Genrefied Classics: A Guide to Reading Interests in Classic Literature. Tina Frolund. 2007. Libraries Unlimited. 392 pages.
Genrefied Classics is essentially a reference book. A book of bookish lists. There are ten genres explored in the book. Each chapter of genres is broken into sub-genres or categories. Each sub-genre has a list of recommended reads. Each entry lists the author, the title, the year and country of initial publication, details about more recent publications, and information about if the title has been done as a movie or an audio book. Each entry also features 'similar reads' and subject headings for that title.
Classics can be interpreted differently by people--depending on each person's definition of what a classic is and is not. This book only includes "classics" published before 1985. (Ender's Game would be an example of a more recent classic included in this one, the oldest examples would be The Iliad, Aesop's Fables, The Aeneid, etc.)
While the intended audience of this one may be adults who work with kids and teens (fifth grade on up through twelfth grade)--in other words librarians, teachers, etc., I think other readers can benefit from browsing this one. I don't think you have to be looking for a classic to put in the hands of a teenager to benefit from it.
There are categories or subcategories within this one which I wish were a bit longer because I would love even more suggestions. I would have LOVED it if the chapter on romance had been longer. I would have thought there would be more categories too. This section just felt a little uninspired, if that makes sense. Because while it's nice to include Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, it's not like those aren't oh-so-obvious choices. And to list only one Georgette Heyer?! I also think it would have been nice for Eugenia Price to get a mention or two either in this section or the historical fiction section. And Grace Livingston Hill, for that matter, either here or in inspirational fiction. And it just felt wrong, wrong, wrong for Elizabeth Gaskell not to be included in the romance section or the historical fiction section. Surely North and South and Wives and Daughters and Cranford are more than worthy to be included!!! I mean North and South is absolute must-must-must read in my opinion.
I was pleased to see some of my favorite authors included: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, Ray Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, John Steinbeck, L.M. Montgomery, etc. Some of the authors recommended were unfamiliar, which is a GOOD thing in my opinion. I picked this one up wanting to discover new-to-me-authors in my genres of choice. Unfortunately, some of them might be a bit tricky to find at the library.
Because of my familiarity with some of the subjects (sub-categories), their recommended reading lists seemed too short, too incomplete, as you might expect. If you come to the book wanting new-to-you authors, new-to-you-books, the more you've read of the basics, the more that will be the case. But these lists aren't supposed to be comprehensive, they're supposed to be more basic than that.
One thing that also GREATLY annoyed me (I have low tolerance for this, don't laugh) is when they used the WRONG, WRONG, OH-SO-WRONG listing for the Chronicles of Narnia. Publication order. Publication order. Publication order. That's all I have to say about that.
As you might expect, the longest chapter is devoted to historical fiction. Over sixty pages worth of recommended reading. The shortest chapter is definitely the one devoted to inspirational fiction.
The ten genres are:
Adventure
- Espionage
- Journey
- Lost World
- Nature and Animals
- Sea Stories<
When I was a little girl my brother would tease me by saying I should read the dictionary–to be as smart as him. I would scoff and return to whatever it was I was doing. Who knew I would actually end up a reference book junkie, the compulsion for books only exceeded by my pen fetish? Charity book sales, used book stores, The 99 Cent Store, garage sales… I am compelled.
Among my more odd specimens are old medical dictionaries and legal manuals; mythology, psychology, geomythology and quantum theory; studies on the Quabalah, a library of Wiccan and Druidic knowledge and several books on Buddhism. I must say though, that my favorite references are
The Old Farmers Almanac and
Pocket Ref by Thomas J. Glover.
More than just places to find an answer, these pages entice a question and spur my imagination. In the Farmers Almanac I can hear people in the fields discussing the best phase of the moon for planting their next crop. I can learn how to predict the weather or find delicious tidbits of folklore and trivia. Thomas’ Pocket Ref offers a primer on knots and their uses; Morse code and Braille alphabets; a perpetual calendar; every type of conversion table you could ask for and a chili pepper hotness scale. Actually, the amount of information in the Pocket Ref is mind-boggling; it is by far the most fun I have had for five dollars.
