The Reading of Old Books

As the result of a really weird series of events in my personal life, I've started (again) reading old books--I'm on Athanasius now, a little bit every day. Before that came Julian of Norwich and Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (The Faith of a Physician) from the 1640s. I also read Theologia Germanica, but would recommend against it--super annoying.

Is anybody else out there reading old books? What? And what would you recommend, and why?
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  • As the result of a really weird series of events in my personal life, I've started (again) reading old books--I'm on Athanasius now, a little bit every day. Before that came Julian of Norwich and Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (The Faith of a Physician) from the 1640s. I also read Theologia Germanica, but would recommend against it--super annoying.

    Is anybody else out there reading old books? What? And what would you recommend, and why?
    I requested and got Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad for my birthday, but I haven’t started it yet. Soon.


  • windsofchangewindsofchange Shipmate
    edited February 1
    For purposes of this discussion, what's your definition of "old"? I have been reading some older 20th and 19th century novels (Vonnegut, Twain, Alcott, Austen) and finally slogged my way through "A Tale of Two Cities", but haven't gone much further back than that.

    Really would like to read The Iliad and the Odyssey, but have tried and failed multiple times. But who knows, maybe this is the year to give it another shot! Would appreciate recommendations for really readable translations. Even graphic novel versions might be helpfu l!

    FWIW I am trying to make myself get back into spending more time reading books, rather than screens. While the dedicated ereaders are a nice compromise, especially for enlarging font size, I find myself becoming more comfortable with printed books as well.

    As to why, well, TBH, I find myself needing to stay off the news feed so as to avoid walking around all day with tears of outrage constantly flowing, which helps no one.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Yes, it depends a bit on what you mean by "old". I am planning to read Dickens' David Copperfield soon - read it years ago and enjoyed it and my real life book club reading of Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead (I advise you not to go near it, YMMV) inspired me to revisit the far superior text on which that is based. I have it ready on my shelf but other reading keeps claiming my attention.

    As for The Iliad and The Odyssey I've been recommended E V Rieu's translations and, again, I have them on my shelf awaiting my attention.

    I revisit Dame Julian on a regular basis.

    To me "old" books can also mean re-reads of favourites, and I do that pretty regularly. Robert Harris's Pompeii is a favourite. Also the classic The Wind In the Willows and the Narnia books.
  • Nenya wrote: »
    Yes, it depends a bit on what you mean by "old". I am planning to read Dickens' David Copperfield soon - read it years ago and enjoyed it and my real life book club reading of Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead (I advise you not to go near it, YMMV) inspired me to revisit the far superior text on which that is based. I have it ready on my shelf but other reading keeps claiming my attention.

    As for The Iliad and The Odyssey I've been recommended E V Rieu's translations and, again, I have them on my shelf awaiting my attention.

    I revisit Dame Julian on a regular basis.

    To me "old" books can also mean re-reads of favourites, and I do that pretty regularly. Robert Harris's Pompeii is a favourite. Also the classic The Wind In the Willows and the Narnia books.

    "Demon Copperhead" wasn't awful, but the premise really wore thin after a couple of chapters. I'm not sorry I read it, but unlike the original, I know I'll never read it again. Whereas I revisit David C. once a year and always look forward to reencountering my role model, Aunt Betsey Trotwood!
  • For “old” could we say more than 50 years old? Preferably 100– Not strictly of course. I’m just trying to avoid the current crop of trendy books and the stuff that is likely to turn up on the “what are you reading” thread, which seems more likely to be contemporary stuff. I don’t want to duplicate threads, and also i suspect that time has a way of sifting out many bad books into obscurity.
  • TwangistTwangist Shipmate
    edited February 1
    I reread the narniad before Christmas and got a lord Peter whimsey novel for Christmas (which I whizzed through and greatly enjoyed)
    I had started to reread emile brunners "the mediator" before 2024 got really horrible and my brain couldn't cope.
    I wouldn't really count these as old as such, more "not contemporary" or even "not very recent".
  • Nenya wrote: »
    As for The Iliad and The Odyssey I've been recommended E V Rieu's translations and, again, I have them on my shelf awaiting my attention.

