5 free classics under 150 pages

Here's my curated collection of 5 free classics to get you started in your journey of reading the classics. All of these are great books. You can read one of these beauties in one weekend. If you've wanted to get into the world of the classics, but don't know quite where to begin, this would be a good start. 

1. Frankenstein - 134 pages
   Read about Victor Frankenstein's pursuit to give life to his ambitions. In the book, the monster talks back to Victor, and is even more eloquent than the scientist. Explore the depths of the monster's feelings and see if you are not moved by his story.
   Link: http://amzn.com/B0084BN44Q
   
   
2. Red Badge of Courage - 154 pages
   Ok, this is just over 150 pages, but it's still a great read. This is a story of a young soldier that signs up to fight the entire rebel army. He's faced with his own challenge of courage, and he finds out that he might not be up to the challenge of facing the enemy. Does he find his courage? Read it and let me know what you think.
   link: http://amzn.com/B0083ZHYIU
   
   
3. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - 96 pages
   At only 96 pages, you can probably read this in one or two sittings. Dr. Jekyll lets out his darker side as he takes his magic elixirs and summons the demon within, Mr. Hyde. Do we all have an inner demon wanting to get out? Is the freedom worth it for Dr. Jekyll? Read this one to find out. link: http://amzn.com/B0083ZR7BY
   
   
4. The Pilgrim’s Progress - 136 pages
   This was the second most read book in the English language besides the bible. And it's good. If you're not a christian, the historical value alone is worth it. Follow Christian as he describes in his dream his journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City
   link: http://amzn.com/B0083Z665M
   
   
5. Call of the Wild - 111 pages
   This classic may not be for dog lovers (some of the dogs aren't treated that great in the book), but you'll gain tremendous insight into the primal law of the wild. Learn what Buck learns as he finds himself thrown from civilization into the primal world. Does he succeed? What does he learn in his struggle to survive about man and beast?
   link: http://amzn.com/B0083ZBW2Y
   
   
6. Bonus book!
   The Wind in the Willows - 194 pages
   At over 190 pages, it's a little longer than these other classics, but this one is definitely worth it. You may remember Toad and his love of cars, but to me, the real story is about the Water Rat that loves to be on his river messing about on boats. A classic tale of love of the land in a beautiful pastoral setting in the English countryside.
   link: http://amzn.com/B0083Z9D7U

100 classics book challenge

At first my challenge was to read 40 classical books. I did it! I'm up over 40 now, so here's another list of 100.

Northanger Abbey

Wind in the Willows

Vanity Fair

Great Expectations

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Paradise Lost

Anne of Green Gables

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Little Women

The Great Gatsby

Peter Pan

Emma

Pilgrim’s Progress

Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Pinnochio

The Age of Innocence

1984

East of Eden

In Search of Lost Time

Madame Bovary

The Good Soldier

Frankenstein

Wurthering Heights

The Inferno

Grapes of Wrath

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Red Badge of Courage

A Room with a View

Lolita

Sleepy Hollow

Silas Marner

The Arabian Nights

Dracula

Pride and Prejudice

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Wizard of Oz

Moby Dick

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Animal Farm

Confederacy of Dunces

Tess of Durbervilles

Metamorphosis

The Time Machine

The Scarlett Letter

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Secret Garden

Treasure Island

Catch-22

One Hundred Years of Solitude

A Farewell to Arms

Of Mice and Men

Fahrenheit 451

Iliad

Neurmancer

Walden

Slaughterhouse 5

David Copperfield

Swiss Family Robinson

Sense and Sensibility

The Jungle Book

The Jungle

Oliver Twist

The Woman in White

Brave New World

Tale of Two Cities

Romeo and Juliet

Gulliver’s Travels

Don Quixote

Madame Bovary

Heart of Darkness

Invisible Man

Around the World in 80 Days

Ivanhoe

Rob Roy

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Fountainhead

The Three Musketeers

Heart of Darkness

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

The Wind in the Willow

Lord of the Flies

Last of the Mohicans

Misanthrope

The House of the Seven Gables

On the Road

Cather in the Rye

Ulysses

Tom Sawyer

War and Peace

Old Man and the Sea

The Sound and the Fury

The Stranger

The Karamzov Brothers

The Count of Monte Crisco

Mansfield Park

Jane Eyre

Robinson Crusoe

Annan Karenina

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Climbing Parnassus

Parnassus was a mountain in the ancient world that called to the lovers of wisdom. At the top of the mountain lived the nine muses:

