The Plan

They say that writing down goals increases one's chances of actually reaching them. To test that theory I've created this space to post my "great books" reading plan. I am not following any one list or canon, but drawing from several according to my desire for breadth, relevance, and practicality. I should note that by "relevance" I mean works that have been highly influential or have high artistic, religious, or scientific merit within the Western (Judeo-Christian-Greco-Roman-European) tradition. My overarching goal is to better understand my culture, which is why works from other great civilizations aren't included in this project unless they had an influence on the West.

I posted the first version of this list earlier, but will be leaving that post alone. This list will get updated and expanded as I progress (assuming I progress!), and will be a record of where I've been and where I intend to go. It will also be a record of my core classical library as I build it up.

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General Preparation

• The Well-Educated Mind (Bauer) √
• How to Read a Book (Adler & Van Doren) √
• The Trivium (Sr. Miriam Joseph) [in progress]

Context (to be read concurrently with texts)

• Oxford Atlas of World History (O'Brien)
• New History of the World (Roberts)
• Encyclopedia of World History (Stearns)
• The Story of Art (Gombrich)
• Gardner's Art Through the Ages (12th ed.)
• Music in Western Civilization (Wright)

References

• Oxford Classical Dictionary
• Encyclopaedia Britannica (2005)
• ye olde internette

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Mesopotamia

• Myths from Mesopotamia (Dalley)
• chapter on Gilgamesh in Ancient Epic Poetry (Beye)

Ancient Egypt

• The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Faulkner)

Hebrew Bible

• Oxford Annotated NRSV Bible
• with support from the Oxford Bible Commentary

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Preparation for Ancient Greece

• Ancient Greece (Pomeroy)
• Classical Mythology (Morford & Lenardon)

Homer

• Iliad & Odyssey (Lattimore)
• chapters up to Homer in Ancient Epic Poetry (Beye)
• A Companion to the Iliad: Based on the Translation by Richmond Lattimore (Willcock)
• Homer's Odyssey: A Companion to the Tranlsation of Richmond Lattimore (Jones)

Hesiod (Lattimore)

Greek Lyrics (Lattimore)

Greek Drama

• Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (Greene and Lattimore)
• Aristophanes: all or part?

History

• Herodotus: The Histories
• Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War

Hippocrates

Plato

Aristotle

to be continued...