Field guide to the classics

“Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature’s 50 Greatest Hits”

By Jack Murnighan

Three Rivers Press, 374 pages, $13.95

He may be almost too smart for his own good, but in coming very close, Jack Murnighan has redefined the notion of a beach read. In this field guide to the classics, Murnighan provides a cheat sheet — the buzz, the best line, a quirky fact, what to skip — and does so with such charm and heart that even resistant readers might give Pushkin or Proust another try. Murnighan is both jaunty and wise in the way one can be when one has been touched by literature when he proposes giving a book another look and writes, “I want you to feel those books in your heart.”