Why We Still Read Classic Novels in 2025

Living in a time of instant, on-demand entertainment, delivered straight to the device in your pocket can feel exhilarating at times. That said, it can just as easily feel exhausting, leaving you wishing for a story with the strength to stand the test of time.

But what is it about the classics that gives them their enduring power? And will we still be reading them a hundred years from now?

Classics Help us Understand Ourselves

The great novels endure because they speak to something timeless. Human nature hasn’t changed much since Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice or Leo Tolstoy imagined Anna Karenina stepping onto that fateful train platform. Technology moves on, slang comes and goes—but love, jealousy, ambition, and guilt remain constant.

Reading classic books lets us see our own lives reflected through another time. We recognise ourselves in Elizabeth Bennet’s pride, Gatsby’s longing, or Heathcliff’s obsession. Even when the manners and customs feel foreign, the emotions are instantly familiar. The classics remind us that people have always been this complicated, hopeful, and contradictory.

These Stories Remind us Where Stories Come From

Every modern story stands on the shoulders of older ones. Themes, archetypes, and moral dilemmas are recycled endlessly—from The Odyssey to Star Wars, from Frankenstein to Ex Machina. By reading the classics, we see how storytelling itself evolved.

Reading the classics can be a way of studying history not through the events that happened but through the emotions that resonated with people. When Shakespeare wrote his plays, the Wars of the Roses had only recently passed from living memory. The fear of a nation swept into turmoil by the scheming and squabbles of monarchs is present throughout his work from plays like Macbeth and King Lear to histories like the Henriad and Richard III.

A history book can tell you about the events that happened, often with far more accuracy than any fictional account, but the fiction provides another layer of understanding. It tells us about how people felt, and about the ideas that seemed profound to them.

Challenging & Rewarding in Equal Measure

The classics can be demanding. There’s no getting around that. They were written for readers of a different time and place. The syntax can be heavier, the paragraphs longer. They often present perspectives that don’t cleanly fit alongside modern viewpoints. At times this can be uncomfortable but it can also feel liberating to know that the writer neither understands nor cares about our sensibilities.

Put simply, the classics can be a lot of work—although many are more accessible than they’re given credit for—but the rewards speak for themselves. When you engage with the classics you step into another time and place. In many ways it’s like going to another country. You might not always understand the language or the culture but you’ll gain a new perspective all the same.

They’re free and accessible to everyone

Once upon a time, owning a personal library was a luxury. Today, you can read the world’s greatest books—Dracula, Moby-Dick, The Picture of Dorian Gray—for free. Many are in the public domain, available through Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, or right here on OpenLeaf.

You don’t need a subscription or a literature degree—just curiosity. Online reading has opened the classics to everyone, anywhere, at any time.

If you’re ready to rediscover the great novels that shaped modern storytelling, try reading them on OpenLeaf. Our reader is clean, distraction-free, and beautifully minimalistic—perfect for getting lost in your favourite reads.

Take a moment to slow down and let the words of another century remind you just how timeless a good story can be.