things should absolutely check out the literary tricks ticking beneath the surface of more interpretive classics like Metamorphosis and The Master and Margarita. Nothing turns a hobby into a chore like trying to untangle just what this giant beetle means or exactly who this cat is supposed to represent while simultaneously attempting to refire your synapses. This is especially true for anything satirical, something many of the classics are out of necessity.
Understanding which historical figures Animal Farm skewered between its pages, or how deeply Pride and Prejudice lodged a tongue in its cheek is, in my experience, a way for new readers to bypass the sometimes confusing language and feel clever for spotting the things they knew were waiting to be found. Then there are the classics like Heart of a Dog and The Trial, where the story is more or less obscured beneath fine details and devices. And just to draw on my earlier point about introductions and context, once new readers know why certain classics are like this, they may form a whole new appreciation for the quite contemporary plots hiding beneath the surface. Thanks to the residual trauma of high school reading lists, new readers may think everyone expects them to figure things out for themselves, that it demonstrates some sort of character growth, or that spotting the meaning behind one classic will totally translate into another one that was written like one-hundred years later.
But the point of good and subtle satire is that it remains pretty much indistinguishable from the reality it is attempting to imitate. Many classical writers, particularly the Russians, were published at a time when taboos and political commentary could get you gulag-levels of cancelled. As such, some classics behave like angler fish; the light from the good story lures in unsuspecting new readers, who then find themselves between its literary jaws. Back in the day, this gave the authors a modicum of deniability despite everyone totally knowing what they were trying to say. But now, unless new readers happen to be experts in the Russian Revolution, a lack of prior knowledge makes some classics seem kind of lame and confusing.
Look, no one is expecting new readers to teach a university course on these books, and while you should read them one day, the important part now is to have more fun doing this than scrolling your phone.
But digging into the deep lore of the classics is not always the solution. New readers should approach some classics as if they were brand-new stories with no roots in popular culture. These include pretty much anything that modern media companies have spent the last century rehashing, franchising and merchandising. For example, you won't find much of modern Dracula or Frankenstein in, uh… Dracula or Frankenstein. When reading classics like Alice in Wonderland with modern adaptations in mind, new readers may experience a steady flow of unmet expectations that ultimately end in anticlimax if they approach classics like Alice in Wonderland expecting the psychedelic drug frenzy popular culture has spiked our drinks with. Personally, I spent most of Frankenstein waiting for the monster to go on a crazy killing spree that just never really happened. Then I felt ridiculous for expecting this, and then I wondered if I was the problem or if reading just didn't click with me.
This circles back to my point about prior understanding of context, technique and plot. Crime and Punishment is routinely described as this horrific psychological thriller, and while it certainly is these things, Raskolnikov's crime just doesn't seem so heinous compared with today's weirdly popular serial killings. Of course, this is not the sort of shock factor the story was going for, and I think it helps to know this before diving in and wondering why some old crone getting her skull caved in basically shook the moral foundations of an entire generation.
It's completely understandable why modern expectations and interpretations sway new readers from reading other books. The classics can make reading seem, to be honest, a little bit lame at times. This is such a shame, considering that modern books and the risks their authors take are routinely more shocking than many other forms of media. Maybe it's because not as many people are paying attention to the source material, or maybe it's all that mass appeal studio money, but, ironically, movie adaptations are often considerably watered down compared with what was on the page. Again, new readers are more likely to approach the classics because they wear modern masks rather than face the overwhelming choice paralysis of selecting something more contemporary but random from the shelves.
This brings me to another reason new readers should initially avoid the classics. There are all sorts of possibilities to punch into a search engine when looking for books to buy. A common theme is to make reading seem dangerous, cool and sexy, which it totally is most of the time, but searches for most controversial books ever or best banned books mostly bring up the classics. Thing is, historically controversial vs currently controversial are two very different things, especially in an era where, as new readers are keenly aware, books aren't such a big deal anymore. There's also the caveat that unless you happen to live beneath a repressive regime (or in Florida), then banning books is a mostly impossible and always stupid thing to do. As a result, readers eager to catch a glimpse into the literary backrooms are in for a surprisingly underwhelming experience. Most recent examples of banned books simply involve hardline conservatives coping with the existence of the LGBTIQ+ community.
Don't get me wrong, many of the classics on these lists are incredibly brave and profoundly important to society as a whole. Especially the politically motivated ones that have more than earned their place in the literary canon. Brave New World, The Grapes of Wrath, The Handmaid's Tale and, of course, 1984 contain timeless and often unheaded cautionary tales. These are all super worthwhile books, but again, they don't come across as particularly shocking by today's standards. New readers may understandably assume that reading is a dusty old thing.
But quite a few of these classics (like a whole lot actually) only wound up on these lists because of 19th century America's refusal to admit that people were, in fact, having sex or that minority groups did, believe it or not, have agency over their lives (and were also having sex) or that violence was not just something that good guys like Americans reluctantly resorted to for noble reasons (like to have more sex) or that, God forbid, women were even real people (who enjoyed things like having sex). To put this into perspective, the country that has since normalised school shootings once banned both Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games because the pearl-clutchers figured reading them would turn kids to violence. If you've seen The Hunger Games adaptation or The Simpsons' spoof on Lord of the Flies, you can probably see what I'm trying to say about these books being, yes, very good, but no, not particularly shocking.
Confronting, sure. Lolita is no stranger to these lists and despite how crazy good it is, it definitely comes with an ick factor. And while you'll probably bump into 120 Days of Sodom somewhere along the line - which is honestly just an incel's extended shitpost - the idea of banned books as these saucy underground commodities is relatively old-fashioned. Mind you, there are exceptions. The Satanic Verses is an inevitability when searching for books in this way, but the manufactured outrage and offence that surrounds this book imply that it's much more accessible than it is. Admittedly, this is more of a modern classic, though it is worth mentioning because the sensationalism surrounding its publication encapsulates everything I'm trying to get across. This book benefits from prior context, technical insight, plot awareness and the realisation that it's not as crazy as modern media may have you believe.
So, are lists kind of useless to new readers, then? Do they just rehash the classics with clickbait that leads new readers into potentially disappointing decisions? Not always, but pretty much all the pitfalls detailed throughout are the same ones new readers may plummet down when they perhaps inevitably type best books ever into a search engine. While these lists are comprehensive and considered, new readers who act on their recommendations are in for a bumpy ride. Check this top five, for example.
1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
3. Ulysses by James Joyce
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
5. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Ooft. Like with all the classics, there's a spectrum at play here, and it ranges from intimate to impenetrable, and while these lists certainly contain some of the best books ever written, they are invariably compiled by people who already know perhaps a little too much about literature. Going from reading nothing but social media comments all day straight to a single page of Ulysses is enough to scramble anyone's brain. Believe me, I know. Hell, even jumping directly from The Great Gatsby to In Search of Lost Time feels like cramming your skull through a keyhole. Plus, even if The Catcher in the Rye (which is possibly the most straightforward here) sucks you in with its single iconic character, new readers brave enough to then attempt One Hundred Years of Solitude will immediately find themselves consulting the book's family tree because there's like a million José Arcadios being iconic seemingly all at once and God help you if you have an edition without the family tree.
Yes, while all of these books are notable destinations, they are not the best way to start your journey. But again, this is my experience, and I'm not the sharpest tool, etc., so if you're feeling bold, then the same suggestions above apply. Read the introductions, glance at the book's cultural significance, look over interpretations and plot synopsis, and then, the really important part, try to just enjoy the writing.
The whole point of this hasn't been to sneer at the classics and call them out for being big, lame nerds. The classics are incredibly important to even those who never read them. Even if some are kind of problematic or just bad by modern standards, they form the building blocks of both popular culture and modern society while serving as cautionary tales and milestones for how far we have come. I also understand why school curriculums force-feed kids the classics. These books are drenched in humanity and dripping with culture; they are indispensable to empathy and the cultivation of critical thinking.
I'm really not trying to make an argument against them. I've read every classic mentioned here, and while I wasn't a fan of all of them (fuck you, The Scarlett Letter, seriously), the ones I tried to tackle early on very nearly broke me, both mentally and physically, and saw me spending more time on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II of all things than with these books I came to love. I wouldn't be here, writing this, or either of my two books or currently reading my 507th book on Goodreads since picking the pastime back up if apps were as distracting then as they are now.
There are so many more accessible books that can do for new readers what the classics have done for centuries. At a time when we are losing even veteran readers to modern distractions faster than we are gaining new ones, I'm not sure we should force students or adults to pay a toll on the classics before training up on something contemporary. And, honestly, who cares if new readers never return to the classics or if they permanently settle into a comfortable corner of genre fiction or fan fiction? Reading is hard and should be applauded and encouraged in all its forms. Give new readers a chance, for chrissake, and if you have made it to the end of this piece, rock on. It gets easier. I promise.