AEE 2684: Intimidated by Classic Literature? 3 Tips to Overcome It With Rebecca Schinsky

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2684. Intimidated by classic literature? Three tips to overcome it with Rebecca Shinsky. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times.

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Do you wonder if you're ready to read classic literature in English? We're here to show you that you are. Rebecca Shinsky from the Zero to Well Read podcast joins us today to share three tips for reading and loving the classics.

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Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score to take our free two-minute quiz. That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. Hello, everyone, and welcome. I'm so excited to introduce you to our guest today, Rebecca Shinsky.

Hello, Rebecca. How are you? Hi, I'm wonderful. Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Yes, this is very exciting. I'm going to give a little bio here for Rebecca, but I want to let everyone know I am thrilled about this because I have found this newfound love for literature.

I'm a sci-fi reader, as you guys know, and I love... crime mysteries. But Toni Morrison was my gateway back into literature. And it's because of Rebecca's podcast, which I'm going to tell you about.

And I am so excited for everyone out there listening to get some tips today about why and how you also can be reading great English literature. Of course, we can also read those YA novels, sci-fi, anything that's fun for you to read. But if you have felt intimidated by literature today, today's episode is going to help you see that you shouldn't be, right?

That it is accessible for everyone at your level, whoever's listening. So Rebecca, let me first introduce you. Rebecca has been working on the bookish internet since 2008. She is chief of staff at Riot New Media Group, which is home of Book Riot and co-hosts Zero to Well Read and the Book Riot podcast.

So Zero to Well Read is the podcast that I am more familiar with. So Rebecca, tell me a little bit about that. You do it with a co-host and you're sharing details and sort of a breakdown of books that a lot of people might consider difficult, right? Yeah.

Yes, that's exactly the idea behind the podcast. We've been running Book Riot now for almost 15 years. And one of the things that we've heard the most from listeners and readers is that they want to access classic books, the books that are popular, books that make a big difference in our culture. But often people are intimidated, or they would do it if they had one friend that would read the book with them.

But sometimes, as we were just talking about off mic, it's hard to find that person. Yeah. Yes. kind of a mix of English class and book club. And we try to keep it really fun and make you feel like you can pick these books up because that's the idea.

You shouldn't have to be enrolled in a special course to be able to engage with great literature. Exactly. And that is what I love about it so much. For those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a while, it might know when I started trying to read books in Spanish, I started with Don Quixote.

in Spanish. It was far too ambitious. And of course, I gave up right away. But I also didn't have, like you said, a book club. I didn't have a class. I was on my own.

All of this extremely difficult vocabulary that I wasn't familiar with. And Don Quixote is difficult in English. So it was well out of... I just wasn't prepared.

But then I started reading A Man Called Otto in Spanish. And it was so much more accessible. I loved it. It was a page turner. And I realized... Oh, I should be trying sticking with easier books.

And now I have not gone back and tried to read really excellent literature in French and Spanish. And I know that a lot of our listeners are in that same boat where we're sort of sticking with what is easier, what is more accessible. And I know I'm missing out on a lot of great literature, just like our listeners are missing out on amazing literature in English. Some of you out there listening might, might be trying to read that literature or

But like you said, Rebecca, without a book club or a class or at least a friend to chat about it with, it's very sort of lonely and isolating. That's not fun. So I love that about your podcast. I'm excited for the tips you guys are going to hear today.

And Rebecca, right off the bat, can you give a recommendation for our listeners of where to start? What is a book that is classic literature that would be pretty accessible? Yeah.

I would start with The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. It sits in the zone between short story and novel. It's about 85 pages long, so not a big commitment. Hemingway was famous for writing very short sentences, very direct language.

So it's a wonderful way to challenge any preconceived notions you have that classic literature must have difficult languages, or just impossible sentence structure. Everything is very straightforward. What he chooses not to say is just as important as what he says.

And the depth of feeling that Hemingway is able to convey in just a few words is really what he's known for. So you get that whole experience in 85 pages that I think really anyone who's listening to this would be able to approach. You don't need any special background knowledge.

It doesn't have any complex vocabulary, but it is one of the most important books in American literature. I love that recommendation. That's the first one that I read in an AP English class in high school. And I think it was such a great introduction for me to literature and will be to every one of our listeners for all of the reasons you shared.

So yes, start with the old man in the sea. And it's interesting, all literature, I think, more than the average book that you would just grab at the bookstore or the library, you are going to want to talk about it with someone. So I'm excited for you to share your podcast, Rebecca, and for everyone out there to have a chance to listen to someone talk about these books with someone, because that's what's difficult is you're not going to just tell someone, read this book, I loved it. You're going to want to talk to someone about the themes, about what you discovered, about a lot of the things that are very eye-opening and thought-provoking in these books.

That's right. All right. Yes, let's dive in with the tips. Because if so, once we know we read the old man in the sea, I think these tips will still be, you know, useful for that.

But then as you move to Toni Morrison to other authors that are weightier and difficult to understand, you do need strategies to be able to stick with these books and understand them. So let's dive in with some tips about how to approach literature in English.

