How do you teach yourself to be able to read classics and other difficult books? Is there like a reading list or something where the books progress in difficulty from a typical modern novel to the hardest classics? Would easing into them like that even work out?
666
Start with short classics with short chapters and a small but decent vocabulary that are enjoyable on a very surface level, like The Stranger, The Immoralist or Of Love and Other Demons. I'll even throw Buk's Post-Office in there, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Gradually increase the length and difficulty at a pace that doesn't hinder the enjoyment of the book, and continue to choose books that constantly choose books that interest you.
I still kind of do this but at a much more frantic pace. After Moby-Dick, GR, and War and Peace each time I returned to a shorter work that took less effort sentence-to-sentence that I had always wanted to read, and then dove into something much longer that took a lot more work.
I also found Soumission by Houellebecq to be extremely funny and smart, while very easy. I don't know, research some basics.
>>8053561
You know the Greek meme?
it isn't half wrong.
A LOT of classics constantly make reference to various Greek mythos.
The same goes with the bible.
>>8053561
A lot of the classics are NOT hard to read.
>Is there like a reading list
Try Bloom.
Pic unrelated? Moby Dick is not a difficult read in any shape or form. I just got off reading Ulysses for the first time and I didn't get a damn thing. I'm probably gonna come back to it in a few years after I become a bit more learned.
>>8053561
>Short Stories
>Novels
>Hemingway
>Kafka
>Mark Twain
>Sherlock Holmes Books
>Edgar Allan Poe
>Lewis Carroll
>Young Adult Novels
Why bother? If you find it difficult you're likely not interested. Just read what interests you. There's nothing to be gained from spending 6 months reading Finnegan's Wake if you don't enjoy it.
They're just entertainment in the end. Some people just like to torture themselves for fun.
>>8053760
This is one way of looking at it, unless you want a career in literature.
>>8053760
You may find it difficult at the moment but you can build up to them, you shouldn't discount half the literary canon because its too difficult, with practice and sometimes reading sparknotes or the wikipedia page people can build up quite easily to the harder books which are often also deeper and more rewarding.
>>8053561
You just have to get used to it m8; I think Plato is the easiest one to read in translation. Try in this order: Ion, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo.
If you get to the end of those and have a decent idea of what's going on you can go in many directions.
>>8053762
If you want 'a career in literature' but aren't sufficiently motivated to read difficult books, you've gone wrong somewhere.
