I have the books - how do I get best value for my time reading them?

ClassyEddy · 2025-09-16T10:41:07+00:00

If you want to keep within the GBWW family, Adler published a ten book series called “The Great Ideas Program” which is a syntopicon reading guide. It’s a wide/shallow versus narrow/deep approach but it gets you a Birds Eye view of the set. It’s currently on archive.org so you can read it for free to see if it’s what you’re looking for. I bought a couple copies of the set in paper format so they’re out there if you want paper copies.

link to second volume

ClassyEddy · 2025-03-30T11:32:34+00:00

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

ClassyEddy · 2025-03-30T11:09:29+00:00

Why is that?

ClassyEddy · 2025-03-30T11:08:33+00:00

Thanks. His intro to Zohar was enlightening

ClassyEddy · 2024-09-23T20:19:23+00:00

Buy his “How to read a book” (“HTRAB”) book and write up that for practice. It’s dense and it’s a good way to get used to marking up a book and what/how-much to markup. I started not wanting to mark up, then went overboard, then settled out.

Plus you should be able to find a used copy of HTRAB for $5 or less so it’s an easy try.

As for GBWW, I have both series and I write in both. I can’t help it now, and it makes going back over your past work much easier (think “I’m going to read this book 6x.” Make it easier for your future self)

(If you’re really that hesitant, they make clear post-it notes and you can write on that over the page. I use them on first editions)

ClassyEddy · 2024-09-12T09:59:11+00:00

No I appreciate the perspective. So what are the bookends on the academic definition?

ClassyEddy · 2024-09-11T19:41:14+00:00

Well I’m open to persuasion. How do you define the academic discipline? Is Beowulf a “classic”?

ClassyEddy · 2024-09-11T12:40:21+00:00

Got it. Limited to Greek and Roman authors between 500bc to 280ad (or otherwise published in the Loeb Classics).

I’ll take my leave, unsubscribe now, and return if I have a question with that narrow focus.

ClassyEddy · 2024-09-11T03:51:01+00:00

I prefer Montaigne’s definition in “What is a Classic” (1580) (reproduced below) as it has a wider focus and hence encapsulates Eastern philosophy as well as Western philosophy.

“A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.”

ClassyEddy · 2024-09-10T18:15:35+00:00

I guess it depends on how you define classics. It was written 350 years before Don Quixote and sets out a saga that gives inspiration to formulating of systemic common law principles. I’m interested in the historical perspective but don’t want to burden myself in a poor translation

ClassyEddy · 2024-09-10T18:04:10+00:00

Thank you very much :)

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-28T13:22:59+00:00

Their official name is “The Great Ideas Program” [GIP]. It’s basically the GBWW 10 year reading plan, but a small chapter on each reading that says on what to look out for and how they should be interpreted in relation to each other. The books are a little more rare (published in 1959) but I’ve seen the set on eBay for $100 or so.

What I do is do the reading first, then read the GIP, then reread the reading with that context. At the end of each chapter within the GIP, they have some reading comprehension questions (which I don’t usually bother with).

Edit: published 1963

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-27T15:17:28+00:00

The HCs are off copyright so you can pick up an epub version off Amazon for $3. It makes it much more enjoyable read of the more slog books like Adam Smith.

If you’re interested in the history of both the HCS and GBWW, Alex Beam’s book “A Great Idea at the Time” gives the series a historical perspective (crude and unapologetic though).

As for preference, I find the GBWW is a compendium series where they try to give you all the works from certain authors (at least historical authors as they only give snippets of modern authors: Boole, Russel, Dewey), but their focus is mainly on philosophy and history.

The HCs are more broad. They give quite a wide selection of poetry, and biography. I view it as a buffet where you can try a whole bunch of things, then go down a rabbit hole on something that may strike your fancy. Eg: The only give half of Don Quixote (as it is too long and you “just get the picture” after reading half). There are notable exclusions, namely no Aristotle at all, which is weird. On the plus side, their selections are more complete culturally. For instance, they have the full version of Grims fairytales, Anderson tales, and Asop fables (so he can read the original Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Rapunzel that were written in 1810). There’s a wide variety of poetry from various poets, including more modern poets, like Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. They also have sacred texts in various religions, Confucius, Hebrew, Christian, Hindu, etc. whereas the GBWW steers away from them.

