As I mentioned a while back, I've chosen to get away from the set lists provided for the Great Books. Instead, I've pared down the remaining pieces. I've kept what still looks interesting to me and thrown out whole categories of the rest. (Condemn me if you must, I feel good about these choices.)
I've got it down to nearly 60 works. Fewer than that, actually. In the ten year plan, there are some longer works that are broken into chunks. I paid attention to that while figuring out what to keep. When I read them, I'll read them in unbroken segments though. I won't try to divide 'War and Peace' in two and read the halves years apart.
So what am I keeping? I've broken it into four broad categories.
Plato & Aristotle (The Big Guys)
Plato -
Phaedo
Laws (Book X)
Symposium
Philebus
Gorgias
The Sophist
Timaeus
Aristotle -
Categories
On the Soul (Book II ch1-3, Book III)
Metaphysics (Book XII)
Ethics (Book V)
Ethics (Book VIII - X)
Rhetoric (Book I ch 1, Book II ch 1, ch 20, Book III ch 1, ch 13-19)
Politics (Book VII - VIII)
Greeks and Romans
Homer - The Odyssey
Sophocles - Ajax, Electra
Aristophanes - Thesmophorizusae, Ecclesiazusae, Plutus
Thucydides - Peloponnesian War (Book VII - VIII)
Epicetus - The Discourses
Virgil - Aeneid
- The Eclogues, The Georgics
Tacitus - The Histories
Plotinus -
First Ennead
Fifth Ennead
Sixth Ennead
St Augustine - On Christian Doctrine
Literature
Dante -
Divine Comedy (Hell)
Divine Comedy (Purgatory)
Divine Comedy (Paradise)
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales (Prologue, Knight's Tale, Millers Prologue and Tale, Reeve's Prologue and Tale, Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, Friar's Prologue and Tale, Summoner's Prologue and Tale, Pardoner's Prologue and Tale)
Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel (Book III - IV)
Shakespeare -
- Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Twelfth Night
- Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus
- Othello, King Lear
- Richard II, Henry IV (both parts), Henry V
Cervantes - Don Quixote (which the reading list broke into two parts)
Sterne - Tristam Shandy
Fielding - Tom Jones
Goethe - Faust (two parts)
Tolstoy - War and Peace (two parts)
Boswell - Life of Johnson (various sections)
Philosophers
Hobbes - Leviathan (part II)
Descartes
- Meditations on First Philosophy
- Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Spinoza
- Ethics (Part I)
- Ethics (Part II)
- Ethics (Part III)
- Ethics (Parts IV and V)
Milton - Samson Agonistes
Pascal - The Provincial Letters
Montesquieu - The Spirit of Laws (Books I-V, VII, XI - XII)
Rousseau - Discourse on Political Economy
Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration
Mill - Utilitarianism
I've got it down to nearly 60 works. Fewer than that, actually. In the ten year plan, there are some longer works that are broken into chunks. I paid attention to that while figuring out what to keep. When I read them, I'll read them in unbroken segments though. I won't try to divide 'War and Peace' in two and read the halves years apart.
So what am I keeping? I've broken it into four broad categories.
Plato & Aristotle (The Big Guys)
Plato -
Phaedo
Laws (Book X)
Symposium
Philebus
Gorgias
The Sophist
Timaeus
Aristotle -
Categories
On the Soul (Book II ch1-3, Book III)
Metaphysics (Book XII)
Ethics (Book V)
Ethics (Book VIII - X)
Rhetoric (Book I ch 1, Book II ch 1, ch 20, Book III ch 1, ch 13-19)
Politics (Book VII - VIII)
Greeks and Romans
Homer - The Odyssey
Sophocles - Ajax, Electra
Aristophanes - Thesmophorizusae, Ecclesiazusae, Plutus
Thucydides - Peloponnesian War (Book VII - VIII)
Epicetus - The Discourses
Virgil - Aeneid
- The Eclogues, The Georgics
Tacitus - The Histories
Plotinus -
First Ennead
Fifth Ennead
Sixth Ennead
St Augustine - On Christian Doctrine
Literature
Dante -
Divine Comedy (Hell)
Divine Comedy (Purgatory)
Divine Comedy (Paradise)
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales (Prologue, Knight's Tale, Millers Prologue and Tale, Reeve's Prologue and Tale, Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, Friar's Prologue and Tale, Summoner's Prologue and Tale, Pardoner's Prologue and Tale)
Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel (Book III - IV)
Shakespeare -
- Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Twelfth Night
- Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus
- Othello, King Lear
- Richard II, Henry IV (both parts), Henry V
Cervantes - Don Quixote (which the reading list broke into two parts)
Sterne - Tristam Shandy
Fielding - Tom Jones
Goethe - Faust (two parts)
Tolstoy - War and Peace (two parts)
Boswell - Life of Johnson (various sections)
Philosophers
Hobbes - Leviathan (part II)
Descartes
- Meditations on First Philosophy
- Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Spinoza
- Ethics (Part I)
- Ethics (Part II)
- Ethics (Part III)
- Ethics (Parts IV and V)
Milton - Samson Agonistes
Pascal - The Provincial Letters
Montesquieu - The Spirit of Laws (Books I-V, VII, XI - XII)
Rousseau - Discourse on Political Economy
Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration
Mill - Utilitarianism
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