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Culling The Classics: Dracula

October 25th, 2013

When I was in high school, young and naive and with barely any literary taste, I gave Dracula a try. I hadn't read many classics at that point (Treasure Island maybe? The Swiss Family Robinson?), but my middle school love of Goosebumps made me think I might be able to make an exception for a vampire book. Look at me, all adult and mature and literary!

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Culling The Classics: Anna Karenina

September 30th, 2013

I hate Russian authors. Every time I've ever tried to read a book by a Russian author, I've failed miserably. Crime and Punishment? I hadn't committed any crime, but it sure felt like Dostoevsky was punishing me. Dr. Zhivago? Boris Pasternak should've changed his name to Boring Pasternak. Lolita? Vladimir Nabokov was writing in English about a French guy driving around the United States, and it was still too Russian for me.

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Culling The Classics: The Jungle Books

August 23rd, 2013

That's right, we're culling two classics for the price of one this time: Rudyard Kipling's seminal children's collections, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book. Time out—children's classics? Who started the rumor that these books were for kids? Do parents actually know what's in these things, or are they trusting that Walt Disney stuck as close as possible to the source material? We're going to have to clear up a few things.

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Culling The Classics: The Catcher in the Rye

July 23rd, 2013

It is alleged that there are over eight million books available on Amazon.com. Eight million. That means that even if you read one entire book per day for 100 years, you'd still only be 0.4565% of the way towards reading everything that Amazon has to offer. And that doesn't include any books that might be written next year, or the year after that, or any other of those 100 years. And remember, that's ju​st Amazon. There are plenty of harder to track down old, out of print, and foreign works that would have to be added to the list as well.

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