I am not going to do a real review. Reviewing this type of book – a book that was assigned as part of a university-level English class I took back in 1970 – is a fool's game because the odds of you finding this particular book or even wanting to search out this particular book are quite low. Instead, I want to talk about why it might be worth your while to revisit the similar type of book I'm guessing you already own – a collection you were assigned in college, read a few pieces from (the ones that were required), maybe even read a few other selections because they sounded interesting, and then, after completing the class or maybe at graduation, you put into the stack of books that you just never got around to selling to the used book store.

Again, this is not a review. This, instead, is about revisiting the past and about remembering why certain authors are held in such high esteem

There are innumerable authors we "should" all read. And a large portion of them were force fed to us in high school and college in environments where we just weren't ready to understand anything going on within them. Some seemed dated, some seemed long, some seemed boring, and a good portion of them never spoke to us (nor could we figure out how they spoke to anybody else.) We read the books and barely passed the associated exams.

Of course there were exceptions. Those one or two authors who wrote "classics" that we found accessible or entertaining or brilliant or one way or another made it worth the read. You have yours; I have mine. And I guess that is the entire purpose for the inundation in the classics we all must endure – the hope that one or two things might stick.

But, as time passes, we become much more than we used to be. And what I have found is that it is worth going back and trying again. I have spent the last few years going back to authors I should have read and didn't. In some cases, I am less than impressed. But in others I suddenly understand what the hoopla is about. Had I not been willing to revisit I never would have understand why anyone would care about Maugham or Dickens or Conrad or Chandler or an increasingly large number of authors whose works I now actively seek out.

So, back to this collection (and back to similar collections you may have in your bookstacks – because bookshelves are too constraining.)

As I read this collection I was reminded why a number of these authors are considered "must reads". Here's a quick list of the authors whose works (just the works from this book) stuck with me: Dostoevsky, De Alarcon, De Maupassant, Chekov, Hawthorne, Bierce, Chesnutt, Crane, Capek, Sartre, Forster, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, Hughes, Steinbeck, Bellow – you get the idea.

Some of those authors I didn't remember. Others I remembered as ones which did not impress me. Others have always impressed me. And others have only recently (last few years) impressed me.

Again, there is a reason famous authors receive that fame. (A quick aside – I do not mean the "famous at this point in time" fame that current best sellers or even of-the-moment, everyone-should-pay-attention-to-them authors currently have. The worst part of this book was the authors that were considered au courant when the book was published – 1970. Some were fine. Others had not held up and felt to be nothing more than failed experiments. Time had not had a chance to make a decision on quality.) If you are unaware of the authors who have rightly achieved historical fame, then it is worth going back and diving back in. There is already more reading than any of us can accomplish in multiple lifetimes. But it is always good to have more – that is, it is always good to have more quality reading.

You want to search this particular book out? It will be worth your while. However, I'm willing to bet you've already got one just like it. Dig it out, and dig into it. ( )