You can find lists of books easily if you look for them, but really how do you know if they are any good? How can you know what recommendations to trust?
Are you the kind of person who is always looking for good books to read? Or are you the kind of person who reads the same thing over and over?
Are these good books to read?
If you are a book lover, there is pleasure in both of these approaches. My oldest daughter is an insatiable reader, who almost never repeats a book. She is always looking for something new. By contrast, my younger daughter, also a bookworm, can happily read the same book twenty, thirty, even a hundred times.
Most of us, as we get older, grow into more complexity than either of these extremes. I sometimes think of reading like food. Sometimes I am in the mood for comfort food, something I’ve had many times before and I know I will enjoy. Sometime I’m in an adventurous mood and I want something new. Sometimes I’m in the mood for steak, and sometimes I’m in the mood for candy.
When someone says they’re looking for a good book, it’s not always clear what they mean. What makes a book good depends on the reader. But as someone who teaches litearture I have a few insights and opinions.
Some books are candy
The two purposes of reading are to experience something familiar and to experience something new. A really good book needs to accomplish both of those things in order to be satisfying. If a book is compelling and complex enough it will still feel new after multiple readings. And if a book is insightful enough about commun human experiences it will feel familiar even the first time.
More than that, reading is a skill, and you can get better at it. With someone to guide you, any book can become a good book, because a guide can show you something new even in a book you’ve read many times before, and teach you how to find more new things. And a guide can teach you what is familiar even in a very unfamiliar book.
I would recommend Dracula and Frankenstein on their own merits. They’re both worthwhile and interesting books. I’d recommend Beowulf . The laies of Marie de France are fascinating and worth your time. I’d recommend that you read about Robin Hood. But more than any of those books on their own, I recommend practicing reading well. At Clockworks Academy we will guide you, so that whether you’ve read these books before or not, you’ll find something new and something familiar in each one.
Register for a course now, and find out what makes these books, and any book, good to read.