If you could only read classics or contemporaries for the rest of your life, which would you pick and why?
I would definitely do with contemporaries. This isn't even a difficult choice.
The truth is that I hardly read classics anyway. And when I do, they tend to be more "modern classics" than actual classics. Things that are less than a century old. There are a lot of barriers to the older classics, and the truth is that I probably get just as much from a Wikipedia entry or the spark notes. Mostly I'm just reading them so that I understand references in newer books anyway.
The world has changed a lot since most of the classics were written. And it's only changing faster. It's not just the language in older books that's burdensome, it's the almost complete lack of diversity. Reading older books is like looking back at a time when the world was a lot smaller and more narrowly defined.
I'm not trying to say classics are bad. They tend to be classics for a reason. They're foundational to a lot of what we read today. But when I'm trying to learn more about the world we live in, it helps to read something that was published more recently. The authors are more diverse and so is their subject matter. It makes for a better overall reading experience.
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