    Those translations could themselves count as 'old'. Just checked my copy of that translation of The Iliad, and it was printed in 1950. Still pretty good, mind you. Not a verse translation, but well-chosen poetic (and not flowery!) language.

    I've been re-reading John Buchan recently. Think that probably counts, given that the last one I read was originally published in 1922 (my 15th edition published 1932). Some of the reason I read them is the lovely way old books smell. In the case of Buchan it's also because his writing is such that I can see the places he's describing and hear the voices as I read. In several of his works I can easily walk where his characters do, since he lived in the next village out from the part of the cattle-crossing my parents live in and set sections of books nearby (The Blanket of the Dark is all local).
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    I always think Buchan’s evocation of place is masterly.
  • ChastMastrChastMastr Shipmate
    edited February 1
    For very old, Bede, Boethius, and Eusebius are awesome.

    Dante (especially the Sayers translation and commentary) and Spenser and Milton and Chaucer, for more recent.

    Everything by C.S. Lewis, though I don’t consider him old. Charles Williams and Tolkien too, of course.

    Chesterton and George MacDonald.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    Anthony Trollope - a readable author and humane narrator.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    I recommend Richmond Latimore's translation of The Iliad.
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    If it's Christian classics you're after, I enjoyed The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis has some gems in but is a bit harder to read - kind of like the book of Proverbs in style.

    Howard Thurman and Evelyn Underhill are also good, but not so old (mid-20th century).
  • Definitely interested in Christian classics! Though not ruling out others either.
  • Over the years I have had a fondness for a number of C19 authors, and have had phases of trawling second-hand bookshops ( the old and musty ones that used to be crammed with books of every genre and age) for novels of that era

    My first experiences of 'old' books was, as a child, finding at home, a couple of bound volumes of Strand Magazine of the late 1880s. Among the delights I found in there were lots of Sherlock Holmes stories, as Arthur Conan Doyle was a frequent contributor. I blame that for my addiction to detective novels & TV series. There was also at home a Complete Plays of George Bernard Shaw. I read my way through both the the Strand Magazines and the plays of GBS at around 11 or 12 years old.

    Arnold Bennett was an early favourite, as was Galsworthy (following the TV serialisation of The Forsyte Saga in the late sixties). I was introduced to Hardy and Dickens and George Eliot at school, and continued reading them at intervals for many years, although I have only read the shorter works by Eliot and never got round to Middlemarch. I started reading the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen in my twenties.
    My peak reading years were the 1980s & 90s, but was almost exclusively reading authors of the period.

    I returned to C19 during the early years of this century, going back to old favourites plus Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins , but by the end of the first decade I was finding reading a bit of a struggle, and currently barely read at all, and certainly not books.

    My most recent acquisition was a copy of Elizabeth and her German Garden, which has no author's name in it anywhere, but the internet tells me that it was written by Elizabeth von Arnim, who also wrote The Enchanted April.

    I have also enjoyed a few of the 'evangelical' novels of Mrs O F Walton. I was given A Peep Behind The Scenes as a Sunday School prize in the mid 1950s, and have very fond memories of the tears I shed reading it. Then in the mid sixties our old church house was demolished for a new church to be built, and a shelf full of books by the Religious Tract Society dating back to the turn of the century (judging by the bindings, sadly undated, and by a bookplate in one dated 1910) which were being cleared out. I begged a few of these, and also picked up the occasional volume of that type from those old bookshops. Most were culled when we moved house , but I have kept Mrs Walton's Christie's Old Organ and Audrey, or Children of Light, also The Lamplighter, by Mrs Cummins, but this last has such close and tiny print that I never attempted to read it.
  • TwangistTwangist Shipmate
    Last proper old book I read (have been checking my records) was thomas watson's body of divinity (first published 1660ish in a late 50s reprint) about 6 months ago, love his vivid illustrations.
  • Been reading some John Masefield, partly because he was a friend of wife's grandfather. I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying it, rather old-fashioned poetry, or verse as it was called. But some nice passages, and some dross. Just finished, "Wonderings".
  • TwangistTwangist Shipmate
    Been reading some John Masefield, partly because he was a friend of wife's grandfather. I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying it, rather old-fashioned poetry, or verse as it was called. But some nice passages, and some dross. Just finished, "Wonderings".

