Man, poetry is the luscious mistress with impatient look in her eyes. I know it'd be a ride to read some of her but for some reason I'm weary of it... Though, to be sincere, Keats always rings a bell. Like he's the one to read. I might follow that voice telling me to pick up his poetry.
Follow that voice, and go for Keats. He's fantastic, maybe my favourite of the core Romantics, followed very closely by Shelley.
I love the classics but I wouldn't call it a hobby, reading is the hobby. Everyone is different. You can't go wrong with reading Dickens. Start small because classic books take some getting used to
Indeed they do. I'm currently reading David Copperfield, and sometimes I find myself staring at the same page for nearly half an hour. I look what page I'm at, and it turns out I still have hundreds and hundreds of pages to go. It's a good read though (if you are patient enough).
When parsing one of the metaphysical poets at university, I was quite flabbergasted to learn what the poem was about beyond its superficial level. That was one hell of a coded message. It surpassed our faintest understanding of English. And sadly, willingness to understand.
Keats or Shelley? I don't understand. They do. I think I might have downplayed their difficulty in this thread. The rule I've found is the more you put in the more you take away.
Here are some suggestions that I didn't see so far: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dammit, you're pushing me to the corner. It was about a sailor to go overseas and his fiancee who was on the point of crying. He tells her not to. There's also the wedding ring at stake, and its tightening around the woman's finger. There's too much of symbolism for me to remember details...
I remeber trying to read Little Women as a child and couldn't get into it. And when I first read Pride and Prejudice it took me a while to read the first chapter but it paid off as I'm use to it now and I'm trying to have at least one classic on the go. I'm rereading Jane Eyre right now.
I wish you luck. Jane Eyre is perhaps one of my favourite novels. It's not an easy book, though, nor is Pride and Prejudice if you are not used to it, but I find both worth the time and investment.