If you're going to say that old books are better than new ones

[conuly]

because you think that all the books in the past were classics, do yourself a favor - go take some time and read some bestsellers of whenever that have largely been forgotten today, and never quite made it to hallowed "classic" status. I'll wait.

Note: Do this whether you're talking in general or only about some specific subset of books.

*****

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Comments

[shadowkat]

Or just look at the best seller lists from times past...and ask yourself if you've heard of those novels?

Most probably haven't. Jane Austen wasn't really the best seller back then. Most of the books people read in English Lit weren't that popular at the time the writer was alive and they didn't make that much money off of them.

[dark_phoenix54]

That's so true; for every classic, there are a LOT of dark and stormy nights. I used to run the used book sale at the library, and sorting and shelving for that was a real eye opener for books no one had heard of. One time someone donated a bunch of John O'Hara books and they sat on the shelf for months and were finally discarded (I brought one or two home). His work was highly thought of in the 40s and 50s!

[shadowkat]

During Jane Austen's time - gothic romances were in and very popular, so popular in fact that Austen went out of her way to parody them in Northanger Abbey. And during Shakespeare's time - the popular play write wasn't Shakespeare but Christopher Marlow. They were competitors and Marlow often got more air time, and we barely see Marlow's work now.

A lot of popular novels don't hold up well over time, one of the reasons they are forgotten.

[conuly]

On the flip side, let's be blunt: some classics are overrated. Obviously we won't all like every work, "acclaimed classic" or not, but there are some that just got better press than contemporary works that were objectively better but, for whatever reason, forgotten.

[fred_mouse]

*cough* Dickens *cough*

[dark_phoenix54]

Oh, gawd yes. I've read some classics that I absolutely couldn't figure out WHY. Like 'Don Quixote'. Cervantes must have been paid by the word, I swear. Same with Melville- 'Billy Budd' has a couple of chapters on nautical knot tying that I can't figure out how they advanced the plot. *shakes head*

[dhampyresa]

I Lived Exclusively Off Doomsday Prepper Food for a Week
many of us realize that if something really bad happened, we wouldn’t know the first thing about surviving for a week on the ingredients lying around in our pantry.
I feel like this deserves way more than just being an afterthought.

[movingfinger]

I think a lot of people grappled with that this year!

It's two skills really: anticipating what ingredients to keep on hand, and knowing how to use them.

I do have dehydrated meals (and water purifiers, and so forth) in buckets in the garage, evacuation kit. But the writer is absolutely right: the limiting factor on all of them is available hot potable water. I haven't found a small immersion heater I can run off the car socket yet...

[kengr]

Way back when in the SCA some folks took a new, galvanized garbage can and punched a couple holes near the bottom. They then took a loop of copper pipe and soldered he ends to the holes.

At a campsite, they'd fill it partway with water and build a fire around the loop of pipe (it was like two or three "turns" around something).

It produced hot water in an amazingly short time.Only thing I'd change on their design would be to have the pipe connections seperated by several inches vertically, and putting in one way valves so the water would go in at the bottom and come out at the upper opening.

[conuly]

I've heard that, since most of those are also sold to backpackers, one method of eating them if you don't have hot water is to seal them in the bag with water and then tuck it into your shirt for an hour or so.

It's minimally palatable.

[thewayne]

There are some greats from classic literature, but I agree, you are missing out if you don't read modern literature. Some classics hold up, like The Three Musketeers. Lots do not.

I receive an ebook sale email every day (used to get two, don't know what happened to the other one) and liked the description of a book completely against type for what I read, and picked up an utterly charming book called Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. It's about an older British gentleman widower who falls in love with a Pakistani widow who runs a shop in town, much to the scandal of his son and daughter. Very amusing book. Is it a classic? Dunno, only time can tell that. But I loved it, and I expanded my horizons a bit.

[ioplokon]

Yes! And then there's the ones that survive by virtue of early MST3K treatments. So like, Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (which I love but which is also a deeply weird book) was received sincerely initially but like, a few decades later was reprinted with an "Index to Tears" so that people could read those bits out loud at parties and laugh at them.

[chelseagirl]

When I was an undergraduate English major it was still pretty much Great Books (except "hmm, maybe we should check out some more women and people of color"). Ten years later when I went back to grad school, after doing Other Things for a decade, there were lots and lots of reclaimed neglected texts. Which . . . some of them were definitely worth reclaiming, and particularly again if they were by women and people of color, but some of them had been rightfully neglected for certain.

[conuly]

Sigh.

[bitterlawngnome]

I've been thinking this a lot today! scanning a literary magazine from the 1920/30s, and the breathless YOU MUST READ THIS and FINEST BOOK OF THE MODERN ERA etc etc ... and most of them have been utterly forgotten.

[conuly]

Meanwhile, I bet some of our faves today were sleepers.

[bitterlawngnome]

there's one that I think I'm going to track down, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Negro

[dorchadas]

Also a great exercise with music--checking the chart-toppers from decades past is a lovely way to be confused how anyone could ever have thought [Song X] was that good.

[conuly]

Ugh, I just got into it with somebody elsewhere who is standing firm by his assertion that all music of his youth was good.

I don't think that's hyperbole speaking, he's such an ass.