I suggest you read the following books, which I often read.
● The first book is The Book of Songs.
Confucius said that there is nothing to say without reading poetry. Poetry here refers to the Book of Songs. The Book of Songs is an important source of China literature. Many beautiful images and idioms that we are familiar with now come from The Book of Songs. For example, does "Jiaxu" have a special feeling, a particularly beautiful feeling? But if I say "reed", I'm afraid you don't think it's beautiful?
By the way, just now I mentioned a sentence from Confucius, that is, there is nothing to say without reading poems. Mencius also said that it is better to believe in books than to have no books. These two sentences, one is the Book of Songs and the other is the Book of History, which are not the same as what we understand now, and involve the expansion or narrowing of the meaning. Therefore, when we study ancient Chinese, we must pay special attention to the year when the author wrote.
● The second book is Historical Records.
As for the historical records written by Tai Shigong, I only suggest reading biographies, biographies and biographies, not watches and books, which is not particularly helpful to language learning.
The language of Historical Records is vivid and simple. Many languages actually recorded the most vivid spoken language at that time, such as a gentleman, and a prince would rather have seeds. Reading historical records can not only clear some obstacles for us to learn classical Chinese, but also let us know the vivid side of ancient Chinese and improve our interest in learning classical Chinese.
The third book is four books.
Four books are actually four books, including The Analects of Confucius, which records the words and deeds of Confucius and his disciples. The Doctrine of the Mean, written by Confucius' grandson Zisi; Mencius, representing Mencius' opinions; And a university.
I want to read these four books because they were listed as Confucian classics by Zhu more than 1000 years ago. Although we are no longer as exclusive as Confucianism in feudal times, Confucianism has penetrated into everyone's soul in China, and terms such as benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faithfulness created by Confucianism are still in use.
So these four books are actually the source of many classical Chinese. You must read them. After reading these four books, you will learn a lot of knowledge, idioms and fixed usage, so it is not so difficult to read other classical Chinese.
● The fourth book is China's View on Ancient Literature.
In the view of ancient Chinese, there are many excellent classical Chinese. These classical Chinese are inexhaustible and immortal. I suggest you recite as many paragraphs as possible, and learn all the paragraphs by heart, so as to find out the meaning of these paragraphs. I mean understanding, not "translation". It is foolish to translate classical Chinese into vernacular Chinese, just like translating idioms.
After reading these books, I believe you can cope with 85% of the classical Chinese in your life.