I love the little thrill that comes when a book you thought you knew finds a surprising echo in something new. Pairing a neglected classic with a contemporary counterpart is one of my favourite reading games: it sharpens attention, reveals continuities across time, and lifts both books out of their solitary orbit so they illuminate each other. Below I offer a practical, hands-on guide to doing this well—whether you’re reading alone, planning a themed weekend, or organising a book-club meeting that wants to feel a bit adventurous.

Why pair a neglected classic with a contemporary book?

There are a few reasons I keep coming back to this practice. For one, it combats the “archive effect”: we either revere classics as untouchable or consign them to dusty obscurity. Pairing them with a contemporary work teases out their relevance. It also helps with accessibility—sometimes a modern voice will act as a bridge to older language, cultural contexts or narrative structures.

Finally, reading in pairs deepens interpretation. Differences in form, tone and historical position become talking points rather than barriers. You notice where patterns repeat, where worlds diverge, and where tiny choices in craft change everything.

Start with a clear pairing intention

Before you choose titles, decide what you want from the pairing. Here are some intentions I use:

  • Theme-focused: Look for books that interrogate the same subject across time—family, migration, labor, madness.
  • Form-focused: Pair a formal experimenter from the past with a contemporary who mirrors or answers that experiment.
  • Comparative empathy: Select books that put readers inside unfamiliar lives or cultures, then discuss how voice and perspective guide empathy.
  • Translation and reception: Read an older work alongside a contemporary writer who’s been influenced by or rewriting that tradition.

    • Practical steps to find good matches

    I follow a small ritual when I pair books—part research, part intuition. Try this quick process:

  • Pick the neglected classic first. Commit to a title that genuinely intrigues you, not one you think you should like.
  • Scan the contemporary scene—reviews, literary magazines, and award shortlists. I often find perfect counterparts in recent Booker or National Book Award lists, or in the pages of Granta, The White Review and n+1.
  • Look for a hinge—a shared motif, setting, question, or formal echo. The hinge can be literal (both set in port cities) or more abstract (both interrogate memory).
  • Check length and readability. If you want to read both in a weekend, aim for two books that together equal roughly one long novel. If this is a semester-long project, vary page density.

    • How to decide reading order

    The order you read matters because it shapes your expectations. Here are three approaches:

  • Classic first: Good when you want the contemporary book to feel like a response. You’ll carry historical nuance into the modern text.
  • Modern first: Useful when the contemporary voice makes the older text more approachable; you encounter the original with a set of questions already formed.
  • Interleaved: Alternate chapters or sections. This is my favourite for close thematic pairing—tensions and resonances accumulate in real time.

    • Reading tools and environment

    Small practicalities improve the experience.

  • Annotate: I use a pencil for classics (so my marks feel less permanent) and a coloured highlighter for contemporary books. This visual difference helps me track which notes belong to which time.
  • Companion notebook: Write a page of impressions after each chapter or section. Use one column for immediate reactions and another for comparative notes.
  • Curated soundtrack: Sometimes music helps set an atmosphere—an ambient playlist for melancholic modern fiction, or period-appropriate classical pieces for older books. I use Spotify playlists titled “Reading Focus” or “Quiet Background” when I want to avoid distraction.

    • Discussion prompts to deepen the pair

    Whether you’re alone or in a group, these prompts open useful paths:

  • What did each book assume about its reader’s knowledge? How did that affect your comprehension and trust?
  • How do narrative voice and point of view guide sympathy or distance?
  • What did each text leave unsaid? Are the silences similar or oppositional?
  • How do form and structure shape meaning? Would the contemporary book mean the same if told in the classic’s style, or vice versa?
  • Which social or historical constraints can you perceive in the classic, and how does the contemporary book inherit, resist or rewrite them?

    • Sample pairings I've tried (and loved)

    Here are a few pairings I’ve used in workshops and book-club sessions—short notes on why they work.

    Neglected classic Contemporary counterpart Why they pair well
    Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April (1922) Rachel Cusk, Outline (2014) Both probe solitude and reinvention in women’s lives, but with strikingly different tonal economies—one buoyant, one austere.
    Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (2016) Conversations about colonial legacies, fractured identities, and narrative reclamation across centuries and geographies.
    Walter Scott, The Antiquary (1816) Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall (2018) An exploration of folklore, archaeology and masculine performance; one is sprawling and historical, the other spare and immediate.

    Adapting pairings for groups and events

    For book clubs or public events, keep logistics in mind. Offer tiered reading lists: a core pair plus one or two optional shorter reads (essays, translations or short stories) for people who want extra context. Send a short primer with background and three questions a week before the meeting—people love having a compass.

    I also enjoy adding small sensory elements to events: a tea or cocktail inspired by one book’s setting, or a reproduced archival image. These don’t substitute for close reading, but they create an atmosphere where curiosity can flourish.

    When pairs fail — and why that’s useful

    Not every pairing will spark. Sometimes books feel unrelated, or one overwhelms the other. That failing is itself instructive: it shows you where assumptions about continuity are wrong, or where a modern writer is doing something genuinely new rather than answering a tradition. In my experience, a “failed” pairing often leads to an even better one once you recognise what didn’t connect.

    Try it with curiosity, a little patience and a willingness to be surprised. You might find that a neglected book stops being neglected the moment someone beside it speaks back in a voice you didn’t expect.