Prologue: The Age That's Good for Reading Classics, and a Life That Needs Classics

Part 1.
Why I liked the classics

Time to lean on the classics in my Kerencia
Can classics really change your life?
The power to make you wait for the next bus
Like filling a puddle with water, like digging a well deep
Forty, the age when 'real study' begins

Part 2.
Where is there a life that is not shaken?

To be able to exist as existence itself - Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Holden Caulfield - J., a must-have in every teenage home.
D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
Comfort for a Shameful Life - Osamu Dazai's "No Longer Human"
The problem is always the "heart," my heart. - Natsume Soseki, "Heart"
The Things You See When You Let Go of Prejudice - Raymond Carver, Cathedral
There's no such thing as a life without ups and downs - Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Part 3.
In the name of love, we endure each other

On the Hardships of Parenthood - Honoré de Balzac, "Father Goriot"
The Unstoppable Advance of Mother - Romain Gary's "Promise at Dawn"
How to Tell True Love - Somerset Maugham's "The Veil of Life"
Growing Life, Fading Life - Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
A World in Need of Love - Émile Ajar's "The Life Before Us"
The most special being to each other - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Part 4.
Look at beauty even when you are sad

A sad self-portrait of an office worker who ran forward without looking back - Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"
To all of us who live as salesmen - Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman"
I'd rather not do it - Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener
A Life of Constantly Digging Up Sand - Kobo Abe's "The Woman in the Sand"
A Simple, But Solid Life - John Williams' Stoner
The Joys and Sorrows of Those Who Follow Heaven's Blessings - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Night Flight"

Part 5.
Even if it's not perfect, the road continues.

A dichotomous society, slicing in two like a radish - Italo Calvino's "The Viscount in Half"
How to Live Honest in an Absurd World - Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
The Real Tragedy of Fake News - Heinrich Böll's "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum"
The Leader We Dream of, The World We Dream of - William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Obsession and Obsession: That Precarious Line - Herman Melville's "Moby Dick"
I only lost my overcoat - Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat

Part 6.
Living as 'me' even in the midst of uncertainty

If you suddenly hear an inner drumbeat - Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence
Whom I Waiting for - Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Live simply, simply, simply - Henry David Thoreau, Walden
A Life Undefeated - Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea"
Unable to speak, it became writing; unbearable, it became literature - Park Kyung-ni's "Land"
Writing that keeps me from getting lost in the noise of the world - George Orwell's "Why I Write"

Epilogue

“It’s not about why the classics are good, it’s about why I like them.”
In the face of life's pervasive questions, the classics are the oldest and most steadfast light.

Every day we stand at a crossroads of choice.
Some choices change the mood of your day, and some choices change the course of your life.
If among those countless choices there is 'reading the classics', it is not simply reading, but a decision that comes from within one who seeks to deeply understand life.
“Why I Liked Classics” is a book that arose from such experiences of choice and encounter.
The author asks:
Why do classics still remain with us even now, and why do some sentences remain in our hearts for so long?
And why do I keep stopping in front of that old sentence?

The author is a reading activist who has been meeting people through books for a long time.
For 27 years, I have worked as an educator and planner, reading books with people of all ages, from children to teenagers and adults. Believing in the power of "reading together," I continue to teach classic reading and writing at Sungryemun Literature Center, libraries, and schools.
She says.
The questions posed by classics never become outdated, and they become even more vivid when read and shared together.
The agony of “to be or not to be” in Hamlet, the wavering before a choice in Anna Karenina, the self-awareness just before death in Ivan Ilyich… all these conflicts and reflections are remarkably similar to our lives today.

This book does not stop at quoting passages from the classics.
The author honestly records how those sentences caught him at certain points in his life and how they gave him the strength to move forward again.
Memories that came to mind as I turned the pages of the book, a line that shook my heart, and the time I spent refining myself while savoring that sentence unfold calmly.

This book proves, in the language of life, that reading classics is ultimately about confronting one's inner self through the stories of strangers.
So, to those who have felt that the classics are unfamiliar and distant, this book quietly approaches them and says this.
The sentence you need most right now might be hidden in a classic written long ago.

“The classics are not difficult.
“Reading together makes it deeper and warmer.”
The more I read, the more I see life, and the sentences that make me love myself again.

"Why I Liked the Classics" is a book that provides direction for those who are new to reading classics, and allows those who have already read classics to sit down in front of them again.
This book views reading classics not as an 'intellectual display' but as a 'process of recovering a sense of life.'
It contains the time of people who hold on to long sentences, ponder and discuss them, and finally translate them into their own words.

The author says that classics contain deep questions that confront the essence of human existence.
But that question is often too heavy to bear alone.
That's why it's important to read together.
This is because we can look at the sentences again from each other's perspectives and hear the words the classics are telling us more clearly through each other's interpretations.
This book is based on the author's experience of reading through "brick books" like "The Land" and "Moby Dick" through reading groups and repeatedly witnessing scenes where each other's lives and sentences intersect.

Reading classics means savoring the sentences that have passed through an era, and ultimately, looking back on one's own life.
In the process, the reader is led to look deeper into relationships than knowledge, questions than answers, and the center than the appearance.
The joy of reading classics conveyed in this book provides the starting point for such change.
For those who have reached a certain point in their lives, those who wish to re-establish their resolve, and those who wish to refine their inner strength through the warmth of classics read together, this book will be a long-term companion.