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
I read an abridged version but I agree!
Beowulf
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.
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.
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.
Moby Dick and War and Peace were both sick with it.
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.
