forum Recommend me Shakespeare/classic novels so I can troll my friends!

Started August 12, 2021 by Deleted user

tune

Edit topic

Does what it says on the tin. I need to troll my friends by seeming smarter than I actually am. Help.

Also please no horror or tragedies, only like, happy stuff. I already write too much angst, rom-coms and satire would be fun though.

As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Twelfth Night are all really good Shakespearean comedies!!

BHH Kyle Kallgren on YouTube makes the best reviews of Shakespeare-related media. He's openly had some difficult psychological slumps since 2020 and hasn't been making so many videos since then, but I think his reviews of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (surreal comedy based on Hamlet) and Titus Andronicus might still be up.

Growing trends is to read more diversely, though… I'd recommend The Color Purple by Alice Walker or Fledgling by Octavia Butler — but those are either tragedy or gothic horror. There are a couple of very cute stories in The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

If you really want to troll your friends with academic brilliance, you've got to read the most boring nonfiction: Das Kapital by Karl Marx, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, Orientalism by Edward Said, The World I Live In and Out of the Dark both by Helen Keller.

If any music schools are still staging recitals for their opera singers, maybe try to find out if you can get a ticket or a seat to get cultured in theater arts. Opera is swanky. Master Class was my introduction to basically a biography of Maria Callas, but because of the selected songs (or arias, if you want to get technical) sampled for that musical, I also learned about different operas.

I'd recommend Hamlet but it's, uh, definitely a tragedy lmao

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas is so much fun tho!

Also I have come to the realization that most of the classics I read could be classified as horrors or tragedies, whoops. Mainly because most classics are? You might have a hard time finding "fluffy" classics. Tho Jane Austen's books are fluffy romance and classics, so?? There's an option

The Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (the OG collection of Robin Hood stories haha) is pretty good, tho (spoiler) Robin dies at the end (of old age! Or poison, can't remember lmao) so idk

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll isn't a tragedy or horror! It's just,,,, weird. Same with Wizard of Oz

The og Peter Pan by J M Barrie is pretty good too

The Importance of Being Earnest!! Oscar Wilde does satire really well and his comedies are hilarious

The Importance of Being Earnest!! Oscar Wilde does satire really well and his comedies are hilarious

Yes. This one. I loved it!

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut!!! It's my favourite classic and also just one of my favourite books in general. I don't know how to explain the plot in a way that makes it sounds like a good book, but it has aliens and time travel which was the main selling point for me. It's also only like 300 or so pages, so it's not super long either.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is also really good, and I feel like its pretty underrated as far as classics go. Basically though it's about a mentally disabled man who undergoes an experimental procedure to make him smarter. The entire thing is told through his progress journals, and it's so, so good. It also made me cry.

It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember really liking 1984 by George Orwell too.

Slaughterhouse Five has an amazing first sentence; I really need to read it!

As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Twelfth Night are all really good Shakespearean comedies!!

And if you want plays that aren't tragedies but not also not comedies, try Measure For Measure, A Winter's Tale, The Tempest, and any of the Henriad plays. My personal favorite is Henry V.

Oooh Henry V is very good, I agree with Jyn