Let’s Get Classical
By Sam / Spinebreakers Crew
(Apologies in advance to any Austen-ites who object to my shameless butchering of her classic work!)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good intellect must be in want to read the classics of English Literature. At least, that is my view of things. This craving to read the best of what the English language had to offer came to me at the age of ten. Picture the scene; it is Christmas 2003, and our humble narrator (…also known as me) is tearing his way through his presents with childlike abandon. He is coming to his last two gifts. One of them is clearly his ‘main present’ (after all, it is big. And bike shaped,) so he leaves this until last. This leaves only one - from his grandmother. He opens it with baited breath, praying it’s not another lurid green hat-and-scarf number. It isn’t. It’s a book, a book that will change this boy’s life; the name of that book?
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.
Aside from the frankly morbid title, this book was a revelation. Inside it was the key to knowledge. A thousand and one (as the title quite rightly suggests) books that had been decided, by a team of “experts”, to be the best of the best. However, it is in the word ‘must’ that the real message of the book is delivered, for it presents a challenge; these books are not just “books you might quite like” or even “books that are really good”. They are “books you MUST read.” They are books that it is imperative that you read –and as a self-confessed English geek, how could I not take up that opportunity!
Now, you may at this point be wondering why I am bringing this story of my childhood to you now, and why I even paid attention to a challenge presented by what is essentially mashed-up tree bits, and this is a fair question, and one which has two answers. Firstly, I’m ever so slightly obsessive, and secondly, (and more importantly,) I am now 17, and that means one thing. One bone-chilling, insomnia-producing, nightmare-inducing thing…I have to apply to university - in my case, for an English degree. Now, to those of you who have not had to do this yet, it may seem like a simple process; merely a few forms and a bit of writing. And on the face of it, that really is all there to it….until, that is, you come to look at the statistics. For the university I want to study at, the acceptance rate for English is around 1 in 20. That’s 1500 applications for 75 places, which means I have to look better on paper than 1425 people. After the initial panic and rounds of hyperventilating, I began to think of what could set me apart from these people, and suddenly I remembered the book its promise if containing (to slightly misquote a favourite film of mine,) ‘the finest books known to humanity’. After all, what could look better than making a sizable dent in the 1001 best books of all time?
Luckily for me, this seemingly impossible task has been slightly easier due to my affiliation with Spinebreakers, and by association Penguin Books. After all, many of the books featured on the list are available through the excellent Penguin Classics range, in often very attractive covers (but we’ll leave my love for the Penguin design team for another time…), so it makes perfect sense to start with these books.
And start I shall, for together we have an Odyssey ahead of us (although ironically ‘the Odyssey’ is not on the list due to it technically being a poem!) So join me in the coming weeks and months as I plough through the greatest books ever written, from Austen to Zola, from ‘Birdsong’ to ‘To Kill a Mockingbird. Let me report my findings to you in the hope that you will all do the same, and together we can experience the best literature has to offer, find books that will stay with us forever…and win at every literature round a pub quiz has to offer!
Sam's mission begins with a visit back to school, as he explores ‘Regeneration’, his first AS-Level text, and first novel of the 1001…
Click here to read Sam's review of Regeneration by Pat Barker.
Sam's review of Persuasion by Jane Austen (No.933).
Sam's review of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (No.437)
Sam's review of The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe (Numbers 909, 911, 915)
