My first year in The Classics Club

I’m having an anniversary! It is one year (and two days) since I joined The Classics Club and claimed that I would read the 50 classics on my list within five years.

Since then I have read 14 of the 50 books on my list and found some new favourites. The Classics Club is also a great community and I have encountered several interesting blogs and had many interesting discussions thanks to it, so if you enjoy classics I recommend it. You choose your list yourself so the only demand is that you should list at least 50 classics and aim to finish them in maximum five years.

I have enjoyed most of the fourteen books I have read from the list so far, but three of them stand out from the rest. As an anniversary is a perfect excuse to highlight some favourites, that’s what I’m going to do.

Perhaps the most surprising book to me on my “top three most memorable classics club reads so far”-list, was Wind, sand and stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I was not at all convinced by his much more famous novel, The Little Prince, but I loved this memoir, which perfectly captures the beauty and danger of the early days of air traffic.

The second one on my list was also unexpected. I knew that I wanted to have read The Poetic Edda, but did not expect to enjoy actually reading it as much as I did. It was a lot more readable than I had expected and includes some great stories, many of which I recognized.

The last one on my list was not unexpected at all. I added The Brothers Lionheart to my list because I already knew that I loved it, and wanted to reread it, and get an excuse to tell everyone else of its greatness…

All the books read for the Classics Club
Carter, Angela: Night at the Circus
Alighieri, Dante: Vita nuova
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby
Kafka, Franz: Metamorphosis and other stories
Lagerlöf, Selma: Gösta Berlings saga (Gösta Berling’s Saga)
Lindgren, Astrid: Bröderna Lejonhjärta (The Brothers Lionheart)
Moberg, Vilhelm: Din stund på jorden (A Time on Earth)
Pushkin, Alexander: The Queen of Spades and other stories
Rushdie, Salman: Midnight’s Children
de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine: The Little Prince
de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine: Wind, Sand and Stars
Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
Den Poetiska Eddan (Poetic Edda)

The Poetic Edda

If I were to define a Classic a key characteristic would be their ability to leave a trace in the reader and/or culture at large. Influencing people, later works or even the language itself in their wake. Rarely is that clearer than when it comes to the classical mythologies. The Norse myths have named the days of the week (in the Scandinavian languages and in English), formed proverbs still in use ( such as “Där ölet går in går vettet ut” roughly “where the beer goes in, sanity leaves”) and continue to influence works through the centuries (Wagner, Tolkien, Marvel, Gaiman).

The Poetic Edda (also called the Elder Edda) is a collection of epical poems about Norse gods and heroes. During the 13th century these myths were collected and written down in Codex Regius. This text now form the primary document for The Poetic Edda but other poems of a similar type and age are often included.

I got the Poetic Edda in Christmas gift last year and have been reading it on and off since then. So it has been another slow read but unlike Metamorphosis and other stories I have mostly enjoyed it. While it is hardly something to read from cover to cover in one setting it was mostly very readable. The poems range from high to low, from funny to bloody to tragic and back again. I might not read the whole again but I will certainly revisit some parts.

I read it in a Swedish translation (Den poetiska Eddan) by Lars Lönnroth which included helpful notes and introductions to the texts. It was on my list of 50 classics to read with the Classics Club.

There is an English translation available for free at Project Gutenberg but I found that it lacked much of the lyrical qualities of the text. So if you want to read it I would suggest looking for a more modern translation. If you want to try just a piece of it I would recommend Völuspá (Prophecy of the Völva) which is reasonably brief, covers (at least in passing) much of the mythological framework and generally is one of the best parts (and probably the most famous).