FORGOTTEN TOMES :
KNOWING YOUR CLASSICS by J . H . Bográn ( TopShelf Columnist ) Twitter @ JHBogran | jhbogran @ gmail . com
As a native Spanish speaker growing up in Honduras , my list of required reading classics included some names you may be familiar with , like The Hunchback of Notre- Dame , or Homer ’ s The Iliad . Of course , Don Quixote de la Mancha is a given . Beyond that , the list comprised some local writers , like Ramón Amaya Amador ’ s The Wizards of Ilamatepeque or Green Prison .
When I started reading English books , I fell in love with thrillers from the works of Clive Cussler , Ken Follett , Robert Ludlum , Frederic Forsyth , and Tom Clancy . Later on , as I cultivated like-minded friends , e . g . other aspiring writers , they mentioned books that I either never heard of , much less read . Several times I had found myself at a loss when people made references to The Great Gatsby and its green light , or almighty spyingon-its-people governments like in Nineteen Eighty-Four .
Soon I realized that what most people consider to be modern classics could vary from one country to another , or one culture to another , even in countries with a shared heritage like in Latin America . For example , it ’ s a tradition in Mexico to present the play Don Juan Tenorio around Day of the Dead every November , yet I only read it during a brief stint as an aspiring theater actor — I wanted to play the antagonist Luis Mejía .
Feeling like an ignorant despite all the
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books that I had read was a new feeling for me , so I studied , and pretty much like Santa Claus I made a list of naughty and nice . Except I named books rather than children . During my quest , I received a lot of input from the local library , along with the opportunity to borrow a copy instead of having to buy all of them .
Like me , many people who started to read late are afraid to take a classic . I ’ ve known people scared of James Joyce ’ s Ulysses for both its content and hefty volume . The same with Herman Melville ’ s Moby Dick . My personal whale was not about length but
writing . Several times I tried reading Huckleberry Finn , but its “ delicious ” phonetic dialogues made it unreadable to me . I have Elijah Wood , and his audio reading of the book , to thank for allowing me to finish it .
After a few years I still haven ’ t gone around to read all of the classics ; how could I with all of the new books coming out every year ? Still , the effort has paid off , and I ’ ve read so far : Gone with the Wind , The Great Gatsby , Steppenwolf , Fahrenheit 451 , columns
A Confederacy of Dunces , among others .
I firmly believe it ’ s important to read classics , and libraries and bookstores play an instrumental role for the new generations to discover beautiful stories that still have an impact in today ’ s world — Bram Stocker ’ s Dracula for example .
A suggestion would be to tailor a list according to genre and style and entice readers , one book at a time , until they have acquired the taste . Had I read Pride and Prejudice when I first started , I would have thrown that book across the living-room .
J . H . Bográn , born and raised in Honduras , is the son of a journalist ; however , he ironically prefers to write fiction . José ’ s genre of choice is thrillers , but he enjoys to throw in a twist of romance on occasion . He has published three acclaimed novels and is a member of The Crime Writers Association , the Short Fiction Writers Guild , and the International Thriller Writers where he also serves as the Thriller Roundtable Coordinator and contributor editor for their official e-zine The Big Thrill .
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