    My dad used to sing john Ireland setting of Masefields "sea fever".
    The BBC adaptation of his children's book "the box of delights" is quite the festive classic too.
  • HedgehogHedgehog Shipmate
    It is rare that I read a recent book! Probably the oldest that I am currently reading is the Buddhist text Suttanipata. It is not entirely clear to me how old that is, but a commentary on it was probably written no later that the 1st century BC.

    After that, I move waaaaaay up to 1909 for Maurice LeBlanc's The Hollow Needle, which I am almost finished. After that, I plan to read Baroness Orczy's Lord Tony's Wife (1917). Most everything else on my to-read shelf is probably less than 100 years old.

    For those of you considering The Iliad and The Odyssey, may I recommend The Aeneid? Gripping stuff, if you can find a decent translation.
  • KendelKendel Shipmate
    edited February 3
    Slugging it out with Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death." Seems particularly appropriate reading in the US these days. Theme of despair.

    Reading around the brand new "Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders" by Martin Achatz. How could I turn down a book with a poem titled "Bigfoot has Late Fees at the Carnigie Library." New but charming and thoughtful enough that it's still worth mentioning.

    @Roseofsharon I just read Enchanted April recently. Loved it almost as much as the movie.
  • NicoleMRNicoleMR Shipmate
    Haven't read anything particularly old recently, but in the past I've read Vanity Fair, and Candide.
  • Late last year I re-read The Epic of Gilgamesh. I think more of the text has found since I read it decades ago.
  • The_RivThe_Riv Shipmate
    edited February 3
    Rudyard Kipling's Kim is still on my bedside table. Anchoring that 'in process' stack is Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamasov, which at this point I'm just going to have to restart from the beginning. There's a slim little chapbook of Dickens' The Cricket On The Hearth tucked in there somewhere with a War Poets (WWI) Anthology. These are the older books right now. I'm determined to read the three books I received as Christmas presents before returning to my tsundoku pile, all of which are far more recent.
  • DafydDafyd Hell Host
    edited February 3
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    I requested and got Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad for my birthday, but I haven’t started it yet.
    It's interesting to compare that with her translation of The Odyssey. They do feel like different poems - her Iliad is more choppier.
    I also really like Caroline Alexander's free verse version of the Iliad.
    (Both Wilson's iambic pentameters and Alexander's free verse seem to me to work far better than the loose six beat line that seems to be the standard for Homeric translation and feels to me to fall between the two stools.)

  • Okay, I blush to admit this, but I wasn't able to get into the Iliad or the Odyssey at all -- just had this complete mental block around them.

    Then I read them in a children's edition called "Classic Starts," which basically puts the whole story into very readable prose for beginning readers.

    Sounds really silly, I know! But -- once I read through the basic *stories,* it all made way more sense, and now I'm much more confident about my ability to read the actual books!

    Yesterday I got the Lombardo translation of the Iliad from my local library and am already through the first couple of chapters - and that mental block seems completely gone!

    Sometimes my "inner child" is actually useful!
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    I had to read both for my first year Greek Lit in Translation course. We read The Illiad in verse and The Odyssey in a prose translation.
  • Caissa wrote: »
    I had to read both for my first year Greek Lit in Translation course. We read The Illiad in verse and The Odyssey in a prose translation.

    Do you remember which verse translation you used?
  • Okay, I blush to admit this, but I wasn't able to get into the Iliad or the Odyssey at all -- just had this complete mental block around them.

    Then I read them in a children's edition called "Classic Starts," which basically puts the whole story into very readable prose for beginning readers.

    Sounds really silly, I know! But -- once I read through the basic *stories,* it all made way more sense, and now I'm much more confident about my ability to read the actual books!

