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Britannica has a 10 year reading plan that they published along with their Great Books Of The Western World set that you might find interesting. http://www.gre

by troupe 5y ago

Britannica has a 10 year reading plan that they published along with their Great Books Of The Western World set that you might find interesting. http://www.greatconversation.com/10-year-reading-plan http://www.greatconversation.com/10-year-reading-plan The Harvard Classics is a similar set of books that pre-dates Britannica's set. It has a 15 minutes a day reading list for the year. The reading list is in volume 50. https://www.harvardclassics365.com/p/free.html https://www.harvardclassics365.com/p/free.html

kleiba 5y ago
How realistic is such a "10 year plan" though? With 20 books per year, this list implies that spending only ~2.5 weeks on each book would be both possible and fruitful. I doubt that very much.
- kixiQu 5y ago
  They do specify which parts to read. Focusing on excerpts would be typical for a survey -- seems fine to me.
- dhosek 5y ago
  Dipping into this, most of the books listed are very short, especially in year one. 2.5 weeks for Hamlet, for example, is quite generous. Likewise for two chapters of Gibbon.
  - loughnane 5y ago
    The two chapters on gibbon were a fascinating read. They focus on how Christianity came to power under the Roman Empire… a topic I’d not seen treated elsewhere. I imagine some improvements in our understanding have been made since Gibbon’s time, and I’d def seek those out before walking around claiming I “know” what happened back then, but as an entry point is was a great, if a little bit too wordy, read.
    - pmdulaney 5y ago
      To become motivated to read Gibbon I recommend the episode about him in the BBC In Our Time podcast. I don't have my phone with me, but I think it's in the Philosophy category.
- loughnane 5y ago
  I discovered this list some years back. As others have said it’s very doable. I’ve got a full-time job, wife, kids, friends, etc. and have been comfortably able to keep at about ~90% of the pace of the plan. I recommend it. The organization is really nice; the years get more “difficult” as you go on and within each year the works are ordered chronologically. In this way it’s very approachable. It’s not long before you start seeing references between the books, something referred to as The Great Conversation. I find that really exciting; it’s makes the stories richer in the same way as when you get steeped in the lore of some fantasy world… but it’s with ideas that shaped _our_ world. Last thing I’ll say is that the ideas in the books aren’t a unified block. There is often disagreement between ideas, and sometimes explicitly called out. For example, Montaigne says he thinks Plato gives too much license to children to determine the topics they should study. Montaigne thinks instead it should be more prescribed. It’s moments like that, when you see two sharp minds disagreeing on such a topic that you ask yourself what _you_ believe. Then you can geek out on how that question was answered by Dewey and others that shaped what modern education is today. Really a delight to go through.

by troupe 5y ago

kleiba 5y ago

How realistic is such a "10 year plan" though? With 20 books per year, this list implies that spending only ~2.5 weeks on each book would be both possible and fruitful. I doubt that very much.

kixiQu 5y ago
They do specify which parts to read. Focusing on excerpts would be typical for a survey -- seems fine to me.
dhosek 5y ago
Dipping into this, most of the books listed are very short, especially in year one. 2.5 weeks for Hamlet, for example, is quite generous. Likewise for two chapters of Gibbon.
- loughnane 5y ago
  The two chapters on gibbon were a fascinating read. They focus on how Christianity came to power under the Roman Empire… a topic I’d not seen treated elsewhere. I imagine some improvements in our understanding have been made since Gibbon’s time, and I’d def seek those out before walking around claiming I “know” what happened back then, but as an entry point is was a great, if a little bit too wordy, read.
  - pmdulaney 5y ago
    To become motivated to read Gibbon I recommend the episode about him in the BBC In Our Time podcast. I don't have my phone with me, but I think it's in the Philosophy category.
loughnane 5y ago
I discovered this list some years back. As others have said it’s very doable. I’ve got a full-time job, wife, kids, friends, etc. and have been comfortably able to keep at about ~90% of the pace of the plan. I recommend it. The organization is really nice; the years get more “difficult” as you go on and within each year the works are ordered chronologically. In this way it’s very approachable. It’s not long before you start seeing references between the books, something referred to as The Great Conversation. I find that really exciting; it’s makes the stories richer in the same way as when you get steeped in the lore of some fantasy world… but it’s with ideas that shaped _our_ world. Last thing I’ll say is that the ideas in the books aren’t a unified block. There is often disagreement between ideas, and sometimes explicitly called out. For example, Montaigne says he thinks Plato gives too much license to children to determine the topics they should study. Montaigne thinks instead it should be more prescribed. It’s moments like that, when you see two sharp minds disagreeing on such a topic that you ask yourself what _you_ believe. Then you can geek out on how that question was answered by Dewey and others that shaped what modern education is today. Really a delight to go through.