Check It Out: Easing into it
In my experience, the hardest part about picking up a masterpiece like Don Quixote is that it's just way too intimidating. It's a huge work, and I don't even know if I like this author. I'm too young to commit myself to just one book for the next six months!!
So I asked Olivia Tejeda from Towson's Ukazoo Books to help us ease into some of those oh-so-scary classics. She and her staff gave some great suggestions:
Read Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse before reading Mrs. Dalloway.
Read John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men before reading East of Eden.
Read Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms before reading For Whom The Bell Tolls.
Read Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables before reading The Scarlet Letter.
Read Ayn Rand's Anthem before reading The Fountainhead.
Read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose before reading Foucault's Pendulum. (NOW she tells me.)
Read Don DeLillo's Libra before reading Underworld.
Read Toni Morrison's Sula or Bluest Eye before reading Beloved.
Read Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer or I Married a Communist before reading American Pastoral or The Human Stain.
"Also recommended was reading Moby Dick twice," Tejeda reports. "It's much better on the second reading."
Comments
Read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before Ulysses. (Though I read Portrait more than a decade ago and have still not picked up Ulysses.)
Posted by: Dave | August 6, 2008 3:56 PM
Okay, Dave and Nancy, now you've admitted which books you haven't read, how about sharing which books you've read and enjoyed but are embarrassed to admit you liked?
Posted by: Darlene | August 6, 2008 4:46 PM
Darlene, that will be True Confessions, part 4: Guilty Pleasures. Coming Thursday morning. Sorry to keep you in suspense (as a mystery writer, you must be used to keeping others in suspense).
Posted by: Dave | August 6, 2008 5:29 PM