Beowulf on the Beach
Categories: Staff Picks
My high school world literature teacher Ms. P. probably wouldn’t have been too pleased with this book. After all, Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature’s Greatest Hits by Jack Murnighan lists sections to skip over in several of her required readings:
The Aeneid, Madame Bovary, Crime and Punishment...
And while I loved her class (except those pop essay quizzes) and I love the classics, I have to admit that William Faulkner’s confusing The Sound and the Fury (a two-page long sentence?) and James Joyce’s super-confusing Ulysses (Whaaaat?) aren’t at the top of my “to read” list. There are sections to skip for those, too.
Still, writer and professor Murnighan has an obvious passion for the classics. He wants us to enjoy them, to read them a second time as an adult for pleasure, rather than as a student for a test. He writes, “This isn’t a Cliff’s Notes telling you what you’d need for school; it’s an attempt to show you what’s in the great books that make them really matter.”
Plus, he gives a wonderful list of tips on reading the classics (and good books in general). Here are a few of my favorites (edited for space):
- Read slowly. Don’t ever let a sentence go by without fully processing it.
- Reread. Instead of there being a lot of books out there that you barely know, pick a few and love them well.
- Don’t miss the vocabulary. If you’re going to read tough literature, you might as well get some of the fringe benefits: impress your friends and kick butt in Scrabble or on the Sunday crossword.
- Above all, engage. The greatest men and women of all of history are speaking to you--and you can hear them.
