Kickoff Tomorrow

Tomorrow the reading plan starts. Based on my reading ahead, I'm pretty excited!

Year One, January Reading

January

Plato: 'Apology' and 'Crito' Kindle/Nook/Google
Aristophanes: 'Clouds' and 'Lysistrata' Kindle/Nook/Google,Google

Four Questions

Since I mentioned Adler's 'Four Questions' I should probably actually write about what they are. These are the questions that an active reader should be asking. (Adler had more questions and rules than this but I think this is a good place to start. Maybe the others should be added too. We'll see.)

First question: What is the book about as a whole? In which we try to 'discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by sudividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics'.

Second question: What is being said in detail, ahd how? In which we try to 'discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author's particular message'.

Third question: Is the book true in whole or part? A big meaty question in which you judge the validty of the theme and the arguments made to support it.

Fourth question: What of it? The meatiest question of them all. How significant was this? And were you informed or even enlightened?

And there they are. The other rules are a bit more technical in terms of how you 'own' the book. They have to do with understanding key words and finding the important arguments. I will note the eighth rule: 'Determine which of his problems the author has solved and which he has not; and as to the latter decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.' That seems like a useful approach as well.

Monthly Plan

Spurred by Micah's suggestion, I've read Adler's 'How to Read a Book'. When I first picked it up I felt foolish because, of course, reading books is a skill that I've pretty well been on top of for more than thirty years. But of course, this is about a more in depth reading style. If you haven't read it and you really want to 'own' the books you read, I would highly recommend this.
I've had some ideas in my head as to the structure of each month. Adler has somewhat rearranged this for the better, I think. I'll put this out here for now but please know that I'm very open to feedback and change on this. I want something fairly standard but what I'm writing down now doesn't necessarily have to be the finished product. Think of this as a suggestion:

• 1st (day of the month) - the title of the selection. Perhaps some suggestions on secondary materials. For instance, I think that Shakespeare is better watched first and then read. (Adler would recommend against reading any kind of analysis first, so keep that in mind.)


• 3rd - A timeline of the life of the author. This will make it easier to bracket exactly when things were written in relationship to each other. Not sure if this will grow through the year or if I'll just have one big timeline and repost it each month.


• 6th - a bio sketch, almost certainly heavily cribbed from Wikipedia. I'll highlight anything that I read there that seems to shed light on the background of the piece. And I'd encourage anyone else to do so as well.


• Midmonth - Start of the general discussion. This will move around a bit depending on the number of works for that month. May start as early as the 10th but not later than the 15th. (This will probably have some fairly organic growth, depending on how much participation there is. Will it start with just general observations? Or should I follow Adler's 'Four Questions'? And if so, does each one deserve a different post? Not sure yet.)


• 18th - Modern focus. In which we try to figure out how much impact the piece still has on modern life.


• 20th - A reminder of the selections of the next month.


• 21st - Cultural reflection. Did it remind us of any modern movies, books, music? (For some reason, I want to know if various authors would have fit into the cultures of various sports teams too. But that may be meaningless. Anyway, this is where that info would go.)


• 24th - Meta discussion or perhaps 'syntopical discussion'. How does this piece fit in with the other works that we've already read?


• 27th - Related readings. What else fits in with this piece. Especially what else that isn't on the list. This might also be a good spot to talk about who else would benefit from reading this (for example teachers, city planners, cousin John).

And then the new month comes along and we start over. Anyway, that's the plan. Feel free to offer suggestions.

Great Books, More Info

I meant to link to a full list of the authors. Wikipedia has a good one here. The first edition is the one that I'm working through.

Finding the Books

Haven't even started the project yet and already I've found out something that I didn't know. Back when I started this I thought that the e-book arrangement would give virtually free classics to anyone that wanted it. Not quite. Most of them were free on the Kindle but very few were on the Nook. Barnes and Noble are selling most of these for a dollar or less. Google books had all of them but the formats can be a bit wonky. I might go back and set up links to Project Gutenberg at some point too.
It's something of a modern cliche to note that we have tremendous amounts of knowledge at our fingertips. Setting this up really drove that home for me.

Year One

I'm going to try and set links to the Kindle, Nook and Google books copies of all of these. I expect that these links will break at some point due to common internet drift. Please notify me and I'll fix them at least during the year that we're working through these pieces.

January

Plato: 'Apology' and 'Crito' Kindle/Nook/Google

Aristophanes: 'Clouds' and 'Lysistrata' Kindle/Nook/Google,Google

February

Plato: 'Republic' books 1 and 2 Kindle/Nook/Google

Aristotle: 'Ethics' book 1 Kindle/Nook/Google
Aristotle: 'Politics' Book 1 Kindle/Nook/Google

March

Plutarch: 'Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans' (only Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius, Lycurgus and Numa compared, Alexander, Caesar) Kindle/Nook/Google

April

From the New Testament: Gospel of St Matthew and Acts of the Apostles Kindle/Nook/Google, Google
St Augustine: 'Confessions' books 1-8 Kindle/Nook/Google

May

Machiavelli: 'The Prince' Kindle/Nook/Google

June

Rabelais: 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' books 1 and 2 Kindle/Nook/Google

July

Montaigne: 'Essays' (Of Custom; Of Pedantry; Of the Education of Children; That it is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity; Of Cannibals; That the Relish of Good and Evil Depends in a Great Measure upon the Opinion We Have of Them; Upon some Verses of Virgil) Kindle/Nook/Google

August

Shakespeare: 'Hamlet' Kindle/Nook/Google

September

Locke: 'Concerning Civil Gov't', second essay Kindle/Nook/Google
Rousseau: The Social Contract books 1 and 2 Kindle/Nook/Google

October

Gibbon: 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 15 and 16 Kindle/Nook/Google

November

Declaration of Independence Kindle/Nook/Google

Constitution of the United States Kindle/Nook/Google
The Federalist Nos 1-10, 15, 31, 47, 51, 68-71 Kindle/Nook/Google

December

Smith: 'The Wealth of Nations' Introduction - Book 1, Chapter 9 Kindle/Nook/Google
Marx-Engles: 'Manifest of the Communist Party Kindle/Nook/Google