I think it helps to understand that classic literature is not always the same as a book that is just fun. There can be overlap, and many people would say that t

I think it helps to understand that classic literature is not always the same as a book that is just fun. There can be overlap, and many people would say that those are their favourite books and often the best books, but often classic literature is "classic" because it has been very influential and has been talked about a lot. In other words, it helps to understand that reading the classics is taking part in a long conversation that often goes back hundreds of years, and in some cases thousands of years. They are good because they are important to a collective idea of human culture. They tell us who we are and were. > They tend to be thick, obtuse or just plain difficult. This is where taking literature courses, or knowing history, can be very important. Courses like these fit the classics into a timeline, act like cartographers of human culture, and, most of all, provide context, so that you can understand the humanity (the forms of life in the world often so different from our own) tied up in these books. It helps when reading The Picture of Dorian Grey to know about Wilde's life and trial, aesthetics and popular culture at the time, and especially the ideas of late 19th century dandyism in England that were so prominent at the time of its writing precisely because the book is a brilliantly witty encapsulation of all those ideas. They are what make it mean. The same goes for Dostoevsky who was writing in a time when Russia was in the midst of an incredibly fertile period for literature, the arts, and philosophy and general intellectualism for a relatively small minority.