Classic versus Modern

I get many comments about how I come up with my ratings.  It's not really very scientific and as I've said before I wobble between my reader's mind and my writer's mind when I try to determine what the rating should be for a particular title.

I was posed a question after I posted my review of Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad.   If I was reading Shakespeare would I feel comfortable giving him a rating of less than five?  The answer is, 'of course'.   I don't read Shakespeare because I find it slow and uninteresting.  Just because I don't like it doesn't mean Shakespeare wasn't brilliant in his own right.  I'm learning not to spend my time reading what I don't enjoy.  There are too many choices and not enough time to read everything.

In the 19th century while Mark Twain was writing, there was no television or radio or big box bookstores with tens of thousands of titles to choose from.  A book entertained, passing the time between dinner and bed.  Each word savored by the reader, shared with the rest of the family by being read aloud, and read over and over until the pages were worn.  Mark Twain used lengthy descriptions to describe people and places unknown allowing readers to transport themselves to a faraway land.  Today we call that watching television.

John Steinbeck is another one of my favorites.  He wrote in the mid-twentieth century in a world with radio but not television.  Steinbeck tells poignant tales of the life during the depression, again in a time when books were cherished. His style is long and lingering but has a faster pace in step with our evolving and more complicated lives.

Today we have become used a life of instant gratification.  Books are everywhere.  If we don't feel like lugging around 500 pages, we can simply download it and read it on the computer.  Huge bookstore chains along with Amazon indulge our each and every whim.  We read a story and then discard it  before moving on the the next latest and greatest new idea.  Our society doesn't linger over anything anymore.

Shakespeare, Twain, Steinbeck are all wonderful storytellers and in the end are all writing about the human condition.  We want to discover ourselves in a book, what makes us tick, why we do the things we do.  Modern writers are all out to write the story that discovers who we are in a modern society just as the classic writers wrote about life that was relevant to their time.   Can we learn from these classic authors?  Absolutely.  I learned plenty as both a reader and a writer.  Are they worth investing my time in?  Absolutely!  Do I feel guilty I didn't rate them all as a five?  No.  My goal is to give my own readers a fair and balanced picture of what they are investing time and energy in.  Sometimes my personal bias creeps in.  I'm only human.

If we take the time to look at life as a learning experience, then the books we choose will enrich our lives and entice our palates. Will we read some dogs along the way?  Yes.  But we will have been made a more interesting human being because of it.   And we just might unlock the secret to our own lives.