I would say start when you're looking at these older or more difficult books by looking for an edition that has an introduction. Read that introduction before you jump into the book. It will give you a sense of what to look for as you're reading, what might be important, how to navigate unfamiliar topics or language. If a book is older and it doesn't have an edition that has an introduction, look at the Wikipedia page or do a Google to help you get grounded in what you're stepping into.

There are no bonus points for just jumping in cold and trying to figure it out yourself. Give yourself as much information as possible. And also to that end, don't worry about spoilers. Most of these books, even if you know what a plot point is that's coming –

it won't change the experience of that language and the world unfolding for you. So really give yourself the information that you need to get started. That's such a great idea. I've often read books and wished I could have sort of a book club before where we chat about and look up everything there is to know about the book, give ourselves as much information as we can so that then we're reading and we're familiar with what is happening.

We understand a lot more. Otherwise, it's easy just to give up. you get a chapter or two in and you feel like there's a lot here I'm not understanding. And it's hard to stick with it.

Or even if you understand what's happening on the page, you might be wondering, like, why is this book important? Especially with older books. And so to go back to the old man in the sea, which we have a zero to well read episode about that folks can listen to. Okay, we'll link to that on the blog for this episode.

So you can find it that would be so helpful. Yeah. You can find copies that have introductions that tell you about Hemingway's career, but also the background of the story that he was writing and why it was so groundbreaking at the time that it was published. And knowing that can really help you just get your arms around what's going on in the story.

I love that tip. Amazing. Okay. Give us another tip. Okay. Another one is when you come across a term that you don't know, because this will happen to all of us, even if we're reading in our native languages, mark it, but keep going.

Don't pick up your phone in the middle of the book. Don't interrupt your flow. Often you're going to be able to figure out the meaning of that word by the surrounding context. If not, you can always go back and look it up.

But I really advocate for just make a note, keep going, unless it seems to have a really disrupted whatever is happening there. But The best thing you can do for yourself, I think, is try to keep yourself inside that reading experience. I agree a thousand percent.

And this is happening to me a lot as I read Toni Morrison. There are a lot of words. Even though I have a robust vocabulary, there are still words I don't know. And I'm forcing myself, don't look it up.

Keep reading. And often it's because I am so invested in the plot and I want to know what's happening next. And I'm curious about what's going to happen that I don't want to derail myself. So I agree 100%.

Don't look up the words then. Mark it because it will be interesting to go later and find out now that you have the context. Do you know what it means? Look up the definition.

Very interesting. But wait and do that once you're through the book so that you can stay invested in those characters. Yes. Have you ever felt exhausted after speaking English?

Not because the conversation was difficult, but because your brain was working overtime to translate, checking grammar, searching for vocabulary. But true fluency actually feels lighter. You spend less time thinking about English and more time connecting with people. Find out what's standing between you and that next level that you're looking for.

Take our free two-minute fluency quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. All right, let's move on to your third tip.

These are fantastic. I'm so excited for everyone listening to use these tips as you dive into great literature. So my last tip is don't assume that you're doing it wrong if you're not always 100% sure about what's happening, or if you feel like you're not getting it. Many writers are creating that effect on purpose, and they're trying to tell you something about the world that the characters live in, or something about the issues that they're writing about.

So Just let that feeling wash over you. Note that many of the great books and a lot of the old great books are much, much stranger than we give them credit for. And sometimes that uncertainty is...

author's point, it's them trying to make you feel a certain way. So note that that's happening. And then you can always go and, you know, talk to a friend or look it up later and see, like, did I really not understand this? Or is the confusion part of it, but especially when you're just starting to embark on these books, and Toni Morrison is a great example, there are things that are unclear and uncertain, and unsettling, even to scholars who have spent decades in

studying her work and sometimes just accepting this is supposed to make me feel unsettled as part of it. Yes, that's such a good point. Don Quixote was a great example of that. You read it in English or the original Spanish.

It's meant to be confusing and unsettling and you figure out why later. Don't give up, right? Dive in. I love how you said wash over you. Allow yourself to be immersed in that and realize this is likely intentional.

that I am confused, that things seem strange. Something is off in this person's head and that might be intentional. Yes. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie are great examples of this postmodern writers who create these really big, unruly worlds in their books.

And it feels big and unruly and like all kinds of things are happening. And like your dead grandpa shows up at dinner and there's flower petals coming from the ceiling. And that's part of it. He's doing that on purpose.

So the more interesting thing is, why am I supposed to feel this way? Not is it wrong that I feel this way? Yes. Okay. I love these tips so much. Thank you for sharing all of this.

I can't wait for everyone listening to dive into these books. I do want to share. I'm curious if you'll agree with me, Rebecca. I want to share one exception to the read the introduction first, which is by Toni Morrison.

I wish so much that I had not read. There's a long essay, an introduction in the newest edition. And And it's like we said, spoilers don't matter, but this is a short story that Toni Morrison wrote, that if you don't know anything about it, you will discover so much about yourself and the assumptions you are making.

And I really want to talk to every one of our listeners about what they thought and what their experience was reading it. And if they read the introduction first, it will sort of ruin that. What do you think? No spoilers for everyone listening, because everyone should read Recitatif.

