The Book List

Following is the list of books we’re reading in our Classics Reading Group.

Our current selection is in bold-faced red.

Classics Reading Group: Why read the classics?

I’ve always wanted to read the classics–the books well-read people read, the ones that make a person, well, educated.  So last year, my daughter and I started reading the classics. She is a teacher, and I’m a writer and psychologist. Both of us saw that, in spite of many years of education and experience, neither of us had read but a fraction of the books a well-read person ought to have read. This is true even though she actually taught literature and English to high school students in public schools, and I have a master’s degree in literature (and two other advanced degrees, besides).

We borrowed heavily from the ideas of others about what constitutes a good literary education, turning first to The Lifetime Reading Plan, and turning next to The Well-Educated Mind. We looked at The Harvard Classics, and perused Jackson Spielvogel’s Western Civilization. Then we looked into spiritual traditions and religion, noticing that some of history’s greatest religious thinkers were not represented in some of these lists. For instance, The Lifetime Reading Plan assumes that a person has read the Bible; we find that today many people have not, and so we added parts of the Bible to our own plan. We also added Buddhist works, both ancient and modern.

In a separate article, I’ll post the list for others who are interested in such undertakings. I welcome your suggestions for books we may have overlooked.