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.

  • VoxAdActa@kbin.social
    1·
    3 years ago

    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.

  • Knoll0114@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    Probably something by Jane Austen? Actually technically Shakespeare but that was for school so it doesn’t really count.

  • melonpunk@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    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.