Every now and then I start feeling like my education is lacking, so I launch a reading project. Like that time I decided to read all of the Modern Library’s top 100 books and then only read (I think) 5 of them because they were so depressing.
Well, folks, we’ve entered another of those Every Now and Thens.
This time I’m working off the Great Books list in Susan Wise Bauer’s “The Well-Educated Mind.” They’re all books I probably should have read at some point in high school or college. They’re also all books I’ve never read. It should only take me ten or twenty years to read them all.
I started “Don Quixote” a few weeks ago, and it is making me feel like a big doofus. From what I gather, this is the First Novel Ever and it is Very Funny and also Wonderful. I’m only on Chapter 19, but I’m just not that into it. Don Quixote seems like a big jerk, and there’s enough scatological humor to launch a Johnny Knoxville franchise.
I’m hoping things will change soon in the next one billion pages. (Seriously. I had no idea how long this book was.)
One thought on “I’m guessing ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ will do me in”
Some of these are actually really good reads (in my opinion)- Huckleberry Finn, Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter and Uncle Tom’s Cabin actually didn’t bore me to tears the way way Crime and Punishment did (save it for reading at night when you’re having trouble sleeping). My problem with Great Books is that I read to be entertained, not to be made to think.
Some of these are actually really good reads (in my opinion)- Huckleberry Finn, Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter and Uncle Tom’s Cabin actually didn’t bore me to tears the way way Crime and Punishment did (save it for reading at night when you’re having trouble sleeping). My problem with Great Books is that I read to be entertained, not to be made to think.