In this episode I am talking with Kelly Hardesty about her blog, sky-t-tray.us, in which she writes about reading the books we tend to categorize as classics. What is the definition of a literary classic? Why – and how – might a reader explore these works written decades or centuries ago?

The books we talked about specifically are

Little Women by Lousia May Alcott (1868)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943)
Anne of Green Gables series by L M Montgomery (1908)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (1985)
Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (1915)
I Wonder as I Wander by Langston Hughes (1956)
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark (1981)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927)
Martin Eden by Jack London (1909)
Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck (1954)
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë (1848)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818)

Questions or comments about this or past episodes can be sent to [email protected]