Classics are always popular, but these days you almost can’t escape the pressure to read one due to social media. You must have seen countless videos with moody aesthetics flipping through artfully damaged copies of some obscure French author’s book. And then the anti-intellectualism mini-essays convincing you that your favorite romance is actually brain rot.
I don’t subscribe to these ideas, obviously — everyone should read what they like — but you might want to give classics a try either way. They’re generally more difficult to read than contemporary books, but they also explore important themes and you might even enjoy one.
However, getting started is the hard part. Where do you even begin? Surely not with that door stopper copy of Les Mis? No, don’t worry. This guide is here to show you where to begin and how to ease yourself in. Follow these steps, and finding your next favorite book will be easy as saying read on.
If you’re ready to choose some classics to read and want my thoughts (and to know what happens in the books), I have an exhaustive roundup of best classics by genre here.
Start With More Modern Classics
One of the best ways to get started with reading classics is to begin reading the most recent ones. If you’ve never read a classic novel, you may have trouble jumping into something from the 1800’s, where the language is different, more unfamiliar and complex.
Instead, start with something more recent. Here are some modern classics you can consider:
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
- A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
All of these have been published in the 20th century (The Secret History as recently as the 90s) which means the world and the language isn’t all that different and unfamiliar. Some of these will even feel contemporary or not all that different from what you normally read.
And once you feel ready to move back in time, go slowly; try the earlier parts of the 20th century, late 19th and so on. Don’t start with the Iliad or Dante’s Inferno. It will likely put you off classics entirely. But if you start more modern and move back, you’ll probably find quite a few classics you enjoy.
Read Short Stories and Poetry
Another good and easy way to get into classics is to read short stories. Big, expansive books might be intimidating, but a short story you can finish in one sitting is definitely not. Poetry is even less so.
Most writers wrote at least some short stories, so you have a lot to choose from. And most are available online for free through magazines or websites. Here are some I’d recommend:
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
- A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
- The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov
- Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin
If you don’t mind poetry, that’s also a good way to get started. You can find free poems online for most classic poets, so you should have no trouble sampling a few and choosing some you like. I recommend Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Walt Whitman, Maya Angelou, and others. Just find something you enjoy.
Read Shorter Classics
Based on the previous section, you’d think this is obvious, but many people forget that classics don’t come only in dense doorstopper size. In fact, many of them are quite short. You’ve seen some short stories above, but you can easily find some under-300 books. For example:
- The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery (218 pages)
- A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (186 pages)
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (180 pages)
- Persuasion by Jane Austen (249 pages)
- We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson (152 pages)
- The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy (86 pages)
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (178)
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (253 pages)
And this is just scratching the surface of short classics. So, give one of them a try, and I hope you enjoy the experience!
Choose a Genre You Love
It might surprise you, but classics come in all sorts of genres. So, you can choose a classic to read based on what you enjoy reading in general. Here’s some pointers:
- Do you normally read romance? Try reading Jane Austen’s books, Elizabeth Gaskell, L.M. Montgomery, Edith Wharton, or the Bronte sisters (for the dark romance variety). I think these authors will also work for you if you love romantasy. You get the high stakes love story with dramatic confessions and scenes, just not so many dragons and fae (maybe some ghosts?).
- Do you normally read mysteries or thrillers? Try Agatha Christie (she usually sneaks some romance in there too), Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Raymond Carver, John Buchan, Raymond Chandler, Wilkie Collins or, naturally, Arthur Conan Doyle.
- Do you generally enjoy horror? Try Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, or H.G. Wells (for some cosmic horror).
- Do you read lots of lit fic? Try James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Christopher Isherwood, George Elliot, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sabahattin Ali, or Virginia Woolf.
- Like SciFi? Plenty of authors to choose from: H.P. Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, Aldous Huxley, or Douglas Adams.
- Prefer fantasy? Other than the obvious (J. R. R. Tolkien’s work), you can try Ursula K. Le Guin, Peter S. Beagle, Madeleine L’Engle or Susan Cooper.
As you can see, every genre has its own classics, and so you can find something to love no matter what you normally enjoy. It’s good to start somewhere familiar and explore within that genre instead of trying something that’s completely new to you — you’ll be more likely to like and complete the classic if it matches your tastes.
Choose Classics That Have Good Adaptations
I know this may sound counterintuitive or even blasphemous, but hear me out. Movies are not all that bad. Humans are visual creatures, and it helps to see a story play out on screen before you try reading it.
- You’ll already be connected to the characters and care about what happens to them.
- If the book itself is harder to comprehend, the adaptation will help you digest the most important themes and events.
- It’ll help put you in the right mindset. Movies tend to capture the vibes of books well, the ethereal qualities of them, so watching a movie can help sweep you into that atmosphere.
I recommend looking for good adaptations though. Anything with Keira Knightley or Colin Firth is a good idea, anything Netflix made recently is not (this is my simplified criteria, you can come up with your own!).
Try Classics for Younger Readers
If you’re struggling to get into classics, you should try some of the classics for all ages. They often deal with similar topics and themes as the ones that are for adults, but in a much more digestible (and often more fun to read) way. It’s also a good way to get into the language gently.
Here are some you could try:
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- Silas Marner by George Eliot
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Try Different Books
It’s important to understand that the term “classic” encompasses a lot of vastly different books from different time periods and with different topics. Just because you don’t like one, doesn’t mean you won’t like another.
For example, I really don’t like Stoner by John Williams (for reasons I rant about here), but I loved A Single Man, it’s one of my favorite books ever. Both are classics, though. What I mean to say is: keep looking. There’s bound to be a classic out there you’ll like.
And if you don’t like something someone recommended as easy reading, it’s not a big deal either. For instance, I loathed Fahrenheit 451, even though people always recommend it as an easy classic for beginners. I disliked White Nights and yet I loved One Hundred Years of Solitude, Master and Margarita, all of Jane Austen and all the Bronte books.
What matters is that you find something you love, and something that gives you value. You may never enjoy a Russian classic or Les Mis, but you’ll find something that speaks to you, and after all, that’s what this is all about.
And What If You Still Don’t Like Classics?
So, you’ve read all or some of the books on this list and you didn’t enjoy them at all? What now?
Well, for one, this doesn’t mean that you won’t like any classics at all ever. There are so many out there that you’ll be sure to find a few that you’ll like. Also, keep in mind that people change throughout their lives. You might not like classics today, but you might like them someday. Maybe you’re currently in a phase where only romance books feel good or fantasy novels, or sad girl lit.
All of this is completely fine.
Reading classics doesn’t make someone a better, smarter person. Similarly, not reading classics or not enjoying them when you try doesn’t make you ignorant or at fault in any way.
The important thing is that you continue reading the books you enjoy and that you are getting something of value from them, whether it’s entertainment, knowledge, inspiration, life lessons, etc. Classics don’t guarantee that, especially if they feel like a chore.
