The Weekly Geeks - my very first time!

It is time for my first installment of Weekly Geeks. I am a complete newbie, I have just found out about it but I think the idea is great and I hope to post often. Enjoy!

1) How do you feel about classic literature? Are you intimidated by it? Love it? Not sure because you never actually tried it? Don't get why anyone reads anything else? Which classics, if any, have you truly loved? Which would you recommend for someone who has very little experience reading older books? Go all out, sell us on it!

I absolutely love classic literature. Sometimes I feel that no one writes nowadays as they used to in the old days. I can see the obvious love for words in there, the flawlessness of writing and the magical ability of a writer to create a world, characters and atmosphere with which I, as a modern reader, can still identify and appreciate. The classic I have truly loved from the first time I read it is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. It makes me weep, like no other novel, every time I read it. Actually most of the classics I love and appreciate are French: Alexandre Dumas’ Queen Margot, Honore De Balzac’s Old Goriot. But there are others as well. Being Polish, I have my Polish writer on the list of favorites as well. His name is Henryk Sienkiewicz and Quo Vadis is very special to me. It won the Nobel prize in Literature, it was the first classic I read and the one that encouraged me to read more. So I guess I could say I have much to be grateful for to Mr. Sienkiewicz.
All the classic literature taught me more about life than all the textbooks I had to study in school put together.

2) Let's say you're vacationing with your dear cousin Myrtle, and she forgot to bring a book. The two of you venture into the hip independent bookstore around the corner, where she primly announces that she only reads classic literature. If you don't find her a book, she'll never let you get any reading done! What contemporary book/s with classic appeal would you pull off the shelf for her?

It would be a book I read last year and loved from the first pages. It’s The Religion by Tim Willocks. It has the appeal of Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas. The action is breathtaking, the many issues presented there are deep and thought-provoking, and the writing, once again, is flawless. I have a review of the book posted here so instead of cheating (copying and pasting), I invite you to read the original post.