    Yesterday I got the Lombardo translation of the Iliad from my local library and am already through the first couple of chapters - and that mental block seems completely gone!

    Sometimes my "inner child" is actually useful!

    That sounds like a sensible way of doing things to me!

    I wish I could find such a "translation" for a book a friend recommended me--the ideas are clearly good and useful, but the prose is defeating me--and I with an English doctorate!
  • I just finished "Of Mice and Men," and the next re-read is" Cannery Row. "
  • I've picked up a short one, George Herbert's "A Priest to the Temple." He's far better known for his Christian poems. This is apparently a kind of manual for country parsons.
  • Okay, I blush to admit this, but I wasn't able to get into the Iliad or the Odyssey at all -- just had this complete mental block around them.

    Then I read them in a children's edition called "Classic Starts," which basically puts the whole story into very readable prose for beginning readers.

    Sounds really silly, I know! But -- once I read through the basic *stories,* it all made way more sense, and now I'm much more confident about my ability to read the actual books!

    Yesterday I got the Lombardo translation of the Iliad from my local library and am already through the first couple of chapters - and that mental block seems completely gone!

    Sometimes my "inner child" is actually useful!

    That sounds like a sensible way of doing things to me!

    I wish I could find such a "translation" for a book a friend recommended me--the ideas are clearly good and useful, but the prose is defeating me--and I with an English doctorate!

    OMG what was your specific major? (Like, literature from a particular place/time, etc., or—?)

    What book?
  • English Renaissance period (basically first printed books till Milton) with a strong side of rhetoric—it was a Jesuit university, after all.
  • English Renaissance period (basically first printed books till Milton) with a strong side of rhetoric—it was a Jesuit university, after all.

    Awesome!!
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    @windsofchange - reading a simpler version of a classic is a great idea. I remember Classic Comics from my childhood. Reading one of them helped me sort out Dora and the other woman (was it Agnes?) in David Copperfield because they were illustrated with different coloured hair.

    It was good to see Trollope mentioned above as it's years since I've read any of his books, which I first encountered in a Victorian Literature course, so today I borrowed "Can You Forgive Her?" from the library today. It's the first book in the Palliser series.
  • HelixHelix Shipmate
    I'm reading Moby Dick. It's a struggle and i must admit i'm more skimming than reading but it was on my list and being 100 pages in, I can't turn back.
  • Gary2Gary2 Shipmate Posts: 16
    The last relatively old book I read this year was ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy’ by Lawrence Sterne. This was the third time I’ve read it - it’s good to re-read, particularly something as rich as this. I noticed a number of things I hadn’t seen before, including several jokes about sex which are both stunningly subtle & remarkably crude once you get it. Laugh out loud.
    ‘Tristram Shandy’ is often praised for its playful parody of the novel form, but I also love the book for its deep humanity. Particularly the friendship between Uncle Today and his manservant (and ex-comrade-in-arms) Corporal Trim. One of those novels where one really loves the characters.
    I like latchkeykids’s mention of ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ - it is, I suppose, the oldest possible book that one can read. How privileged we are that it’s available in Penguin Classics.
  • A Feminine ForceA Feminine Force Shipmate
    edited February 9
    The Epic of Gilgamesh broke my heart when I was twelve. Likewise the Norse myths. I was convinced that all the old stories were full of all kinds of heroism and great deeds and none of the gods ever grew old or died. That somehow, these thought forms were still alive, though hiding behind the veil of reality. That the great stories could be about sorrow, loss, diminishment, error, and the inevitability of consequences was a deep disappointment.

    Rereading Fraser's Golden Bough right now. Forgot how dense it is.

    AFF
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh broke my heart when I was twelve. Likewise the Norse myths.
    I’ve loved mythology since I was a child, and always found the Norse myths more interesting than Greek or Roman myths. I was interested that my son, I think without too much influence from me, shared that love of mythology and preference for Norse myths.

    I discovered the Near Eastern myths later in life, but find them fascinating as well.


  • I've recently gone back to Tudor poetry and intend to read more American poetry beyond those poets I'm most familiar with such as Dickinson and Frost.

