The Scarlet Pimpernel... I just don't get it.

Well, I totally reverted back to high school this week. I started to read the Scarlet Pimpernel, got about 130 pages in and then gave up and rented the movie. HAHAHA I guess I'll just never be "classically" minded. I tried, I really, really tried. But I just could not get in to it.

And I don't even really understand what makes this book a "classic." I mean, yeah, the language is old and British sounding, but who's to say that makes it "better?" It sounds different, and I guess some people like that, but I just don't know what's so special about it beyond that. I still had the same old problems with the story that I have with the current new releases I read.

The pacing in this book killed me. We spent the first 40 or so pages being introduced to this inn keeper guy and his daughter and all the regular visitors. Their characters, the location and even relationships were set up. They had personalities, a romance was sort of introduced. 40 pages invested in this just to learn that none of them were the main characters or even relevant to the story. After those first 40 pages they're not even in the rest of the story. So yeah, that should have been about 40 lines to set up a scene and get to the real story. In fact, I was 130 pages in before I quit reading and I still wasn't sure who the main character even was. My husband had to tell me.

Then I had that frustrating problem where there was an exciting story being hinted at and for some reason I was being shown really boring scenes and then told about these exciting adventures through some other character. Lame. It was frustrating.

Anyway, not to knock all the classics, but I really honestly just don't get it. Not my thing. But I'm still glad I gave it a shot because now I know. I really truly know that those kinds of books are just not my style. It'd been so long since I'd tried to read one that I wondered if I'd only hated them because I was a lazy rebellious high school student at the time. Well, not the case. Maybe if we'd read interesting books in high school I might have been a better student. They need variety! I vote The Hunger Games be let in to the "classics" and integrated into school curriculum. Who's with me?


ps. My husband is rolling his eyes at me as I post this. He is very much a fan of the classics and thinks I'm lame.