I was thinking this while reading The Canterbury Tales, which isn’t exactly the oldest I’ve read (I think that goes to Homer)
But The Canterbury Tales is just so delightful! Getting into the flow of the rhyming prose is very fun to read (I’ve just been reading the Penguin Classics Coghill translation which is fantastic)
I’ve already watched the Pasolini adaptation but I’m definitely going to revisit once I finish the book.
Beowulf fucking slaps
Dunno if you’d count it as a book but the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of my all time favorite stories that I regularly go back to. Also, predates Homer by a long shot.
Probably something by Jane Austen? Actually technically Shakespeare but that was for school so it doesn’t really count.
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol I’m a huge fan of 19th century Russian literature, and that is probably the oldest book I’ve read in that genre.
Other than that, I think Don Quixote is super fun to read at the start, but it drags on too long to be enjoyable all the way through. But that’s the oldest book out of which I got a lot of enjoyment.
The Decameron by Boccaccio is probably the oldest, in terms of reading for pleasure.
There’s the odd older thing I like, such as Greek philosophical dialogues or plays, but I’m not sure I’d count them as books, and they’re more interesting than fun.
I like a lot of slightly less old stuff: Essay on Man by Pope, Confessions of an English Opium-eater by Quincey… Oh, and now that I think of it, I suppose Omar Khayyam’s Rubáiyát is pretty old too.
Not the oldest I’ve read, but the oldest I’ve properly enjoyed is Jane Eyre (and it happens to be my fave of all time too)
Beowulf
