My favourite 'classic' has to be Jude the Obscure, it's pretty moving.

Yeah. Hardy rocks. No doubt about it.

One of my favorite classics is Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey. He opts for an unusual iambic decasyllabic approach (according to the preface) that reads very well. Or, if you want to read it alloud, lends itself to long, rolling delivery. Either way, he caught the imagry and tone beautifully. I also have his translation of the Illiad, but personally feel the story is less powerful than The Odyssey.

Head over to Amazon and take a look.

Thank you! I absolutely love Rosendrantz and Guildestern are Dead! I rarely meet people who've seen or read that. My AP English teacher had us read that and The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and the Wastelands by T.S Eliot. Those were some great poems. No Exit was also a really great play. Shakespeare's comedies also tend to be overlooked.

Personally though I wouldn't recommend just any of Stephen King's books for reading, especially It. I think that one would probably do best sticking with his short stories or Misery. I always felt that King seemed to loose people towards the end of his novels, they seemed dissapointing at times compared to his buildup and often invoked a deus ex machina type revelation.

I have to agree with Crake on this one. Small Gods is definitely Pratchett's most meaningful book (although his best is Night Watch). It should certainly be required reading, just to get people to look at religion in a whole new way.

And on a more on-topic-with-the-thread note, I am apparently one of two people (my high school English teacher being the other one) who actually likes Great Expectations. It's really a funny book, if you read the full version (abridged versions tend to cut the funny parts) and you know what kind of humor to look for.

I have also met a man who liked War and Peace (yes, that 1400 page nightmare of a book) so much he re-read it. I could only get to about page 200 before finally screaming "I have no idea what's going on in this damn book!" and throwing it across the room.

Tom Stoppard is great, though my experience is that in almost all situations with plays, actually seeing a decent production of a play is superior to just reading it. Having read Arcadia vs. having seen Rosencratz & Guildenstern, I think that with Stoppard, the witty, fast-paced banter works better when it's performed.

Same with Shakespeare - if the language barrier is a problem, having it performed so that students can see the context and hear the inflection helps a great deal.

Not that most schools can afford to have their students go see plays, sadly.

Wow. Either the Queensland curriculum is even worse than I could previously comprehend, or I moved to much and buggered it up. Either way, it looks like I missed out.

In the course of five years we read six books. Dead White Males, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, and Johnno. Ah, Johnno. The worst book in the history of history. I was the only person in class to finish it, and every day I regret wasting my time. That phrase isn't strong enough, but my mind tends to recoil in horror even thinking about it.

I much preferred the Drama curriculum: Ibsen, Brecht, Beckett, Shakespeare, Wilde, Wilder, as well as some contemporary Australian and international playwrights, and quite a few more that I can't remember of the top of my head.

Good ol' Brecht. I went to see a live performance of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui during my Theatre Studies subject. Brilliant. Of course, our actual play was commedia dell'arte, but hey! That's cool too!

He also does a decent job (his translation is the copy I have) of translating some of Odysseus' clever. Like the Nobhdy bit with Polyphemos. Unfortunately, ancient Greek has so much capacity for puns and the like that it's hard to get it all. The original scene with Polyphemos was a triple pun. The name Odysseus gave himsely meant, in one context, "nobody" but in another context, "mind", so when the other Kyklopes asked him what was wrong, his response was essentially, "I have a headache". That's one of the advantages of a good teacher.

Didn't know that one. Sadly, I don't think I'll get around to learning Greek. Until then, I'll let Fitzgerald translate. If you like it, check out the Illiad. You'll never look at the Gods the same way again.

(Serene, noble disinterested observers? Ha! Mars is a bully and a crybaby, Athene takes names and kicks butt, just don't get on her bad side, Aphrodite's a sore winner, Hera's a harpy and Zeus is wisely staying out of it.)

As long as were talking about epics try Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. And as Dr. Macloud put it, ummmmm Doctor Macloud......what was I saying? Oh yes, keep the phrase damned noisy neighbors in mind when you read the bit about grendle's motivation.

actually Homer's epics were written down in the 7th c. BCE and were about events in 1184 BCE, they were orally composed sometime early in the Archaic Period (1050 - 550 BCE roughly) based on the social make up and achaeological references (sorry you happened to stumble upon a classics major), and the reason some parts of the Oddessy are dry is that they are actually codes of social behavior for aristocrats wrapped up in a good story (ie. everything with Telemachus). Personally I like Fagles translations he keeps a lot of humor and wit in them.

and as for cool classics that were assigned readings, in greek myths this semester they have to read Apuleius' Transformations of Lucius, Otherwise Known as the Golden Ass translated by Graves, which is just priceless people.

Okay, 2800 and 400. I was close.

Yeah, lots of stuff about the beauty of civilized dining. Until you realize that that's all most cultures have to show off their civility (apart from butchering your people), it doesn't make much sense.

Hmmm.. books I had to read:

5th Grade: Animal Farm
8th Grade: Way too many bible books and chapters (darn xtian schools)
High School: The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, 1984, and a lot of really really REALLY hard to read and understand poems by obscure authors.

Personally, I think the fact that a teacher here in ID ripped a bible in half as a demonstration to wake kids up about censorship was probably the biggest and best thing I've heard of. Too bad I'm in Mormon Central and they are firing her for it. Any other book wouldn't have gotten any kind of reaction.