Old School

Currently Reading: Paradise Lost by John Milton

Three or four times a year I like to read something old. REALLY old. We're talking classical! Last year I read The Iliad, among other things. The year before that I read Dante's Inferno. You get the idea. There are a few drawbacks to doing stuff like this though. Depending on which classic you read, you can really mess up modern fiction.

Take, for example, the work of Raymond Chandler. If you really enjoy reading mystery novels, do NOT read all of his. Read one or two, but not all of them. Why? Because after reading the complete adventures of Phillip Marlow, every OTHER detective created since then will seem a bit of a rip off.

And if you're a really big fan of fantasy novels, knights in armor and such, you'll want to avoid The Lord of the Rings and also The Once and Future King. Same reason. You read them, you enjoy them. You pick up someone else's work and you spend the entire time thinking, "Gee, this is just like what happened to Frodo."

In some cases it can really enhance the novel you're reading. If you like to read books by Orson Scott Card or Ben Bova, having a little bit of literary background really helps. There are still some living authors out there who make reference to the classics without outright COPYING them.

There is one secret benefit of reading the classics though. You'll never have to worry about someone walking off with your book. You stroll around the house with a copy of Paradise Lost, set it down on the coffee table, it'll be right there where you left it. Oh sure maybe someone will pick it up and thumb through it, but once they see that it's written in verse and that it dates back to the 1600's, they'll drop it like a hot potato.