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Life Time Reading Plan

Bernard said:
I think the hardest thing for me would be the subject of the books. Plato or Aristotle book on Ethics would seem to be a very dry read. I suppose any books from Part I would be. Like Litany said, it would almost seem like work. :rolleyes:
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Actually I read The Epic of Gilgamesh at the begining of the school year and it wasn't that bad. Rather interesting really
 
Ashley said:
Actually I read The Epic of Gilgamesh at the begining of the school year and it wasn't that bad. Rather interesting really
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My dad read Aristotle's Ethics, and his first comment after reading it? "I'm going to read it again, and see if I can understand it this time."
 
I can see how it would be interesting. I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig, he wrote alot about the theories of Kant, Plato, Aristotle and other Philosophers. I personally loved it. Maybe a book that would sumerize their theories?
 
I just got finished making a spread sheet with the book titles and Authors and there are 215 books, and a "collected poem" "selected works" counted as one book so there really are alot more then that.
 
Yeah, I agree.

I mean, isn't reading supposed to be fun? You go out, select what you think you will like and read it. Why to read a huge list of books picked by somebody else? Do you REALLY need to be told what is good and what is not? Make up your own mind. Read for pleasure because you like the sound of the book and not because somebody tells you to.
 
I think it would be FUN to read those books, and learn something. Learning for me is not work it is fun.
 
Learning is fun for me, as well, Sapper.....but that reading list seems to be overdoing it a bit. I read for pleasure, and if I happen to learn something from it, then that's a double bonus, but its not necessary. I think that's why most people here read, and are having trouble seeing why you want to read a list dictated to you by other people. No one could pick out an entire list of books for me to read where I would enjoy all the books, unless they were omniscient or really lucky.

Some books on that list seem interesting and some just sound horrid. I admire your dedication, and I hope you enjoy yourself as you work through the list, but its certainly not for me.
 
Don't get me wrong, I love learning new things. The best thing is a book that makes you think 'Wow, I never knew that'. But I prefer to choose my own course, rather than (as said above) have a list dictated to me.
 
I think its a great idea actually Sapper - you'll really feel like you've achieved something at the end of that list :)
 
I probably wouldn't go for the entire list, myself, but it is a very good selection. The advantage of reading the "classics" is that you know where our modern culture/literature came from, and it allows you to appreciate contemporary work all the more.
 
Like the advantage of learning Latin and Greek... you get to understand where a lot of modern languages come from.
 
Freya said:
Like the advantage of learning Latin and Greek... you get to understand where a lot of modern languages come from.
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Someone who understands that etymology is actually very interesting, and therefore it's worthwhile studying classical languages! Such a breath of fresh air!
 
I'm studying biblical hebrew right now, and some words have connections to modern English words but not any where near as many as Latin or Greek.
 
Sapper41 said:
I'm studying biblical hebrew right now, and some words have connections to modern English words but not any where near as many as Latin or Greek.
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How hard is hebrew to learn? How is the alphabet constructed? It's interesting to know, because I find the Greek alphabet very easy to deal with and have no problems recognising it, but I'm also learning Japanese and struggling to even build up a complete knowledge of the hiragana alphabet, let alone katakana and the thousands of kanji characters! One thing you notice when studying a language with completely separate roots is also that grammatical forms and functions differ tremendously, whereas most European languages I have studied work similarly.
 
Shalom Themistocles!
Lets see... the aleph-bet (alphabet) has been pretty easy to pick up. It is very very very different from english and greek. There are 22 letters and no vowels. The vowels are a series of dots places around the letters. The great thing about hebrew is that unlike english the sounds of the letters and vowels never change. For example in english the letter A sounds different in the word Cat, caught, call, etc, in hebrew the sounds never change. Because of this the basics of reading have been very easy to pick up. The grammar on the other hand is alot different from english. Here a site to pick up some hebrew aleph-bet basics and some words.

Learn Biblical Hebrew Basics

If anyone starts getting into it and has any questions just ask, i'm getting pretty good at it :) Also have you activley studied greek at all?
 
I minored in Latin in college, which I found very helpful in passing my Chaucer class - a lot of middle English has latin/french roots. I also find it helpful in spelling words, I just have a better feel for when longer words have double consonants (Cincinnati, for instance.) But I mostly found it a nice change from my literature classes, since most of them were very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants discussion affairs. One could not bs one's way through a Latin translation.
 
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