Everyone calls it a classic. But who’s everyone, and why am I so bored?

For centuries, authors, scholars, critics, and ordinary readers have sought to understand and explain what makes a great book great. When we say “classic,” we mean a work “which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it,” according to Italo Calvino. Or maybe Mark Twain had it right: a classic is “a book which people praise and don’t read.”