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Eddie Hood
I want to talk today about whether classic literature is actually any good at all. And of course, the answer is yes, I love it. But why are those books always so intriguing? You know, when you go into Barnes and Noble or any of your local indie bookstores, you are shopping at your local indie bookstores, right? There's usually a wall for classical literature. And when you stand in front of those books, something about them seems special. If you haven't read them and you've maybe been wondering if you should, then this episode is for you. Let's get into. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I have a problem. I am addicted to books. Sorry to be goofy about that, but you know what? Here's the thing. I love a really good story, and that's what we want to talk about today, is the power of story. Now, when you go to your indie bookstore and you're standing in front of that wall that is classical literature, I don't know how many titles are there. I'm actually interested. Maybe I'll go count them, but they're probably less than 50. I don't know, maybe, let's be generous, maybe 75 books on that shelf. You've got Anna Karenina. You've got, you know, Crime and Punishment, perhaps you've got War and Peace and the Picture of Dorian Gray and Moby Dick and so on. You get the point. Well, why are those books still in print? Why are they being sold? And a lot of people would argue, and I would agree that really good stories sort of stand the test of time. And they continue to show up on people's reading lists because they're really good. And so I've had a couple comments in my book club lately. Right now we're reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and this is one of the classics, of course, classic literature at its finest. And. And we recently read Anna Karenina and a few other of these classics, and we keep getting the same comment from book club members, which is this, oh, my gosh, I had no idea that these older books are such page turners. They've gotten used to the psychological suspense books, the thriller books of today, that are designed to have short chapters and be super pacey and keep you moving in order to hold your attention because apparently you're unable to focus for longer than two minutes. I don't agree with that, but that's what the, the publishing industry seems to think. And so books are becoming more and more compact with plot and twist required and so on. And you don't expect those kinds of things in these, these bigger, older books. I mean, Jane Eyre itself is a large book. This one is, you know, in excess of 500 pages. And what I found is that these other books are often void of lots of the things that might get your attention today. There aren't any car crashes or major explosions. There are definite romantic twists, for sure, and lots of relationships and how they interact. But there aren't many big sort of twisty things. So why on earth are they so darn good? Well, so I hope today to make a case for you, to encourage you to pick up one of these books now, we're going to look at Jane Eyre for a little bit here. I'm going to read a passage or two to you today and I'm going to try to use those two passages to explain why it's so good. So first of all, when you get into a book, you are putting trust in the author and you're saying, hey, author, I really want to like your work, but I'm committing to 10 hours of reading this book or 20 or 30 hours of my life to something you've created. And before I do that, I need to know this can be worth my time because I'm a busy person. That's sort of the conversation that goes through your head, which is a normal conversation and one you should have. Your time is precious and you're really not. At least I'm not in a position to spend my life reading bad books. There are too many books I want to read. I don't want to be lost in the bad ones. So I've talked before about how I give myself a 50 page limit. I don't judge the work until 50 pages. And judge is a bad word. Right. But I have to make a decision. At 50 pages, am I going to keep going or am I going to quit? But you can tell within the first paragraph or two of any book whether or not you're in the hands of a good writer. And if you are, or you can immediately sort of relax into the story and just let it sweep you away. Some writers though, maybe it's the prose or the voice or the characters are missing or something, I'm not sure. But you just know when you're sort of struggling with the book, so I want to read to you the third. Yeah, the third paragraph in Jane Eyre. Now, essentially what's happened here is Jane is an orphan in a home, in the Reed home. And what we find is our author, Charlotte Bronte, is incredibly talented because she doesn't have to use a lot of sort of flowery descriptive language to sort of prove herself as an author. Instead, she gives us a character we care about. She puts that character in conflict immediately and makes us care about this little orphan girl. So it says the said Eliza, John and Georgina, these are the other kids in the home, were now clustered around their mama in the drawing room. She lay reclined on the sofa by the fireside and with her darlings about her for the time, neither quarreling nor crying, looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group, saying she regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance, but that until she heard from Bessie and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavoring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner, something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were, she really must exclude me from the privileges intended only for contented, happy little children. Now, our narrator is Jane Eyre. She is the main character of the book, the protagonist, and she's telling the story of her life. And she sets it up by saying that she's in a home where a mother has her three kids sort of clustered around her and she's reclining on this chair. So what I want you to point to, sort of notice here, is that Jane Eyre uses some really strong verbs to set the stage without being overly fancy with it. She describes this mother, Mrs. Reed, as though she's reclining. She doesn't sit, she's not squatty, she's not pouchy, she's reclining. And high minded people recline in chairs, right? And when she tells Jane Eyre to sort of not associate with her or her children, she uses specific words. She says that Jane was dispensed, right? So this makes Jane feel like an object. Like you dispense things you don't want, you throw them in the trash. And she needs to become a more contented and happy little child. So right out of the gate, we instantly sort of feel like we want Jane to win because all of these people are just horrible to her. And that's how you know you're in the hands of a good author. You're immediately drawn into the story. So you can, you can use your antenna to know whether a book's going to be worth your time or not. I would say give it 50 pages and let the author do his or her thing. Thing. But again, from page one, you can usually tell this is going to be worth the effort to read the book. And let's be honest, reading is an effort. It takes energy, it takes away from your other free time, other things you could do. So you want to do it well and you want to get into a book that is going to keep you entertained. That is why the classics are often a good bet now. Yes, the language is older. This particular book is gothic. It's a Victorian Gothic novel, but it is fantastic. And if you're thinking about tax tackling a classic novel, Jane Eyre is a really good one to start with because it's got that element of sort of creepiness. There's a potential ghost story going on and there's, there's romance and there's like some danger and it's really good. But it's also a fantastic study in human