I was thinking this while reading The Canterbury Tales, which isn’t exactly the oldest I’ve read (I think that goes to Homer)
But The Canterbury Tales is just so delightful! Getting into the flow of the rhyming prose is very fun to read (I’ve just been reading the Penguin Classics Coghill translation which is fantastic)
I’ve already watched the Pasolini adaptation but I’m definitely going to revisit once I finish the book.
Beowulf fucking slaps
Well by the standards you’ve set this is positively modern, but I’d say my favorite ‘old’ book (indeed one of my favorite overall) has to be Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.
I love how bold the story felt playing with the idea of gender and power in the Victorian English countryside. It was also surprisingly sweet, and I hold the storm scene after Bathsheba’s marriage to Troy in my hall of fame romantic hero moments.
The book is just pure comfort for me, like a blanket and a warm mug of cocoa by the fireplace. Bathsheba and Gabriel Oak were such good characters and i couldn’t help but cheer them on, I just loved it.
I also just find it so interesting that Hardy, who is in my opinion, author of some of the most bleak and hopeless stuff out there, is responsible for such a tender tale.
I have a little collection of his books that I haven’t read yet, but this has me excited for one I haven’t heard much of!! The ones I’m most familiar with are Tess of the D’ubervilles and Jude the Obscure.
I am happy to be able to spread a bit of reading anticipation! This is markedly different in tone to Tess and Jude the Obscure, which I think both trend more in line with Hardy’s general vibe - it makes sense to me you are more familiar with those stories.
Hopefully you will enjoy his work :)
This was my first Hardy book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I next read “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and I liked that even more.
Dunno if you’d count it as a book but the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of my all time favorite stories that I regularly go back to. Also, predates Homer by a long shot.
I’d definitely count it, if you read it in a book lol. And yeah, it’s known as the oldest story ever, so I’d imagine it outdates everyone, Homer included 😉
Probably something by Jane Austen? Actually technically Shakespeare but that was for school so it doesn’t really count.
It would have to be The Iliad. I don’t really go for classics, but I was curious. It was the translation they have on Gutenberg, which wasn’t bad. I have yet to read The Odyssey, though.
I think I preferred The Iliad to The Odyssey but I really liked them both. The Odyssey was definitely more fantastical whereas The Iliad felt more epic and thrilling.
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I read that towards the end of last year, and I think it could just be the writing style of that time, but there were definitely some tough slogs to get through. At the same time though, there are some great passages that were pretty thrilling or spooky or even a bit funny. Especially the image of a cowboy character stuck in the middle of this got his style horror 😂
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol I’m a huge fan of 19th century Russian literature, and that is probably the oldest book I’ve read in that genre.
Other than that, I think Don Quixote is super fun to read at the start, but it drags on too long to be enjoyable all the way through. But that’s the oldest book out of which I got a lot of enjoyment.
Beowulf
As a kid, the grandmother of one of my best friends used to read it to us at night in a cabin in Door County WI. She read it in the Old English version. Left a very lasting impression on me and I have read itany times since.
I love formative books like that!! Not nearly the same genre wise but I have vivid memories of my mom reading CS Lewis to us, though I haven’t revisited any of them since their movies came out years ago.
Since someone already said Beowulf, I’ll go a bit later and say Le Morte D’Arthur. The Song of Roland is also really good.
I’ve tried to like a lot of old books, and just never got them (or, sometimes, even got through them). Inferno, Don Quixote, Canterbury Tales, The Iliad, etc. I think the oldest book I’ve actually enjoyed was Dracula. Then there’s a long drought after that; I think the next-oldest books I enjoyed were Harry Harison’s Deathworld (1960) and Morris West’s Tower of Babel (1968). West’s book, particularly; I didn’t realize it was that old until I finished it and caught a glimpse of the copyright date. It reads a lot like a modern spy thriller.
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