About
A Little About Me
I am your average North American college graduate.
I attended your typical public schools growing up, where I went through phases of loving school, to actually believing I would never use anything I learned in class. In High School I pleasantly discovered that I love to read, and for the first time thoroughly enjoyed some class assignments.
Desiring to delve deeper in the Literary world, I decided to major in English, where I quickly learned being an English major is not exactly sitting on leather couches and drinking good coffee while reading Great Books. Okay, I did enjoy the books we read. But they weren’t the classics I wanted to be reading. And there seemed to be much more writing about reading, than actually reading.
So, sticking to American tradition, I changed my major. A few times. And then I graduated.
The Great Conversation
With University diplomas in hand, a friend and I have decided to begin our real education. To immerse ourselves with great, enriching, beautiful literature. To read in order to make ourselves better people. To indulge in knowledge. I viewed Graduation not as a completion, but as the beginning of something great. It was finally my turn to begin my Real Education. To join the Great Conversation: the conversation which brought the West to greatness.
The Great Conversation is a term used frequently when discussing philosophy, precisely because philosophy, as a rule, takes part in the Great Conversation. It is a discussion, debate, allusion to the past. Hutchins, Editor in Chief of Great Books of the Western World wrote, “The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day.”
Mortimer J. Adler also wrote:
What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later in the sequence of years, we find authors listening to what their predecessors have had to say about this idea or that, this topic or that. They not only harken to the thought of their predecessors, they also respond to it by commenting on it in a variety of ways.
Brandon found a list of Great Books of the Western World from Britannica, and we decided to start reading through them. One volume at a time. Over the span of ten years. Not wanting to limit ourselves to just this list, we (Brandon) compiled a supplementary list of 150 classics which the Editors of the Great Books omitted for one reason or another. Some were excluded because they are not from the West. Others because they were considered too modern to be judged by time as Great. But we wanted to read them all the same.
The Plan is to read one Volume of the Great Books every other month (6 a year), and 2 - 3 titles from the list of 150 Classics per Volume of the Great Books. Starting with Epic of Gilgamesh; ending with Our Mutual Friend (true, we were inspired by LOST). We will contribute to the Great Conversation as we go, and occasionally we will write our thoughts and observations on our blogs. I will try to keep you updated on what I am currently reading, and throw in some good quotes as I discover them. Once I am finished with a title, I will briefly give my opinion*, and answer two questions: date completed, and if I would read it again.
In ten years time, we will have read 600 works of Great—beautiful, sad, inspiring—Literature. Reading the Great Books is more than checking books off of a list: it truly will be a life-changing experience.
I am confident we will both be better people because of it.
*Spoiler Alert
