I DID IT. I conquered the classics in five and a half years and lived to tell the tale. Here’s what I loved, what I hated, and what I learned.

Sometimes you give a book a second chance, even if it doesn’t deserve one. And sometimes you know that you are never, ever, ever getting back together.

If the classics are meant to represent the full spectrum of the human experience, they still have a lot of work to do. Starting here.

1984 serves as an always-relevant reminder that our best hope for the future is teaching younger generations not what to think, but how to think.

Long, slow, suffocating: This is a book for masochists, written by a sadist. In other words, my specialty.

While I’d prefer my Greeks a little less bloodthirsty and a little more feminist, I can’t argue with the effusive spirit that has made them immortal.