Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Classics That Don't Connect
Many people experience some shame or guilt when they dislike a literary classic.
Please don't.
I confess to enjoying Ernest Hemingway's short stories while finding his novels to be very hard going. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is another slog for me and yet, of course, many people love it.
Here's my list of some that I set aside but which I'll give a second chance:
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
On the other hand, I know people who cannot stand Moby-Dick and I'm in the process of re-reading it. Another re-read on my list is Bleak House.
Which classics have you set aside?
[Photo by Tom Hermans at Unsplash]
First Paragraph
It's cold on the Wall. That's the first thing everybody tells you, and the first thing you notice when you're sent there, and it's the only thing you think about all the time you're on it, and it's the thing you remember when you're not there anymore. It's cold on the Wall.
- From The Wall by John Lancaster
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Short Novel. Major Topic. Spread the Word.
A novel of special interest to those who are intrigued by religion, law, Roman history, decision-making, crisis-management, ethics, and courage.
Or Jesus, Pontius Pilate, Tiberius, and the Sanhedrin.
It's about the most famous trial in world history but be forewarned:
It's not about Pilates.
Substack Essays: Being Revised and Expanded
- Totalitarian Studies Are Sorely Needed
- The Day the Music Sorta Died
- Let's End the American Cultural Revolution with Some Candor
- History's Personally Revealing Anecdotes
- Evil's Apologists Are Always Out There
- Memories of the Job Search Jungle
- To Get the Saw Dust on the Floor, We Need to Read the Writing on the Wall
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