It's so short. It's... It's been too long since I read it. So I will, I'll have to defer to you there. But as you were saying that I was thinking, this is a great way maybe for folks, if you do have friends that you can, you know, loop into a reading experience with you, you could decide, we're going to skip the introduction, we're going to make our way through this together.

And then you can always go back to the introduction. And Something short like that. It's a short story, so it's very, very short. You could just read it, then read the introduction, then read it again.

Because for a regular-sized book, a novel, you do want to know more about it. You want to be able to be familiar with what's going to happen. For these short stories that are so short and are often intentionally extremely thought-provoking or helping you realize something about yourself, sometimes it is amazing to go into that knowing nothing. And that's true.

I think of anything in all of literature. This is very it is an exception to the rule on purpose. Toni Morrison wanted us to have this experience where we would question our own biases and our own prejudices. And we know what are you thinking about what is being written and why?

So that's really interesting. But I would love for you to share a little bit about Zero to Well Read. We're going to share the link for The Old Man and the Sea so that you could listen to that before, maybe again after, to really help have that book club experience with the book. And then could you recommend a couple of other maybe recent episodes or episodes in the past that language learners could use to get into literature as sort of a jumping off point?

Oh, I love this question. You know, one of the things that we hear from listeners most often is that they're intimidated by big works of nonfiction. And so specifically for US history, the most accessible and just wonderfully readable one that I've come across is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, which is about the great migration where generations of Black Americans after slavery were traveled north and west to set up new lives.

She is a journalist and a researcher, and she did in-depth interviews with dozens and dozens of people to construct this story, but it reads like a novel. It's about 500 pages long. I think just the length sometimes intimidates readers, but if you pick it up, her sentences are just lovely, very easy to access, and you can fall right into the story.

And then being able to step back and realize like, these are real people. And this is what really happened in their lives and an important part of American history is really powerful. Okay, I'm really excited for this recommendation. That's right up my alley.

I want to read it. I hadn't even heard of it yet. And for listeners as well, I agree the length of a book should not dissuade you. Some of the best books I've read were very thick tomes.

And you get so into the characters. I think of War and Peace as one example. And even some of the sci-fi series I've read that end up being 16 books, thousands and thousands of pages by the time you finish a series. I would never go back and trade that time for anything else.

I feel like I know all of those characters. I lived that. So deeply connected. Yes, exactly. So I agree. I'm excited to check that one out. Yeah. Since you mentioned short stories, we talked about Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, which was a Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories from 1999.

She's an Indian writer, writing in English. And a lot of those stories explore the immigrant experience. It's really wonderful. They're just as applicable now as they were 27 years ago.

And because it's short stories, you can do 20 pages at a time. Beautiful language. The stories all come together. But again, not super complicated. And by the time this episode is airing for folks, we will have also done The Odyssey by Homer to overlap with the big movie that was coming.

is coming out this summer as you and I are talking. It's coming out in a couple more weeks. But that's one of those big classic Greek works that's been translated by a bunch of people, and there are all sorts of different ways to approach it.

And Jeff and I, my co-host, we each read a different translation so that we could come to the conversation with different perspectives on it. But I was pleasantly surprised by how accessible it was. My first line in my notes was, this is easier than Shakespeare's. Okay.

I'm very excited. My kids are obsessed with the Odyssey right now because of Epic the Musical. Have you heard of this? Oh, fun. Yes. It's on YouTube. And I hope that someday it becomes a Broadway musical.

My kids have it memorized. They watch it constantly. It's just sort of drawing set to the music. So they're so excited that this film is coming out and they want to read the book.

And I've thought about reading it with them, but they're 11. They're twins that are 11 years old. I'm like... Maybe let's wait a Emily Wilson's translation is the newest.

She was the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English. And it is like it reads very rhythmically. It's very cinematic. Claire Danes narrates the audiobook edition.

And that's another – I'm going to sneak a fourth tip in. Oh, I love that. audio-based listener, which folks listening to a podcast might be. Yes, a lot of listening to audiobooks and podcasts, especially while you're driving or doing chores, you might want to listen to the audiobook just so you can get everything done.

Or listen to the audiobook while you sit with the book in front of you, and that can help enrich the experience or you can hear the rhythm. I do this with Shakespeare. Yes. So that you can hear the intonation and the emotion behind the words.

That's always a wonderful way to make that experience work. I love that. And I love Claire Dane's voice. And that translation sounds perfect for me to read with my kids.

I'm so excited for all the tips that I have gotten today. And for listeners, for you to check out Zero to Well Read for these podcast episodes that make literature so much more accessible. And don't feel intimidated, right? Dive into interesting literature.

It will be so fulfilling. It is worth the time. It is worth the effort that it takes to really, you know, attack really to absorb a novel that is more difficult than the average, maybe YA novel or mystery novel that you would feel is easier. Don't, yeah, don't shy away from literature.

Yeah, give yourself a chance to build your confidence there. It really will pay off. I agree. Thank you so much for joining us today, Rebecca. We really appreciate you coming on the podcast.

And yeah, excited to hear your voiceover on Zero to Well Read. Thanks again. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Bye. Thanks for listening to All Ears English.

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