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| A university packed in 645 pages of great literature and thought. |
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| The Editor, John Mark Reynolds: In the tradition of Cleanth Brooks, Louise Cowan, Mel Bradford, and Leland Ryken. |
I have spent a lifetime with books. I was a reader in my youth and became a reader and collector when I was in college. I have desired more and more shelves sagging with more and more books. But I want to read them, know them, and personally value them. I want to be grounded in the Great Books, the Classics, the Canon of Western Civilization. I have spent years catching up on much of what should have been read in high school, college, and beyond.
I have been a serious reader since high school. I knocked out a few classics during those years, without being able to appreciate them fully. A classic calls for a reader and either a mentor or a group to enhance the experience. My college years enabled me to read some more Great Books, but like much in the modern university experience, the thrust was toward "the latest scholarship." Thankfully, when I took literature classes, we read the literary works.
My curve on the classics and great works turned radically upward when I left public school and began teaching in a classical Christian school. Very quickly, we dove into Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry V, and Paradise Lost. As the years went by, I started the Humanities program, which is very similar to the Veritas Press Omnibus Program.
I pore over every recommended reading list I can find. I gather books like this one and ponder how I can get a few more good reads under my belt. Every collection or list has its certain inclusions and questionable books. This is a fine work of excerpts and suggestions.
So, here is my rundown from the books included in The Great Books Reader:
1. Homer. The Odyssey. Read it many times during my years in teaching Humanities. Had never read it before.
2. Plato. The Republic. I read it for the first time this past year in Humanities. We have read Gorgias by Plato in the past.
3. Aristotle. The Nichomachean Ethics. I have it, but have not read it. (Shameful, I know.) But we do read portions of Aristotle's Politics, and we read Aristotle's Rhetoric. In a few of my classes, I have read Poetics.
4. Virgil. The Aeneid. I have read and taught it several times. We also read The Georgics.
5. Augustine. Confessions. I have read it and used it in class. This year, we will only read a bit from this great, defining autobiography. We do read City of God and On Christian Teaching.
6. Boethius. Consolation of Philosophy. I have read portions of it. Several years back, I had Matthew Smallwood come to class and share his thoughts on the book. Nick, my eldest son, really likes this book. I plan on reading it all this year.
7. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Not yet. Peter Kreeft wrote the essay in the Reynolds' volume. I have Kreeft's book Summa of the Summa, which is a shortened version of Aquinas.
8. Dante. The Divine Comedy. Read it and taught it twice. Love it.
9. Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. Read the Prologue in high school, the Prologue in the original in college with a selection or two of the tales. I have taught through the entire work about 3 times. I really need to read and use the original this year.
10. Erasmus. In Praise of Folly. Have not read this book. I need to at least read some excerpts.
11. Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion. I had read portions in the past. I have taught through several large chunks of Calvin in Humanities.
12. Edmund Spenser. The Fairie Queene. Read and love one part of this great work in college. Have read and taught one part at Veritas. (Is it Book 3? The part about the Red Cross Knight?)
13. Cervantes. Don Quixote. I feel really bad about this, but I have not read this classic.
14. William Shakespeare. As You Like It. Thankfully, I had a very good Shakespeare teacher at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. And I have taught through quite a few Shakespeare plays in Humanities.
15. Descartes. Meditations. Recommended by several who have taken philosophy. Unread.
16. Milton. Paradise Lost. Read and taught many times. I even taught it in a Sunday school class one summer.
17. Pascal. Pensees. I have read portions of this small gem.
18. John Locke. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Unread.
19. Locke, again. Two Treatises on Government. I am familiar with the essays and author, but have not read this defining work. A shameful admission for a teacher of American and British history and American government. (I do find it odd that the Reynolds' collection contains 2 works by Locke.)
20. Isaac Newton. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. No way, but I will someday have to buckle down and tackle this.
21. John Wesley. Sermons. I have read a sermon or two. I would prefer reading Whitefield's sermons and diaries. But there is much profit in reading Wesley.
22. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. I had a great time teaching this 2 years ago.
23. Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. I listened to R. J. Rushdoony's lectures on de Tocqueville years ago and loved them. Read and taught large portions of this during my American Story year of Humanities.
24. Karl Marx. Communist Manifesto. Read it in college out of curiosity. Have read and taught it. A really dull work.
25. Charles Darwin. On the Origins of Species. I have read from and perused this book. My Modern World class read and reported on various chapters.
26. Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. I love this book. Also, I really like War and Peace. I teach some shorter selections by Tolstoy, including Master and Man.
27. Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. Read Crime and Punishment either in college or shortly afterwards--on my own. I have read and taught this book several times. I also like The Idiot.
28. Nietzsche. Genealogy of Morals. I have collected several of Nietzsche's works, but have not read them.
29. Chesterton. Orthodoxy. Read the book a few years back, but have not taught it.
As you can see, The Great Books Reader is a good and enriching collection. As noted in the subtitle, the book contains portions of the chosen books, along with short essays.
Here are my "scores":
16 out of 29 of the books read (either entirely or large portions read).
18 of the 28 authors read (in some cases, I read other books by the authors).
18 of the 28 authors taught in my Humanities class.
Of course, I can complain about authors and selections not included, but that is another essay.
Get a copy of The Great Books Reader and let us all catch up on our readings.
2 comments:
You have successfully made me interested in another book list. I have just started on "The College Board's '101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers'", and have yet to get past volume 5 in my beautiful 50 volume set of Harvard Classics(given to me by my loving father). Thankfully, I think there is a lot of over-lap between what is in these lists and the ones in "The Great Books Reader". The reason I have started using lists is because it pushes me out of my comfort zone into reading books like "Robinson Crusoe"(which I would never pick up without a list forcing me to) and gives me a great appreciation for many types of literature(not just British and Russian)... I think there are even some "modern" novels on the list. So all of this is to say you have inspired me to press on with my many lists... even if I can never read them all.
Grace,
I love lists. I never stick to any one I come across. But books like this one and INVITATION TO THE CLASSICS are helpful to me to focus my reading. I tend to go in too many different directions. I will look at the 101 Books list you mentioned. Keep pressing on.
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