nature. Now, the next thing I want to point out is that stories continue to sell and do well. The better they are at helping us see our own true nature. Stories with car chases and, you know, bank robberies and all those kinds of things, they're fun, but we often forget about them pretty quickly afterwards. We don't remember them. And so they don't really ever become classics. Right. They're not going to last the test of time. But books like Jane Eyre definitely tell us a lot about who we are as humans. These kinds of books don't need car chases in order to make them interesting. I want to read one more passage to you just to give you a sense of what I mean. A good story should focus on what it means to be human and what it means to sort of live this thing called humanity. A tea. Right. It's hard being alive with a consciousness, feeling guilt and sadness and self hate and excitement and joy, all other things. It's really challenging to be who you are and books will help to explore that. There's a scene later on in the book, and I don't want to give you any spoilers, but Jane is sort of starting to fall for a particular character. She's starting to fall in love, but she doesn't really know if she should. And some jealousy starts to show up on the page. And the nice thing is is she hears about this other character and how he's out going to a party where they're going to be other ladies who are of high status, have high wealth, and one of them is this beautifully described woman. And Jane, who's very young at the time, and the man she falls in love with is much older than her. This happened in Victorian England, apparently, a lot. I don't know, whatever. But she starts to feel angry at herself for falling for this guy. Because how could she, a plain. She's described as an unattractive girl, have anything to offer this man when there are other women at these parties that have so much more to offer? One in particular is a lady named Blanche. Now, listen, I'm going to read two paragraphs for you. This is really great because it will see if you can identify your own personal jealousies in the way that Jane Eyre feels. So this is her reprimanding herself. She is. She's. She's heard about this Blanche character. She's embarrassed that she allowed herself to fall in love, and she wants to punish herself. Have you ever done that? Have you ever looked at your own life and said, you dummy, why did you do that? And then you. You do something to make yourself feel even worse. That's why stories become classic stories, because they can do that. They can remind us of those. Those unfortunate habits we have and help us get over them. So here we go. So Jane says to herself, listen then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence. So this is her punishing herself. Tomorrow, place the glass before you and draw in chalk your own picture. She's an artist. She likes to paint with watercolors and have you anyway. It says, do so faithfully without softening one defect. Omit no harsh line, Smooth away no displeasing irregularity right under it. Portrait of a governess, disconnected, poor and plain. She's the governess in a home. She's been hired to teach a young girl how to speak French and be proper and on and on and on. And she, again, has not been described as a beautiful woman. She definitely does not see herself as a beautiful woman. And so now, to punish herself, she's going to paint her own portrait. But she's going to be very harsh in the portrait. She's going to really hone in on her defects, really make them stand out on this. This drawing so she can look at it every day just to remind her of how plain and boring and imperfect she really is. And then to make it worse, she's going to draw a second portrait of the woman named Blanche. Now, she's never met or seen Blanche. She's only heard stories of her beauty and her wealth and so on. The next paragraph goes on to say, afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory. You have one prepared in your drawing box. Take your palette. Mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints. Choose your most delicate camel hair pencils. Delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine. Paint it in your softest shades and sweetest hues, according to the description given by Ms. Fairfax of Blanche Ingram. Remember her raven ringlets, the oriental eye, what you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model. Order no snivel, no sentiment, no regret. I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall the august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust. Let the round and dazzling arm be visible and the delicate hand omit. Neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet. Portray faithfully the attire aerial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose. Call it Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank. And then when she has this picture of her perceived image of this perfect woman that she. She can see sort of trying to court the man that she's kind of starting to fall in love with, she's going to put this woman's portrait next to her own each day so that she can look at them and see how much better this other woman is than her, and she can sort of keep herself in check and remember what it is that she does not have to offer. Now, that is drama. I totally get it. And some of you might be rolling your eyes going, good grief, what is this? It sounds like a soap opera. Look, one of the nice things about fiction is that our characters get to do and say things that we would never dare say or do. And I promise. Well, I can't promise you, but I would guess that many of you, when you have fallen in love with somebody and then had your heart broken, you probably were a little more dramatic in the moment than you can even imagine, right? You probably felt like life was over, like you weren't good enough. Like you. You just had nothing to give, right? And just darkness clouded you. That drama that you felt most likely in your teenage years, it was a pretty pivotal moment in your life. I had that moment in my own personal life, and I just thought it was the end, right? So the nice thing about these kinds of books is they pull those moments out of our lives and they show us who we are as people. And yes, they might paint them bigger, more vividly. The characters might act and say and do things at a higher level than we ever would. But that's what great fiction is. It lets us live these lives at the extreme loudest way possible. So should you read classical literature? I think absolutely you should. Now, the challenge is that you're not going to like all of the books. I'm not going to make that argument. Yes, these stories have stood the test of time because they're great. They have of good characters or strong characters. They have usually a good moral in them, and there's a nice resolution to the story. But not every book is for every person, and you have your own personal tastes. So I've made several videos on how I'm not a big fan of Moby Dick. I probably should be, but I'm just not. That doesn't mean you won't like it. Will you like Jane Eyre? I don't know. But you should definitely pick one of these books up and give it a shot. So the best thing you can do is turn off YouTube right now. YouTube's probably going to punish me for saying that, but do it and go to your indie bookstore and stand in front of that bookshelf and find one of these books and buy it. And then go home and read it. And then leave a comment down below and let me know what you think. All right, everybody, thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of the Readable Podcast. I hope you liked it. Until next week. As always, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. I'll see you next time. If you'd like to take your reading to the the Next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well Podcast.