Saturday, October 6, 2007

Quest

A few weeks ago my Shakespeare professor told the class that we all need to read Plato's "Apology" before we graduate. It wasn't an assignment required for class, but just something to for general learning purposes.

Last week, my Acting professor told us she wouldn't allow us to graduate unless we'd read "King Lear".

These two incidents combined with my general love of acquiring knowledge, and the feeling that I'm not acquiring that much at my current institution have set me on a quest:

By the time I graduate in May of 2008, I would like to be armed with knowledge. I want to know literary classics, important philosophical theories, political speeches, scientific concepts, artists, poets, soccer players, anything and everything.

But I don't know where to start.

I'm looking to you, the denizens of the vast Internet, for help. What do you think I should know?

My List thusfar:

Plato's Apology
Plato's Phaedo
King Lear
Poe's "Beauty and Art"

3 comments:

LetsGoThrow said...

Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
Africa - Arnold
The Guns of August - Tuchman
Ulysses - Joyce

If you can get through those by May, I'll be uber-impressed... I'll be checking back.

Mr. Hill said...

You're tough, Professor Throw. If I were in a class with all that reading, I'd give you bad evaluations and maybe start rumors that you're only good at online chess because you run Chessmaster and ask it what to do.

C, I think I felt the same way when I was winding down my undergrad years. I mean, I don't think any liberal arts major graduates thinking "well, I sure licked that subject."

There's one book I like as a gap-filler kind of thing, called The Well Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, by Susan Bauer. It's a cheat, but it has some pretty straightforward, if overly simplistic chapters on the most canonical books of fiction, drama, poetry, history, and memoir. She has some interesting, very simple advice for "how to read" that I actually think is pretty helpful.

No substitute for staying in college for the rest of our lives, but you would eat so much pizza doing that that it would not really be a healthy life choice.

LetsGoThrow said...

Man, I would take Prof Hill's class because all I would have to do is read a glorified cliff's notes. At least I would get an easy 'A' and keep my GPA up which is what college is all about anyway. As long as you look cool and like unheard of music, you'll ace hill's class, C.

I think that Hill and I would agree that "The Road" is a modern book well worth the read. If you really are just looking for a list of 700 books to read, I can send you the list that I made at about the same point in my college career as you are currently at. Lemme know.

Chessmaster is for chumps.