Sure, you can find just about any information you need on the Internet, but a book can answer the questions you don’t know you have.
What’s in your bookcase? Are you an information junkie? Has an encyclopedia or other reference book ever spurred a project? What are some of your favorite reference materials? Let us know!
by Robyn Chausse
Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, has been published by Perigee, so go check it out in your local bookstore. In the post below Ammon reflects on his visit to talk to 5th and 6th graders.
Are we born with a natural fear of reference books or does it have to be taught to us? This was the question on my mind last week as I was visiting my old grammar school to talk to the 5th and 6th grade classes about dictionaries.
I don’t remember who taught me how to use a dictionary, or when it happened, or at what point I began to 
feel apprehensive about this use. But I know that for many of the years between when I first learned to spell and when I realized that I’d been misinterpreting the usage label ‘colloquial’ in the dictionary that I had been plagued by feelings of uncertainty whenever I went to consult a reference work. I’ve been trying to come up with a workshop of sorts that will dispel this uncertainty make the dictionary enjoyable for children, and I hoped that talking with the 11 and 12 year olds would help me in this.
The 5th and 6th graders were considerably more engaged, engaging, and educated that I had thought they would be. I suppose it is common for people who have not done much teaching to make mistakes in gauging the educational level of their subjects, but I still was fairly surprised. Especially when I was talking to the 6th graders about how the meanings of certain words shift over time, and asked if any of them know the word maverick. I knew that some of them would know what it meant, but was not prepared for the 11 year old in the back row who piped up with “Well…I know that today maverick means someone who doesn’t follow convention…but wasn’t it originally an eponymous 19th century word from a cattle rancher in the West who refused to brand his livestock?” Suddenly afraid that I was talking to an entire classroom of etymologists specializing in regionalisms I decided to change the subject and asked what their favorite words were.
It appears that this particular group of sixth graders had been eagerly waiting for someone to come by to ask them about their favorite words, as the next ten minutes were taken up with a cacophony on shouted examples: “Wicked!” “Fer-shizzle!!” “Erudite!!!”
Both classes were highly enthusiastic about discussing language, and needed only the slightest provocation from me (as when I asked ‘what’s a word?’) and they would leap into a classroom-wide shouted argument about meaning and context that resembled a scrum of either befuddled or drunk semanticists:
“A word is a thing.”
“A word is not a thing – a word is the title of a thing.”
“But…what about the word ‘the’…is that the title of a thing?”
“Of course ‘the’ is a title…’the’ title – duh.”
“What about word…is word a word?”
“Oh…my…God…you are such an idiot!”
“Yeah, but what does idiot mean?”
I have no way of knowing whether the children to whom I spoke are representative of their age, but it was certain that they have not yet had their irrepressible enjoyment of language scolded out of them, or a fear of dictionaries bred in. They would make up new words constantly (Socko – a taco made with old socks), ask questions that were unencumbered by embarrassment (‘Doesn’t the word dude also mean butt-hair?’), and had no qualms about being excited about the dictionary (as was evidenced by the 5th grade teacher having to yell at the entire class that they had to put away their dictionaries).
There may indeed be some small grain of truth to the definition of ‘dictionary’ that is provided by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary (‘A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic’), but if so, it would appear to not take effect for these students until high school at least.
This is a little off topic, but a few weeks ago, I had gotten two great suggestions for books that have made great reference sources (Scott McCloud's Making Comics, and Bruce Blitz's The Big Book of Cartooning), and I was wondering, what books do ya'll have on your bookshelves that you find yourself constantly referring to?
Personally, I recommend - Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children's Books by Uri Shulevitz. It's very helpful in understanding the process involved in creating a picture book.
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Sounds like an interesting book. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Reading guides are wonderful. It's always interesting to see what makes the cut and what doesn't and to try to figure out why. But often I feel overwhelmed when I see these kinds of lists. There are SO MANY books I haven't read. Where will I find the time?
This sounds great. I usually avoid reading guides because I always end up adding too many books to my already long list but I can always feel better about adding classics.