Why am I reading the classics? Before you start, I’m warning you this is a ramble and a half!
There are lots of reasons why I read classic books. When I was about 9 or 10 I started reading classics which had been abridged for children and Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. I really enjoyed reading books which were set in a more genteel time I think and it was about that time I tried my hand at embroidery, I think I fancied myself as a Victorian heroine!
I soon moved on to reading the unabridged books like Jane Eyre and then everything by Jane Austen, and George Elliot’s Mill on the Floss was a favourite of mine when I was about 12. I think at the back of my mind I had a feeling that if a book was still being read and reprinted after so many years then it must mean that it’s a book worth reading. I do hate giving up on books which have been a disappointment to me, there’s less chance of that with a classic I think.
I still have the very first classic book which I bought with my own money, and I can clearly remember buying it. My mum gave all of my books away when she was having a mad clear out, apparently I had grown out of them, I of course knew nothing about it until the deed was done. But my first purchase survived the pogrom because it was for adults. It is a small cream coloured book, published by Thomas Nelson and it’s Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson. Apart from being a dinky wee book it was the title which made me buy it, vanity I suppose, or just curiosity because Catriona is the Gaelic spelling of my own name of course, and I wanted to know what this other Catriona/Katrina got up to.
I had to wait though as I hadn’t looked inside the book where it says – sequel to Kidnapped. As I hadn’t read Kidnapped I had to find that one first. Both books are well worth reading and have a Scottish setting, which is something else which I enjoy. I know – how parochial of me!
I’ll give you a flavour of that first classics book purchase. I bought it in John Menzies (pronounced Ming-is – it’s that yogh letter of the alphabet again) Stationers and Bookshop in Helensburgh, on the west coat of Scotland, north of Glasgow. Helensburgh is a town just about 7 miles north of where I was brought up and it was a favourite place to have a nice day out, a bit of a change of scene. It was a popular destination for day trippers, holidaymakers and at that time had the most millionaires living in it of any town in Scotland. It attracted successful football players and theatrical entertainers, showbiz types I suppose you could say. The actress Deborah Kerr was born there and John Logie Baird lived there and apparently started his experiments on the development of television there in the 1920s.
But all that was of not very much interest to my mum, what she liked Helensburgh for was the American Navy! At the time they were based at the Holy Loch and possibly Faslane, on the Clyde. Yes, all the nice girls love a sailor – so they say, and my mum certainly did. She was always terribly disappointed if for some reason there were no US sailors in the town when we were there. I was always quite relieved because she would urge me in a stage whisper, which really more resembled a fog horn. Touch their stars for luck! She always got the attention of the sailors – I always just about died of embarrassment and of course refused to touch up any sailors. I’m sure my mum made it up – that it’s supposed to be lucky to touch the star on the bottom corner of a US sailor’s collar.
Well I warned you it was going to be a ramble! But when I look at my copy of Catriona it reminds me of sailors and my somewhat eccentric mum. As it happens my dad had been a sailor when they got married, but then, it was during World War II and there were a lot of them about back then.
If you look carefully you should be able to see my cream coloured copy of Catriona on the shelf below.
I enjoyed your ramble đŸ™‚ and I’ve never heard anything about touching Navy stars for luck. That’s a lovely photo of your books. Classics or no, a good sturdy hardback can be so much more satisfying than paperbacks.
Lisa,
Aha! I had a fair idea that that bit up about touching their stars was made in Britain, possibly it did originate from young women in Glasgow during the war, keen to attract the attention of the Yanks, but just maybe it was just my mum’s idea!
I’m still buying lovely old books even when I know I can get them free on my Kindle, some of them are works of art.
I feel just the way you do about the classics. A neighbor introduced me to volunteering at the library when I was in my early teens. I’d read some of the classics before, but working at the library was heaven! I brought home everything I could and read them all.
I used to have a ‘dead author’ rule whereby I’d only read books by authors who were dead, so the authors of the classics where my primary reads. I abandoned that for a while, but, except for mysteries, I find few contemporary authors who can tell a ‘ripping good yarn’.
Isn’t your shelf of books lovely? I used to collect those older hardbacks for their bindings and convenient size. Much prettier than todays huge, awkward books with their strange jackets.
Joan,
I was exactly the same for years, they were all dead authors but I don’t think it was a conscious decision. I rarely read any by live authors even now, as you will have noticed. When I started working in a library as a teenager I was like a kid in a sweetie shop too.
That shelf is actually the top one of an old bookcase. I think they call them waterfall design, the top one is small and narrow and they get deeper and wider as they go down with the bottom one being good for things like atlases and oversized non-fiction. For some reason they don’t seem to make them now which is a shame because it’s a great design.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the waterfall design type of bookcase. I designed the wall of shelved in my current library. Most shelves are the same height, but the bottom shelves are taller for heavier and taller books, like art books and reference books. I like to shelve my books by subject and then by author, so I prefer to have few height restrictions.
Joan,
That was the word I was looking for ‘reference’ books! I think our bookcase is about 80 or 90 years old and the top shelves are only good for those small leather bound classics really. I try to keep all of my art, cookery,craft books together but my fiction is all over the place. I’m definitely going to be more organised in our next place as I have wasted hours and hours searching for books in the past.