reading classic books to convince people I'm smart

"...I'm gonna pick up something fun and light, and I picked up 'Of Mice and Men'..." And my immediate reaction was: "oh no"

Having fun isn't hard--when you've got a library card!

"Flowers for Algernon" A mouse and a dumb boy become smart through a new drug. It is written from the POV of the 'Forrest Gump' character.

"Two dudes who have rabbits." Oh, Angela. Yeah I bet that would have been a surprise.

The Twilight Zone is HUGELY influenced by Bradbury. Both are fundamentally about the mid-20th century culture shock visited on a whole generation of farmers who went to war, went to the moon, grew up on farms, lived in cities. It's all about this wistful Americana stuff, often with a dark vibe to it.

Sooo... I love this series about books, because it encourages people to read and share their own thoughts about books, and that's great. Which is why I just want to give a little shout-out here to your local library. Yes, you have one. They're all over the place, and they're great. They're FULL of books! And you can check them out, for ZERO dollars. And they have librarians, who will help you find books. And if your life gets busy, they'll renew your books if you're late to dropping them off. Please support your local library. Thank you!

Re: Age of Innocence. I think I'd be nostalgic for the Gilded Age too, if I'd just lived through WWI and the 1918 pandemic.

"Cannery Row" is a really gorgeous Steinbeck book that is a lot less tragic! He describes the community of Monterey like critters in a tidal pool

I read a dozen 50 Shades books + The Iliad, so they all were like 300 years old, on average.

When you start reading in that accent.... GOLD!

I was born in 1970 and remember my Saturday morning cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny who had a recurring obstacle character (no name given(*)) whose defining characteristic was that he was huge and strong and dumb and would just grab Bugs and hold him saying , "I will love him and pet him and name him George." Being less than 10 at the time, I had no idea what that was referencing, but I found it amusing later in life. (*) no name given that I remember in the show, but we all know now it would have been Lenny.

I only now realized how a lot of Master and Margarita could seem a lot less funny to anyone not from former USSR as a lot of it is satire of USSR things - communism, state-regulated art/religion. Anywhere else writing a strange book about Pontius Pilate would be "whatever, you do you", not an act of rebellion One of my all time favorites

Oof East of Eden fucked me up.

Once upon a time in 1973, my mom and I decided that we wanted to go to the movies and relax with a “fun and light” lowbrow western. We chose “High Plains Drifter”.

If you'd like a short Steinbeck palate cleanser I recommend Cannery Row. Fun, good characters and setting (based on real people Steinbeck hung out with in those days, along with Joseph Campbell!)

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who likes The Master and Margarita 😞 But it hits different in Russian! My copy also came with A Young Doctor's Notebook, a series of his short stories about working as an inexperienced physician in a remote village. So miserable and surreal, it becomes funny.

I worked in a used/rare bookstore for 20 years or so. I had a lot of time to read and could take any book I wanted as long as I remembered to return it. The classics tended to disappoint me. A common issue was that the problems and concerns discussed in the novel didn't translate very well into contemporary society. So, it wasn't the author's fault that I didn't like it, they apparently succeeded in entertaining their own contemporaries. Of the ones I did like, it wasn't the plot or drama as much as is was getting a real sense for some other place and time. I was also doing research and publishing technical articles at the time and sometimes I wanted to give my brain a rest and found myself enjoying science fiction pulps from the 30s and 40s. The writing, of course, was generally bad, but the authors knew how to pace the story and put in the occasional twist. As a way to pass the time when my brain was on idle, they were fun. Another thing I liked about working in a bookstore was that I could grab a book I had never heard of, sit down and read it. Now and then, it ended up being a pleasant surprise.

I was supposed to read Grendel for a college class, but the week before I realized I had to switch to a different class. It's been on my shelf ever since. I'm definitely going to pick it up next

I find it strange that Pride and Prejudice seems to get a pass while Age of Innocence doesn't regarding rich people and their petty rich people problems. Pride and Prejudice is also about a bunch of rich people where the main financial insecurity isn't so much in becoming poor as much as it is becoming less rich. Yes, Age of Innocence did satirize Gilded Age culture heavily. The major sticking point of the book isn't really supposed to be that these are all terrible people (they aren't heroes, but I very much don't think they're that horrible), but that the culture in which they live in pressures them to make choices that are terrible for their lives that they can never undo and forever have to live with. I think the issue you might have had with it is that culture has moved so far past the 1870's and 1920's that it might not have resonated. People in 1920 would read it and go "Wow, people 50 years ago were so dumb and stupid and their culture didn't make any sense and was actively detrimental to people's lives." It's not that dissimilar to books now talking about how bad culture was in the 1950's or 60's, it's just that us in the 2020's resonate with that more because it's more relevant to us.

"The Legend of Curly's Wife"