Alas, I have read far too few of the tomes of "classic" literature.

I will share a couple of my favorites from the limited selection I've had the pleasure of experiencing, it is just that the reader is best off if aware that I am not even considering some of the greats. For instance, I am at the very beginning of Dickens's /A Tale of Two Cities/ -- it is well nigh possible that is one of my favorites, dear reader, but I am not free to look in the future and inform you of that. We have a limited time, here.

I had an immense aversion to classic literature in my public education days, because everyone assumed, with my love of reading, I should be reading such novels. It was a form of rebellion. Thus, one of the dearest classic novels I have ever read is /Jane Eyre/ by Charlotte Bronte. I read it of my own accord, dear reader, over winter vacation my junior year of high school, and was entirely taken by the book. It is a beautiful novel, and at the time I felt so connected to Jane.

Years later, I would add Jane Austen's /Persuasion/ to that list. It is one of the three novels I worked with when crafting my thesis for English, and the one I most love. My aversion to Austen was unfounded, and while I look forward to further forays into her collected works, /Persuasion/ will likely remain in its special place. It is an autumnal work, they say, and there is something beautiful and painful about it, especially the infamous letter scene towards the end.

One of my favorite professors, from whom I learned the joys of Chaucer, told me about this poignant scene (entirely without spoiling it) before I read it, and she said I would know it when I got there, and that it was magical. Dear reader, it is. If you have not read /Persuasion/, I hope this will persuade you! There is magic in that slim volume!

Well, since you've got it in the photo, Lord of the Rings. There are simply layers of meanings; the different societies are described in such a detailed way; Tolkien looks back to several different northern European mythologies and weaves them into the story; he constructed whole languages for the various cultures in the book; he's great with the poems and song lyrics in the books.

I never have really thought of LOTR as a "classic" before. I guess it is. If I took it out of the picture, then it would be the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. It's supposed to be a set of stories told by a group of nobles heading up into the hills to escape the Black Plague, kind of along the lines of The Canterbury Tales. Some of the stories are bawdy; others are tragic. But it's a fun mix. You do have to have knowledge of the Middle Ages to appreciate some of the details.

I'll stay in character and pick Hamlet and King Lear, for the relatively obvious answer given my screen name :). I find them to be of infinite depth. I have spent years reading them, seeing movies, talking about them...and yet I never cease to learn something new. I've heard it phrased numerous ways -- that the sum total of all human emotion has been depicted in Shakespeare's works, that he is "not of an age, but for all time", that "if all civilization were to die out tomorrow, to be represented by only one piece of literature, that work should be King Lear." I may well agree with it all. I have taught an abbreviated version of King Lear to my children - all less than 6 years old - because it is that important to me that they not be afraid of the complexity when they get older.

If we take Shakespeare off the table (what with the whole "not meant to be read" thing), I've always had a fondness for Dickens. Tale of Two Cities in particular, not his series of "little orphan boy has a happy ending" tales. Sydney Carton is one of literature's greatest martyrs. I could also put To Kill A Mockingbird on the list, but truthfully that might be because the movie (with Gregory Peck) is just so darned good.