Monday Muse: Classics Anyone?

What do you think of the classics? Do you read them voluntarily from time to time, or do you only read them unless they're assigned to you in school?

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I think the classics are important if you're a hard-core reader. When I was only nine or ten, I started reading those juvenile classics like The Secret Garden, Jane Eyre, Tom Sawyer, and my favorites, The Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Cruseo. Now that I'm older, I don't read as many "classics" as I use to. I usually wait until I have to read them in my literature/English classes. Last year in World Literature I read Silas Marner by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) which took place in the Regency Era like Jane Austen's novels. It was an okay book. I think I kept up with it pretty well because Eliot didn't ramble on about nothing like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ugh. I'm reading The Scarlet Letter this year for American Literature and Fahrenheit 451 for English. When I read my first Hawthorne short story back in 7th grade, I thought to myself, what a wind-bag. I love literature, so for me to say something like that about a "classic" authors is pretty unusual. I can barely make out the story in The Scarlet Letter because he talks about so many different things and the words get all jumbled up. As for the bunny trails? Don't even get me started! No wonder they didn't want women to write--they would have put the men out of business back then.

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What do you think about the classics? Have any favorite authors or books? What are you reading for school or just for enjoyment?

Monday Muse is a original creation by BLT

The Voyage of the Kon-Tiki

I read the most interesting story in World Literature class today. It was just a four page summery from the book Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl, the Norweigon captain of the Kon-Tiki expedition. Adventurer/writer Thor Heyerdahl believd that the people of South American sailed acrossthe Pacific and settled Polynesia. To prove this theory, Thor and five other men set out on a balsa wood raft (named after Kon-Tiki, the legendary leader of the ancient Polynesians) in April of 1947. After 101 days of battling giant waves and sea creatures of all shapes and sizes, Thor and his fellow adventures landed on one of the French Polynesia Islands, proving their theory.

Before reading this story, I had never heard of Thor or his voyages. (Just goes to show you you learn something new everyday-and even in Literature class!) My favorite part of the story was their encounters with various fish. The crew came face to face with a whale shark (the biggest fish in the whole ocean-and yeah, don't forget that whales are mammals, not fish), flying fish, some creepy glowing creatures that only came out at night, and one guy even found a sardine on his pillow!

I enjoyed it a lot. In fact I think I will put Thor's book on my "Must Read Classics" list. The book isn't very long (256 pages), so it could probably be read within a short time. Long classics scare me. When I walk through Barns & Nobles I cringe when I see all of Leo Tolstoy's (even though I like his short stories) or Charles Dickinson's works. If you want to scare the daylights out of someone, just show them a volume of War and Peace! It haunts me when I think about all the Shakespeare works I'll have to read in college!That reminds me, I will be reading my first Shakespeare work, Julius Caesar, this semester.

[Bites nails.]

I've read lots of classics-even when I was in elementary school (you know the juvenile kind where the characters don't talk like they just stepped out of Elizabethan Era)-but I have never liked the idea of reading Shakespeare.

Anyways, on a happier note, I just wanted to blog about this neat story. Hope you learned something new too. Happy sailing!

Here is the original Kon-Tiki sitting in it's final resting place in Norway.