Milton's Areopagitica, part of the third volume of the Harvard Classics. I'm hoping to have read them all by the time I graduate. If it is accurate to say that this set represented all elements of a complete liberal education in 1909, then it is certainly accurate to say that college has changed dramatically since then. So far, I'm liking old college better.

AndyRoo wrote:

Milton's Areopagitica, part of the third volume of the Harvard Classics. I'm hoping to have read them all by the time I graduate. If it is accurate to say that this set represented all elements of a complete liberal education in 1909, then it is certainly accurate to say that college has changed dramatically since then. So far, I'm liking old college better.

AndyRoo,

I think you sentiment would be shared by many! Which reminds me of St. John's College of Annapolis, a place that bases all four years on the group reading and study of the great books. For anyone who'd like a handy reading list that is a complete classical education of what seems to me a very solid kind I kindly refer you to their book list:

http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/readlist.shtml


They also have a list of the reading program by seminar for all grades.

For those not wishing to click, here's their Freshman Year list. Solid, wide and quite astonishing in today's lighter academic hodgepodge.

* HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
* AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
* SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes, Ajax
* THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
* EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
* HERODOTUS: Histories
* ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
* PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
* ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
* EUCLID: Elements
* LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
* PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
* NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
* LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
* HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
* Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust

You've blown my mind, Mr. Quay. Why couldn't you have informed me of the existence of this college four years ago? Now for the rest of my life I will regret having missed the boat. Alas, I shall have to strive to make up for it on my own.

I've decided that my children will go to St. John's College in Annapolis. Mark my words, I will make great gentlemen and ladies of them. There's no use living past twenty if you can't live through your children. ;)

AndyRoo wrote:

You've blown my mind, Mr. Quay. Why couldn't you have informed me of the existence of this college four years ago? Now for the rest of my life I will regret having missed the boat. Alas, I shall have to strive to make up for it on my own.

AndyRoo,

I can only plead my own terrible self-centeredness and consequent unfamiliarity with your plight and also ask for your indulgence if not forgiveness. Also, St. John's seems to be a kind of strangely guarded secret among secondary school college counselors. They just don't often talk about it, if at all. To find someplace like this that provides a classical education to make a liberal mind (in the classic sense, not that of modern politics) is something that should be shouted from the rooftops. I don't know why it isn't except that it makes some otherwise generous people nervous for reasons not readily known.

As for making up for it, I certainly did my best in my own undergraduate days, or at least as much as I was able after having too much fun. I was much aided by having wonderful professors who were of a classic bent and who encouraged me to read very widely and shared their time with me to talk about my reading. (The fact Aristophanes Clouds is on the Freshman list at St. Johns makes me almost impossibly happy. If you're not familiar with him I highly recommend any of his plays, especially translations by Douglass Parker.) Fortunately the St. John's list also comes with many a scholarly book of criticism and essays for nearly every title, something immensely helpful for the autodidact.

I've decided that my children will go to St. John's College in Annapolis. Mark my words, I will make great gentlemen and ladies of them. There's no use living past twenty if you can't live through your children. ;)

A fine sentiment and a very fine promise! I hope you will start early and read to them often and widely. That's the whole key I find, getting one to be able to read as early as possible and as often as possible. If you start that fire for truly deep and classic learning at a very young age it cannot be vanquished even by the endless distractions of the current modern educational system--miasma?--that we have now.

I knew a girl who went to St John's. Looked great in jeans.

I'm reading Bloodhounds by Peter Lovesey.

Has anyone read the "Known World"? It was a recommended to me by a friend of the family who is highly educated and said that it was a fantastic read.

http://www.amazon.com/Known-World-Edwar ... 0060557540

Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

A.Quay wrote:

(The fact Aristophanes Clouds is on the Freshman list at St. Johns makes me almost impossibly happy. If you're not familiar with him I highly recommend any of his plays, especially translations by Douglass Parker.)

Yesterday I happened to find a copy of Clouds on a friend's shelf, during a dinner party; I managed to read about a third of it whilst playing a board game. Naturally, I read aloud all the wonderful ribaldries, for the amusement of the group.

I must find a copy of my own. It was excellent.

I started Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, but had to return it to the library about halfway through since somebody requested it (denying me the chance to renew). I'll have to re-request the book so I can finish it. Some interesting foodie stuff, to be sure.

AndyRoo wrote:

...I managed to read about a third of it whilst playing a board game. Naturally, I read aloud all the wonderful ribaldries, for the amusement of the group...

The Miller's Tale was always my go-to volume for this purpose.

Seamus Heaney's poetry collection Opened Ground.


Song

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

-- Seamus Heaney

books:
1- The Phantom Major by Virginia Cowles. The story of David Stirling & the SAS
2- Shock Doctrine by Klien. Hyperbole at its finest, but some very interesting historical facts are intermingled with her theories which are quite interesting.
3- Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. My apologies to anyone reading this who is LDS, I can understand that this book might be unwelcome by people of that faith.

Periodicals:
1) economist
2) foreign affairs
3) foreign policy
4) the new yorker

Don Quixote (the Smollett translation).

I am reading "My Life in & out of the rough" a bio about PGA Tour star John Daly. I am an avid golfer and I have been a fan of Daly since he made his debut years ago. An interesting read that gives a little perspective on why he behaves as he does.

Tuck wrote:

I am reading "My Life in & out of the rough" a bio about PGA Tour star John Daly. I am an avid golfer and I have been a fan of Daly since he made his debut years ago. An interesting read that gives a little perspective on why he behaves as he does.

Tuck,

I would suggest you try to track down a copy of "The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story" by Tim O'Connor. I had the pleasure of watching Moe play in a Senior's tournament when I was a teenager. He was a very unique individual.

Currently I am reading "The Hotel New Hampshire" by John Irving. Just prior I read "A Prayer for Owen Meaney", one of my favourites.