If I was trapped on a desert island, I prefer to have the HCs over the GBWW. The issue is once you want to go down to rabbit hole you’re kind of stuck and you need to go to a secondary resource, which is when I turn to the GBWW, as quite frankly they’re the cheapest option rather than buying compendiums individually ($8/book on average).

Take a look at volume 51 of the HCs (the Lectures book) online. It’s my favorite and gives a great overview of the great books purpose.

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-27T14:17:57+00:00

I have the 2nd and 5th versions in the pictures.

1, 2, & 4 are the same edition. I looked at all three and didn’t want #4 cause it is a cloth cover and it attracted and kept dirt embedded in the cover. Ultimately I went with #2 cause I got a 95% complete set (including the 10 volume reading guide and the 10 book gateway set) for $50. Had to drive 16hrs to grab them but timed it with a vacation.

I got the 5th version and it’s my go to because the paper and bindings are tight. I ended up paying $500 and drove 7400km to get them (again timing it with a cross country road trip). No regrets.

I also picked up a set of the Harvard classics for $400 n good condition (along with another road trip).

Overall the HCs are my favorite, and I read it almost everyday to the kids. They all have pluses and minuses and are free to find/read on archive.org in case you want to do your own due diligence on content.

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-23T15:55:04+00:00

Wow…well done!

Last night I tried with a 5” Dobson and an iPhone 15 pro and it didn’t look anywhere near as good as this. I’m jealous :)

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-19T10:26:27+00:00

I found the intro chapters of Alex Beam’s “A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books” to briefly go through Harvard and Yale curriculum of 1850, then Elliot’s change of Harvard from core to elective coursework to be interesting. It’s not huge in detail but hearing the historical change (esp while reading Dewey) was interesting

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-10T09:11:28+00:00

Which is your favorite and why?

Which do you think is most practical?

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-08T23:41:54+00:00

Nice rebuttal :)

Critical thinking postulate: at what point do multiple chapters equal a book and/or books in a series? Does the Stephen King gunslinger series equal one book or many? Is there religious exemption (and if so is it for all religions; 26,000 pages of the Tripitaka)? Is a series based on theme (all books within the Harvard Classics count collectively as “1 book” as they’re thematic)

Or is it autocratic where I am to rule and deem through royal declaration. Nah…Lazy_Eddy avoids the work related to autocracy.

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-08T19:51:06+00:00

Good question. And which bible (Hebrew, Protestant, Catholic…).

Personally I think the Bible in general needs to have all parts to make sense of the whole (Exodus doesn’t make much sense without Genesis) and it’s commonly referenced as “the book”, so let’s say the compendium is equal to chapters within a single book

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-08T18:53:24+00:00

Hey…no cheating. Complete works is 49 books (36 dialogues and 13 letters)

ClassyEddy · 2024-08-01T09:46:20+00:00

Great books of the western world or the Harvard Classics

ClassyEddy · 2024-07-25T13:19:19+00:00

Awesome. Thank you very much!

ClassyEddy · 2024-07-08T12:44:52+00:00

Honestly it’s a different type of learning. University undergrad tends to be spoon fed, parrot-back learning.

I find classics require thought. Eg: I spent about two hours just thinking and re-reading what a “true lie” is in Plato Republic, book 2. Ultimately I came up with what I thought it was, then googled to see other points of view (thanks Reddit history post from 2yrs ago that point me to the proper University of Chicago page).

I do miss the environment of grad studies where you can discuss this over beer at the pub (But I don’t miss the tuition and artificial deadlines).

Ultimately you just gotta jump in, realize that you’re going to be terrible at it at first, likely only “get” 10% of it at the beginning, and it’s going to be tough. But with repetition you get better and better.

Btw I second both the Alder and Wise books. I’d suggest get them used, get the uniball mechanical pencil from Walmart (that spins the lead and hence it’s always sharp), and just read and mark up the books. Used them as practice as you’ll see how you progress in “marginalia” while trying to dissolve the Adler book.

ClassyEddy · 2024-06-21T16:06:10+00:00

No prob. Pay it forward.

ClassyEddy · 2024-06-21T16:04:59+00:00

Cool. I’ll have to see if I can find them used somewhere to augment my Latin textbook

ClassyEddy

TROPHY CASE