    That all counts as 'recent' to me ...

    I may start on 'The Philokolia' during Lent.

    I've read both 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey' fairly recently but can't remember which translation but it didn't seem that difficult a read, but then I was familiar with the stories from kids' versions I'd read as a boy.

    I've got a copy of Donne's sermons and I'd like to get into those. I've only dipped in and out.
  • HarryCHHarryCH Shipmate
    I wish I knew of more Norse myths. (I have tried to do my part.)
  • I hadn't even thought of Donne's prose, thank you!
  • The famous 'No man is an island ...' comes from one of his sermons.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    The famous 'No man is an island ...' comes from one of his sermons.
    No it comes from Devotions upon emergent occasions written during/ about his illness with a severe fever.
  • Ok. I stand corrected.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    edited February 9
    “Bring us at our last awakening” however does come from A Sermon Preached at White-hall. February 29. 1627, as does a wonderful oration on the great resurrection*:
    But the resurrection of the body is discernible by no other light, but that of faith, nor could be fixed by any less assurance than an article of the creed. Where be all the splinters of that bone, which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the air? Where be all the atoms of that flesh, which a corrosive hath eat away, or a consumption hath breathed, and exhaled away from our arms, and other limbs? In what wrinkle, in what furrow, in what bowel of the earth, lie all the grains of the ashes of a body burnt a thousand years since? In what corner, in what ventricle of the sea, lies all the jelly of a body drowned in the general flood? what coherence, what sympathy, what dependence maintains any relation, any correspondence, between that arm which was lost in Europe, and that leg, that was lost in Africa or Asia, scores of years between? One humour of our dead body produces worms, and those worms suck and exhaust all other humour, and then all dies, and all dries, and moulders into dust, and that dust is blown into the river, and that puddled water tumbled into the sea, and that ebbs and flows in infinite revolutions, and still, still God knows in what cabinet every seed-pearl lies, in what part of the world every grain of every man's dust lies; and sibilat populum suum, (as his prophet speaks in another case) he whispers, he hisses, he beckons for the bodies of his saints, and in the twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered over all the elements, is sat down at the right hand of God, in a glorious resurrection. A dropsy hath extended me to an enormous corpulency, and unwieldiness; a consumption hath attenuated me to a feeble macilency and leanness, and God raises me a body, such as it should have been, if these infirmities had not intervened and deformed it.

    (*“Preached at the Earl of Bridgwater’s House in London, at the Marriage of his daughter, the Lady Mary, to the eldest son of the Lord Herbert of Castle-Island, November 19, 1627.”)
  • Huia wrote: »
    @windsofchange - reading a simpler version of a classic is a great idea. I remember Classic Comics from my childhood. Reading one of them helped me sort out Dora and the other woman (was it Agnes?) in David Copperfield because they were illustrated with different coloured hair.

    It was good to see Trollope mentioned above as it's years since I've read any of his books, which I first encountered in a Victorian Literature course, so today I borrowed "Can You Forgive Her?" from the library today. It's the first book in the Palliser series.

    Thanks! I should see if I can find a kids version of something by Trollope. People are always telling me they think I'd enjoy him, and they may be right. But as with the Iliad, I've had difficulty getting into it.

    (David Copperfield, however, I read in its entirety at a young age, adored it, and have tried to reread it once every year or two since. I always make sure I have plenty of time to get from the beginning to "Janet! Donkeys!" before taking a break. Aunt Betsey Trotwood is my hero!)
  • HarryCHHarryCH Shipmate
    I thought that was "Classics Illustrated". You can find some of them on Amazon.
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    @HarryCH Yes, you're right on the name, I think we just called them "classic comics" because we had a man drive around our neighbourhood
    with a comics library in a caravan. We could either buy or swap comics. He always had a good supply of them. Our local stationery shop where we bought our usual comics ("Princess" and "Eagle") didn't sell them, possibly because they were more expensive.
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    I was surprised how much I enjoyed "Adam Bede" by George Eliot. I hadn't read any of her books before. Anyone here an Eliot fan?
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