Beginners Guide To Reading Classics || 2020

hi everyone welcome back to my channel and happy 2020 I'm so excited this is my first video of the new year and I figured that while everybody is making resolutions and reading goals that I would do a beginner's guide to classic literature because Lucy from lucid the reader I'm sure you guys know cuz I talked about it and Lucy talks about it and a bunch of people are participating in the classics community 2020 Reading Challenge so it's basically everybody who loves classics and once to read more classics it's a challenge to read as many as you can in 2020 or as many as you want at least once a month so at most 12 I'll link her and that's what video down below if you guys haven't seen it yet but I have gotten a few messages about classic books that are good for beginners and how I got comfortable with reading classics all different questions about how to get into classic literature and I thought that this would be a great video to film so I have come up with 10 tips and with each tip I have assigned one or a few books to go with them I will write down below the list and everything that I talked about down below so that you guys have it in front of you in writing in case you guys want to look back on these tips and I hope that they help you a lot so without further ado I'm gonna read you tip number one so my first tip is don't be afraid of them remember they are just stories written a hundred years ago they were once seen as being modern so these are books that were once seen like I said as being modern they weren't always these big daunting intimidating classics and there are just regular stories that are like any other of the books that we read just written years ago and I think a lot of people forget that ever feel oh well I'm not smart enough or you know it's gonna be too hard to understand but these are these are just old books pretty much and I think that if you get past that feeling of being intimidated or that feeling of smart enough or you know if you haven't read enough like that's that's not true just they're just books written years ago and I think that they are definitely worth it and another tip that goes with this is to just just read them and and forget about you know your intimidations I mean I should take my own advice yeah so just have fun with them and and remember that they are just all the books tip number two is ease yourself into classics with children's classics so I have a bunch of children's classics here that I started with and that I'm gonna recommend to you guys the first classic children's book that I'm gonna recommend to you guys is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott I have three editions here for a reason um I just saw the film yesterday the the new film adaptation I posted an Instagram post about it and oh my goodness I'm not going to talk about it because I'm gonna be here for forever but it was everything that I wanted it to be and more they included everything that I wished and hoped that they would include and the casting was perfect the cinematography the costumes the acting the cast was perfection like probably one of my favorite films ever and it is because it is the adaptation of one of my favorite books ever so I have these three editions because certain editions of Little Women only come with Little Women and the all of the film adaptations are the whole story of Little Women so when it was first published it was Little Women and then good wives so they were one story in two volumes and certain editions of these books today do come in two different volumes so these three are editions that come with both volumes and I highly recommend you get in addition with both volumes because you're good you know everybody wants a full story you're not gonna want to read half of the book and just stop so this addition is the puffin in bloom this comes with a little women and good wives this is the Edition they replicated in the movies so this also has it's like a more classy movie tie-in edition it has photos from the film and it's also Little Women and Good Wife so it's both volumes one of my favorites of Saoirse or Joe writing and I love this one so much yes so this is also another edition and then the last one is the most recent one I picked this up yesterday after seeing the film with one of my very good friends this is the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary illustrated edition and it is so beautiful it's nice and buttery on the back it says I don't like to do is by the fire I like adventures and I'm going to find some and I love that so much it's wonderful and I love how it has different elements of each sister so the paint brush for Amy the book for Joe the piano for Beth and the mirror for Meg I absolutely love this and without me I'm sure you guys know what these books are about so I'm not gonna spend very long talking about the synopses if you guys are interested I do talk about a lot of these books in my videos but yeah so definitely recommend little women for beginners to classics another children's classic that I recommend is Anne of Green Gables by Ellen Montgomery this is another book that really helped me get into classics and made me love how how unique and wonderful classics are and I think children's classics are very approachable and are a little less intimidating just the style of writing and the stories themselves but they are also jam-packed with everything that the more intimidating and scary classics also have they have deep meanings they have intricate plots they have beautiful settings and themes and characters so yes Anna Green Gables is fantastic and I love it with my whole heart another children's classic that I recommend is the secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett this is another one that again is like the other view it is very approachable wonderful and just a very nice comfort me these all these children's books children's classics are great great comfort reads the last children's classic that I recommend is the little prince by Antoine de saint-exupery this is a wonderful French translation and it is a great moralistic these are all pretty moralistic stories which you have to take with a grain of salt I love when children's classics are filled with like life lessons I think it's just so wonderful to to hear and to experience I think it's lovely so yeah highly recommend these for children's classics they are some of my favorites I love them so much my next tip is to watch adaptations there are so many classic adaptations of these of these books they are either miniseries or films and they are fantastic I think every single one of these books that I'm mentioning in this video has some kind of