Classics

I am always on the lookout for great recommendations from well-read folks. How about your thoughts on authors/books that you particularly enjoyed but do not receive the accolades or top-of-mind mentions as Great Literature that you think they deserve?

A few years ago, when I was looking for new authors to explore, I started reading the Modern Library's list of the top 100 books of the 20th Century. Lists and rankings are, of course, rather silly ways of thinking about great books, but I thought it was interesting in that there were books and authors on that list that I had never heard of. Now, I wasn't an English major so maybe I was just less familiar with authors beyond the usual suspects, but I consider myself to be more clued in than the average person as I read a lot.

In any case, I came across a few books thanks to that list that I really loved and it made me wonder how they had slipped a bit more into obscurity. A couple of favorites were The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett and Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara.

Let me know who else is out there that I should be checking out!

Jane Eyre is one of my five favorite books. I don’t know what the other four are, I just know that Jane Eyre is one of the top five.

I identify strongly with Jane. I know several other guys whose favorite book it is as well, and who identify with her.

In the current Norton Critical Edition (3rd, 2000) there is an essay on the book by the poet Adrienne Rich. It’s a great essay, but reading it you would assume that Jane Eyre was, if not strictly a “girls’ book,” then one that was overwhelmingly more meaningful to women readers than to men.

Now, it’s impossible to make objective judgments about subjective states of reading, but nonetheless I find it difficult to imagine that Jane Eyre is fundamentally more meaningful to another reader, just because that reader is a woman, than it is to me.

What do you think?

Gregory Knapp
Forums Editor