Classics + Technology = WIN

I have this running list of classics I want to read that I didn't get around to in high school and college. Sometimes it feels like I'll never get around to them. My job requires me to live almost six months in the future when it comes to books - I'm reading and selling things that don't come out for another season. Plus, there are so many books by writers I love out on the shelves already, even when I'm reading current titles, I'm playing catch-up.

So, while I'm thinking half a year ahead and trying to keep up on good things from other publishers that are hitting the shelves now, I also have one eye on the past, and keep wishing I had time to read all the books that, for one reason or another, never made it onto my required reading lists in school. Part of that's my own fault - I spent most of my college years in the 17th century. So, Milton? Check. Shakespeare? Check. Jonson, Marlowe, Donne? Check, check, and check.

But Mark Twain?

*crickets*

I have no idea how I made it out of ninth or tenth grade without ever being assigned The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Now that I think about it, my high school English classes were a ton of Hawthorne, Dickens, and the Brontes. We read some of Twain's short stories, but never the books he's most famous for.

Then, once I started college, I took a course - British Authors to 1800 - with the most amazing professor ever. From there out, I tried taking at least one class of his each semester: The Metaphysical Poets, the Cavalier Poets, Shakespeare's Tragedies ("Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:/ Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so/ That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!"). I probably could have (and probably should have) added a concentration in that period to my major, but I never got around to asking what it would require.

I did take other lit courses, including at least one in American lit, but again, no Twain. Maybe the professors figured that we'd already studied him a thousand times and wanted to expose us to other writers - I have no issue with that. (Although, if there's one work I was assigned more than any other, it's Beowulf. I swear I read that for at least one class a year from freshman year in high school up through my college graduation.)

So, because there are apparently other people in the world like me - wanting to read these things, but never enough time in the day - the folks over at Daily Lit have come up with a brilliant plan. They've broken up books into 500-word chunks. You choose a book,they'll email a fragment to you each day. You can set it to arrive daily, weekdays only, or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. If you read your piece and have time for the next one, you can have it sent immediately.

I have the first installment of Tom Sawyer sitting in my inbox. Time for a test drive.