Classics? You mean those boring books my teachers would always talk about? No thanks! Jane Eyre? Boring! The Pickwick Papers? Even the name is boring! And Frankenstein? Eh. The movie was lame.

Okay, well, how about instead of reading Jane Eyre, you read this book I just read about this nanny who falls in love with this supposedly unmarried man, whose house mysteriously sets on fire and when she saves his life, he falls in love with her, but at their wedding, she finds out that he’s actually already married to a murderous beast who’s trying to hunt them down and kill them.

Or instead of reading The Pickwick Papers, you could read this book where a group of not very smart men called Pickwickians are traveling around and a mysterious stranger disguised as a pickwickian insults a doctor, who challenges the pickwickians to a duel. Things escalate from there.

Or, instead of Frankenstein, you could read about a young doctor who builds a zombie creature, basically, who murders the doctor’s little brother and a young servant girl is hanged for it. I know it sounds like the movie, but it’s a little different. For one thing, in the book the monster has a better vocabulary than I do.

You probably know where I’m going with this, but I have a challenge for you. I dare you to read or at least try one of the books listed above. Classics don’t always equal boring, and to fully understand the literature of today, you have to understand the literature of the past. Also, being able to say you’ve read classics makes you sound smart.