The Road to Erudition

Yikes.

2007-11-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not so good at this "blogging" thing, am I? What can I say, school got in the way. And as this blog is about learning, I suppose that's a worthy excuse.

The List, updated
Plato's Apology
Plato's Phaedo
King Lear
Poe's "Beauty and Art"
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
Ulysses, James Joyce
The Well Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, by Susan Bauer
The Road, Cormac McCarthy

Africa - Arnold...I can't find anything about this book...

I went on Amazon.com to see if they had any Lists that were similar to my Quest and I found two that I will share:
"Books You Should Read Before You Graduate" which I thought seemed pretty good
http://www.amazon.com/Books-Should-Read-Before-Graduate/lm/179T8TJPU0ZR6

And also, "What You Need to Read Before You Graduate High School", which includes such knock-outs as Rent by Johnathan Larson and Bridget Jones's Diary, but maybe since I made it through high school without reading those two, I don't have to go back and catch up... http://www.amazon.com/What-need-before-graduate-school/lm/3JLFS9JHXD191

I also found that Listmania is a website to get lost in.

I think part of my desire for books to read comes from the fact that I've nearly completed three and a half years of college and I've yet to take an English class. I've taken mandatory writing classes, read some philosophy and some French literature and a ton of plays (theatre major...), but not one English class. So next semester I am taking "Transatlantic Modernism" which is about American writers living in London and Paris and Berlin....T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein and all of their best buddies. So hopefully that's good.

Well, that's all I've got for now.

Quest

2007-10-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

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"

Entry One

2007-10-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

Hello.