My Summer Ambition: Read a Classic

Each summer I try to read a classic novel. Of course, opinions vary on what constitutes a classic novel. You can go online and find list after list, but I go by the criterion of whether or not this is something I should have read in high school or college. You know what I mean...those books that are assigned year after year that you were either lucky enough not to be assigned or you just read something else. I also like to reread books that I read when I was much younger. Maybe it is just the fact that I have more life experience and perspective now than I did as a teenager, but they read like a brand new story.

When I was fourteen, I read Steinbeck's East of Eden. It is a kind of retelling of the Cain and Abel story from the Bible. Adam Trask favors one of his sons over the other with unfortunate results. The story is set in California's Salinas Valley around the turn of the last century. I read it again a few years ago when Oprah chose it to be the first book in her new book club featuring classics. Whatever happened to that, by the way? It seemed that the characters I liked when I was younger didn't stand out as much to me while others came to the forefront. The story had so many more layers and richness than I realized all those years ago. I had a similar experience with F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby which was a book report assignment in high school that I grudgingly read and didn't really like. I picked it up again years later determined to find out why people still recommend it. It is now one of my favorite books. If you have also read and liked it, I would highly recommend Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind.

Another favorite of mine is D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. I think a lot of people know about this because it was banned for many years for being sexually explicit. While there are some sex scenes in the book, it is almost tame when compared to some contemporary writing. While it was published in 1928, it reads like something written more recently. It is a powerful story about the breakdown of the class system in England after World War I and how people had to find new ways to live in a world turned upside down with a little hanky panky thrown in for good measure. I find myself drawn to books about that time period. W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge is the story of an American who served in the Great War and it changed the trajectory of his life. He was no longer able to go back to Chicago and pick up where he left off. He couldn't marry his sweetheart and live the life he had planned prior to the war. Instead he travels the world and lives in the moment and studies Eastern philosophy trying to find some meaning in the fact that he lived when so many others did not.

Of course, there have been some books I have attempted and just could not get through. I've tried The Brothers Karamazov, An American Tragedy, Anna Karenina and The Sun Also Rises, but they didn't do anything for me. I don't let it discourage me from trying these kinds of books. Life is too short to force yourself to read something you don't like. There is always another good book waiting. This summer I am thinking of trying either The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and maybe Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut.