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My wife and I recently embarked on the 'Great Books' list from "How to read a Book" [1]. It's a nice contrast to the more scattershot reading that happens onlin

by gdubs 8y ago

My wife and I recently embarked on the 'Great Books' list from "How to read a Book" [1]. It's a nice contrast to the more scattershot reading that happens online. If you're interested in how technology might cause self-interruptions that make things like sitting down with a book more difficult, I recommend checking out "The Distracted Mind". [2] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book 2: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/distracted-mind http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/distracted-mind

davidmr 8y ago
I spent a year at a “Great Books” college whose program Adler helped found. It was a really amazing luxury to be able to spend so much time on it (I left after freshman year, so I only got through the Greeks). Ultimately, St John’s generates a lot of lawyers and humanities grad students, but not a whole lot else without extra pre-grad school to school to get some of the STEM prereqs out of the way. I love that the school generates humanities scholars, but it’s not my bag, so I moved on. If I had the money, I’d love to go back and finish when I retire, but at 40 I’m already not as smart as I was in college, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be too dumb to be a useful classmate when I retire! If you haven’t gotten to Euclid yet, do yourself a favor and get the Heath translations with his notes. A few of them are really, really hard for people trained in late second-millennia mathematics to be able to get through without some hints.
- gshubert17 8y ago
  I attended St. John's College's Graduate Institute, spending four summers (8 weeks each) reading and discussing a shorter version of the undergraduate reading list, and took an M.A. degree in the Liberal Arts thirty years after my Computer Science degree. It was well worth it for me, at age 54, and for participants who were retirement age. At 40 you may be feel less smart than when you were younger, but you're very likely more mature and a better reader. St. John's offers week-long Summer Classics sessions, which convey a lot of the same experiences of reading and discussion: https://www.sjc.edu/santa-fe/programs/summer-classics https://www.sjc.edu/santa-fe/programs/summer-classics
arethuza 8y ago
I read "The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life" a while back and that led to "The Master and Margarita" which is now one of my favourite books :-)

by gdubs 8y ago

davidmr 8y ago

I spent a year at a “Great Books” college whose program Adler helped found. It was a really amazing luxury to be able to spend so much time on it (I left after freshman year, so I only got through the Greeks). Ultimately, St John’s generates a lot of lawyers and humanities grad students, but not a whole lot else without extra pre-grad school to school to get some of the STEM prereqs out of the way. I love that the school generates humanities scholars, but it’s not my bag, so I moved on. If I had the money, I’d love to go back and finish when I retire, but at 40 I’m already not as smart as I was in college, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be too dumb to be a useful classmate when I retire! If you haven’t gotten to Euclid yet, do yourself a favor and get the Heath translations with his notes. A few of them are really, really hard for people trained in late second-millennia mathematics to be able to get through without some hints.

gshubert17 8y ago
I attended St. John's College's Graduate Institute, spending four summers (8 weeks each) reading and discussing a shorter version of the undergraduate reading list, and took an M.A. degree in the Liberal Arts thirty years after my Computer Science degree. It was well worth it for me, at age 54, and for participants who were retirement age. At 40 you may be feel less smart than when you were younger, but you're very likely more mature and a better reader. St. John's offers week-long Summer Classics sessions, which convey a lot of the same experiences of reading and discussion: https://www.sjc.edu/santa-fe/programs/summer-classics https://www.sjc.edu/santa-fe/programs/summer-classics

arethuza 8y ago

I read "The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life" a while back and that led to "The Master and Margarita" which is now one of my favourite books :-)