"To climb Parnassus was to strive after the favor of Apollo and the nine muses - calliope, Erato, Clio, Euterpe, Melpomene, polymnia, Thalia, Terpsichore, Urania"

"And among those gifts most sought was the civilizing, cultivating book of eloquence, of right and beautiful expression."

"The hard, precipitous path of classical education ideally led not to knowledge alone, but to the cultivation of mind and spirit. Knowledge did not, in and of itself, justify the sweat. The climb was meant to transform one's intellectual and aesthetic nature as well."

This book, Climbing Parnassus, makes the case for the lost study of the classical works. I enjoyed the book thoroughly and will add it to my collection. I've written a bit about what a classical education was, and the author of this book can set you on the right track, if you want to take the challenge yourself.

As for me and my house, we will be studying Latin and Greek.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Early humanistic education began with the cultivation of character. Whatever intellectual feats a man might bring off, they were of scant value if he had not first achieved a goodness and tranquility of the soul."

"The cultivated man was, in a real sense, the literary man, the man of words." 

"After Isocrates, intellectual culture became scribal; it depended on books, written words, collections of which overtime with foreman authoritative list of best works." 

"Isocrates taught all who came after that anyone, before he can be called civilized, has to read his culture's books."

"Originality was not price so much as reverence."

"Whatever wisdom is, we're not born with it."

"Isocrates did not, leaving a "sound judgment "to be the proper and realistic aim; the best one could hope to do is to point up the finest examples in the annals of virtuous thoughts and deeds."

"With the Gramatiko students learn to understand and explain what they read, not to "respond" to it. Their opinions were worthless."

'A training in rhetoric, the art of persuasion an eleoquence, might last until a young man's 20s, and its pursuit made up what we now call "higher education." It was finishing school for the articulate. To Speak well was the indispensable ability – and unmistakable sign – of the educated man, whose upper education had instilled recte loquendi scientia, the knowledge of correct speaking."

"They had learned to think and speak and write with precision and flair. They tried not to say something new; they tried to say something worthy, and to say it perfectly"

"The standard was set not by the man in the street, but by the man in the forum."

"For the ancients were marked, as Marrou wrote, by an "utter lack of interest in child psychology. "There's were not "child – centered" societies."

"Greek and Latin weren't needed to get out of the university, they were necessary to get in."

"Never have so many people earned so many academic degrees and known so little. Yet never have so many thought they know so much."

Reading this book brought me back to the difference between the education I had when growing up vs. the education the author talks about from antiquity. The ancients were concerned with reading the best books, reading them with reverence, and then trying to master the art of writing, as the ancients had done themselves. This was the civilizing side to education. Education was not a training for a job, it was cultivation for life.

I remember some of the first courses in philosophy I took at the university where we were to critique some of Plato's writings. But the idea to me was ludicrous on its face. How was I, a university freshman, supposed to critique Plato? I had barely read any of his works, let alone the work of any other ancient Grecian. The idea is still silly to me, and yet this is what passes for education, a series of 'responses' to ideas and writings we have no understanding of, with no context which to judge them.

And then that's when I realized that most of my education was just the reading and rebutting other 'experts' talking about their interpretation of the source material. That's it. Experts talking about their expertness. What hubris! What silly people to think they could expound on Plato, Aristotle, Tacitus, Dionysos, Longinus, Quintilian, Cicero and many, many more. What balderdash!

And yet this is what it means to be educated today.

For me, education must start with a serious reverence for these great minds. Then, if possible, to train your own mind to think like theirs and to write like they wrote. If one can do this, they will have cultivated the one thing that separates us from the beasts in the wild and the wild barbarians; they will have cultivated their own intellect and their own expression of their intellect through the written word.