adaptation whether it's a show or a movie and I know a lot of people talk about how oh I want to read the book before you watch before I watch the movie watching the film adaptation or the TV show adaptation will familiarize yourself with the characters and it'll make it easier to understand while you're reading sometimes certain classics have a very interesting name choices that are hard to understand or they go from you know scene to scene in a very interesting way I just think that watching the film's first can make for a more pleasurable and and more comprehensive approach to this story and it gives you a face to the characters names so when they say a certain character's name and the in the book you can picture that actor and it will become more clear to you and I think it just it visually it helps you to even be more connected with the plot yes you know what's gonna happen or sometimes they do change a few things so you have to also take that into consideration but I think that watching film adaptations or movie TV show adaptations really help a book that I did that with so I started reading Pride and Prejudice before watching any adaptation this was a few years ago I was relatively younger and I was so confused I was having such a hard time understanding the language and the way that she wrote and the particular diction that she uses I was very flustered and I remember thinking okay I'm gonna put this down and go back to it at a later date and I saw I started watching the Colin Firth as mr. Darcy that adaptation the miniseries and what I got familiarized with the way that they spoke and the particular phrases that they used and it just really helped me and even the settings going from one scene to another it made the book when I read it again it helped me in to enjoy it so much more if I went into this book without watching the adaptation I don't think I would have liked it as much so my point is sometimes watching the adaptations before reading the books is more helpful and sometimes yes you want to read the book before you see the adaptation but in certain cases like Pride and Prejudice for me it was better for me to watch the adaptation before reading the book my next tip is to read short classics so a lot of classics are very long and that is part of the reason why I find them and a lot of people find them intimidating and scary because they're huge and usually classics take certain people me included longer to read because of the language so reading shorter classics can make you feel a little less intimidated I think and one short and very thrilling classic is the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde I know a lot of people recommend this as a very good classic to begin with I and I agree completely it's very captivating the language is beautiful and lyrical but also I don't want to say easy to understand because I think I'm saying that a lot um it's very engrossing you get lost in the in this story and the way that Oscar Wilde's writes and the plot itself is so interesting and captivating and a lot of these are shorter classics so but this is one that I wanted to highlight particularly for this tip so yeah read short classics there's nothing wrong with that you don't have to read the big scary ones to feel like you're a classics lover my next tip is to find books that are written from first-person narratives and the three that I am going to mention are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Rebecca by definite des Maurier these are all classics books that have first-person narrators and I think that first-person narrators because you are following that one person it is their story sometimes or at least in my opinion it makes the it makes the whole thing a lot more approachable and easy to understand and all these things that I keep reiterating but when you're reading from that particular main character it can be easier when they introduce in your person when they describe the new the scene it's just you're following one person when it's a third-person narrative sometimes they highlight a bunch of different characters so you can kind of get lost in the you know switching of dialog and plot and who you know who's talking and what scenery and so I think that first-person narratives are very very easy to to read I remember before I read Jane Eyre I was crying because I thought Oh like what if it's really hard for me to follow along and what if I get confused but because it was a first-person narrative I think that was a really big reason of why I loved this book so much because you're just following Jane and it's mainly just it's her story and that's really it there aren't like five million characters that you have to remember their names and different plots that are going on it's just one main solid story and the same with To Kill a Mockingbird we're following the main character scout and her family and mainly her father's story and then we are also in Rebecca you're following the unnamed narrator and her experience with see this is a book that I feel like I didn't watch the adaptation for this one and I'm glad I didn't because I think this is a book that you have to kind of go in without watching the adaptation first but just this one all the other ones I'm pretty sure I think that you could like I think it would be nice if you watch the adaptation first but this one I'm very clean up that I didn't that's a side note anyway but yes first-person narratives have definitely helped me to feel more comfortable with reading classics my next step is to read shorter works by a certain author to through my to familiarize yourself with their writing and I have done this a lot more in 2019 with Charles Dickens in particular so this is a classic Christmas this has a bunch of different shorter works by Louisa May Alcott Charles Dickens Hans Christian Andersen and many more authors so this does have a Christmas carol inside but I have done this particularly with rustic it's because I want to get more into his writing and I thought I would start with a Christmas carol to familiarize myself with his writing and the way that he tells a story and his plots and his wit and everything like that and I'm so glad that I'm doing this because it's making me want to read more of his longer intimidating books so definitely this is a really great tip that I have found is really helpful for me is to just read shorter works by them to get a taste for how they write and another person that I recently did this with and I'm so incredibly excited and I need to talk to you guys about it because I'm having quite the dilemma the next one is Leo Tolstoy how much land does a man need this book is very tiny the so this chip is perfect for these books these are