Reading means so much more than just hovering over words. It’s about places that exist just in our minds, characters we fall in love with, characters we do not fall in love with, characters who become a part of us because we try to mirror them. It’s about escaping and exploring all that there is, and yet a single snuff of book-smell gets us back to reality. (There is no denying the fact that we all love book-smells.)
My favorite genre is fiction, and I am an admirer of classics. From the works of Jane Austen to George Orwell, I have been a devotee of classics since I first laid my eyes on them. Holding hands, writing letters, running through castles, ball dances, complicated lives of the characters- they all have a part of me. The plots, the character developments, descriptions, emotions, and the vocabulary have made it hard for me to move on from Classic Literature. They are like time travel, they take us to a time when we didn’t even exist and portray the lifestyle and the society that existed back then.
Now, the question is, “What does classic literature have that today’s novels don’t?”
Classic literature is so much more than just love, friendship, and emotions. They weave a story of relationships and feelings with a historical perspective. They exhibit relationships and emotions with the bleak time that this world has seen. History becomes easier to understand when you read it and see different views of it through the eyes of various characters. Classic Literature shapes our personality and makes us retrospect our own lives.
Here are some of my favorites-
Animal Farm- George Orwell
Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
Hamlet- Shakespeare
Moby Dick- Herman Melville
Do let me know about yours.
Animal Farm, especially among all, is one of the novels I can go back to anytime. It has much deeper connotations. It stands for any human society- socialist, capitalist, communist or fascist. George Orwell has shown an unpleasant aspect of society. It is a story that can be easily related to today’s world.