Great Books discussion group

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artie
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:38 pm

Great Books discussion group

Post by artie »

Hi. I'm interested in starting a discussion group of the Great Books of the Western World
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Boo ... tern_World.
:read:
I'd also be interested in using the St. John's list because it features music scores and SCOTUS opinions.
https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/u ... ading-list

Any heavy duty readers of math, science and history? I'm not incredibly keen on theology or metaphysics, except in an historical context. Basically, I'm interested in the history of ideas. I've finished the set and am starting a reread.

Anyone interested?
artie
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:38 pm

Re: Great Books discussion group

Post by artie »

This was posted over six months ago. Any takers? We could meet here to get started. Or by email.
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narya
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Re: Great Books discussion group

Post by narya »

Artie, I read many of the Great Books back in the 70s and 80s - I had the set on my bookshelf and plowed about halfway thru them before kid #1 arrived and took over my life - but since then I've read many great books that aren't on that list, and are much more inclusive and thought provoking. Many of the books I read are sci-fi, because that is a great medium for examining our beliefs about the human condition (I was raised on the original series Star Trek). For example, I just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, which did a good job of following both human protagonists and sentient spider protagonists, and how each group reacted differently to similar situations. (Not recommended if you are arachnophobic, though.) And if you like technical creativity, I can recommend Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary.

The Great Books were a good window into what members of a Eurocentric-cis-hetero-male-moneyed-dominate culture happened to think was important back in the 1950s, but it's certainly not the whole story. At least the St. John's list has a bit more diversity.

Here's a partial list of what I've read, in non-fiction, in the past few months:

David Graeber and David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything
Hua Hsu's Stay True (Pulitzer Prize winning memoir)
Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham's The Riders Come Out at Night
Ruth King's Mindful of Race
Regina Jackson and Saira Rao's White Women

I'd be happy to discuss any one of them with you, or you could suggest one for me to read. But I don't think I'll go back to reading the Great Books, except perhaps for a re-read of Cervantes or Shakespeare.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus
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