the penguin little black classics penguin came out with them for their 80th birthday they have 80 little penguin classics and they're either short stories or poetry collections or letters or shorter excerpts from longer books and this is this particular book is two short stories by Leo Tolstoy this was my first ever Tolstoy book and I have been interested in getting more into Russian literature I wrote a more articulate Goodreads review of this book so I think I'm gonna read that to you guys and I've done this before in my videos I don't know why I think I'm I'm more articulate in writing then when I'm just like blabbing to a camera so let me get that up and I will read that to you guys to talk to you more about this book okay so here is my little Goodreads review for this book this was my first foray into Leo Tolstoy's works I'm very pleased to say that I thoroughly enjoyed these short stories so very much both of these short stories how much land does a man need and what men live by are written in the style of fables they are both very moralistic and have some biblical biblical leanings which made for a very compelling read these stories left me thinking and that's my favorite kind of book one that makes me think it also had me questioning certain aspects of life and what was discussed in its pages I am now very intrigued to see how I'll feel about his novels this has made me want to put the tome Anna Karenina on my 2020 TBR and so this is how we talk about this beast this beast of a book someone could like break it up with this thing so this is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy because took my own advice and read shorter works by this author I now desperately want to read Anna Karenina I'm so scared everything that I talked about in this video is what this book is it is a million different characters it is huge that are like the plots go everywhere and it's a translation it's so intimidating I am definitely I actually got it from the library the Keira Knightley movie adaptation of it because I'm gonna watch it very soon but if you guys have read this book please convince me to read it in the comments because I'm so scared it's huge but I know that I'm gonna love her and it's going to be an adventure but it's just like this is my biggest I didn't even put it on my 2020 TBR video because I'm just so scared to read it but like take your own advice Carolyn like why are you doing this video um yeah do it guys like I want to read it so badly and I can't stop thinking about this book and I have been talking to a few of my friends about it and everybody has wonderful things to say about it even though it's huge and scary I'm just very intimidated so but it's all this book's fault like I fell in love with these two short stories so much and it made me want to read autocratic ranana with like Oh with every fiber of my being I really want to read more from him and of course I'm gonna start with Anna Corinne than that because how can you not guys help me out please do I read it should I read it soon how should I even read it should I do it in sections should I read it all in one go should I read it along with other books I don't know but I really want to read it and this is like my biggest goal of 2020 is to read this book but yeah so this is what happens when I take my own advice I want to read these big giant scary books my next tip is to do some fun bookish research find University lectures where you can hear a different analysis of the story go on YouTube and listen to different reviews and book discussions to get a better understanding of the book now this I recommend you doing after you read the actual book I did this with Jane Eyre I found a wonderful lecture which I'll link down below of this university professor in London very deeply analyzing Jane Eyre and its themes and its motives and Charlotte's use of different literary devices it was a phenomenal lecture and it really made me think about Jane Eyre in a different light and this is something that I do with a lot of classics and gives me a better view on it as well and I also think that watching adaptations of classics also does this where it just makes me think more about it I never want to read a book and completely put it to the side and forget about it that's when I know that a book is not going to stay with me or isn't as interesting or isn't as impactful but it's when those books when I want to put them down and learn all about them that's what I love doing so definitely I recommend reading to a bunch of reviews on booktube or different university lectures like I said I think it really enhances your reading experience and it just I think it's so much fun like it's basically just doing homework I guess but that's the things that I think are so much fun doing with classic literature my next tip and my last tip is have fun and just read the classics they are like I say on my phone classics are jam-packed with unique and clever humor and wonderful love stories deep meanings captivating settings tragical moving plots and endings and unforgettable characters these are the books that have made me the classics lover that I am today they are all these books that I have mentioned are why I love talking about classics and reading classics and watching different classic movie adaptations and everything about classic is because these books are so wonderful and so fantastic and to just have fun and read them and enjoy them and try not to be scared of them as I have Anna Karenina in my lap and after I talked about how scared I am but can you boy but yeah just have fun with them and I love talking to you guys about classics so and I'm super active on my Instagram and on my youtube so comment down below and tell me if these tips helped you at all if you have read any of these books and also it would be a huge help because with the new year I've been thinking about different video ideas comment down below some video suggestions that you guys would be interested in seeing because that would help me out a lot and would help me understand what you guys want to see from me like this video if you liked it and subscribe to be part of my little bit ever-growing family and I'm so excited for 2020 reading I am incredibly excited to get to so many of the classics that I have been dying to get to for so long hopefully this beast urilla will be read this year but yeah so tell me some of your goals for 2020 just talk to me down below because I love you guys so much um yeah so have a wonderful day wherever you are and I hope you're reading some amazing books and happy reading

Channel: CarolynMarieReads

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Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 08 2020