Pining for the Classics

I’m a classics girl at heart, but over the past year or so, I’ve forced myself to read more current fiction, stuff published in the last four or five years. I felt this was necessary to my growth as a writer, to understanding the markets and what is making it through the arduous publishing process.

I’ve found some great authors, read some entertaining and moving stories. But I’m pining for the classics again. I want to wrap myself in the stories and characters that transcend time and culture. I want to study masters of the craft—even if they wrote in omniscient points of view and used passive verbs. They managed to tell stories that remain about characters that shape our own lives.

So, after sighing through four hours of Masterpiece Theatre’s new production of Jane Eyre, I’m off on a classics binge, the movie stirring the appetite within me to read Charlotte Bronte’s words once more. Some titles—such as Jane Eyre—will be pulled from my bookshelves and experienced for the 2nd, 7th, 20th time. Some will be books and authors I’ve heard of but haven’t yet added to my list of “have-read.”

Now if I could only read them in front of a blazing fire with nothing else calling for my attention . . .