Dead White Guys

To My Youngers,

I spent a lot of time last week discussing books, reading books, and deciding what books to read next. I'm in a bit of a phase right now- a dead-white-guys phase. I started with F Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, then James Joyce, and now some Melville, and Faulker, with Yeats and Kerouac soon to follow. Of course there was some John Green and Agatha Christie thrown in there (one not dead, one not a man) but being out of the vicinity of a library or book store kind of threw a spanner in the works for a few days...

What brought this on was the realization that I have not read so many of the 'great novels' of the last century. I mean there are many I have read (and love- Catch22, 1984, All Quiet on the Western Front, Man in the Gray Flannel Suit...) but I'm missing out on a bunch of them (To Kill a Mockingbird, Ulysses, For Whom the Bell Tolls, On the Road...). Originally it was just going to be the Great Gatsby but after finding it such an interesting read and such an unexpectedly relevant commentary on the culture of today, I decided to go on a bit of a binge and get myself updated (is it still called updating if you're updating on things from dates gone past?). I anticipate some hiccups, interruptions, and needs for modern novels (small m modern, not big M Modern...) and books written about music, mysterious murders, or childhood adventures, but for the next while the era of dead-white-guy literature will reign supreme.

For some reason saying that makes me want to watch Quantum Leap. Weird.

-E