As you know, I read and loved The Well-Trained Mind. As I mentioned in my post discussing it, I'd recommend it as reading to anyone interested in educational techniques and philosophies, or anyone who has kids and is interested in learning how children learn. It was compelling, to me anyway, and seemed to make a lot of sense.
One of The Well-Trained Mind's co-authors, Susan Wise Bauer, who teaches American literature at the College of William and Mary, also wrote another book, geared for adults, called The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. I don't know if this is a good book or not because I haven't read it (it mostly pertains to how to read a book and how to critically analyze the book), but I did want to see which books she highlighted as "must reads" and thought I'd offer them up for discussion. Keep in mind that the whole premise of a classical education is the integration of all subjects so the books you'd be reading for grammar, spelling and reading would mesh nicely with the period of history you were studying. That said, Bauer tries to recommend books from many different time periods so that the classical model is able to be followed.
She divides her recommendations into five categories: novels, autobiographies and memoirs, tales of historians and politicians, drama and poetry and, as I mentioned, not only makes recommendations on what to read, but how to best to critically analyze it.
Here's the list of novels she recommends. I've read some, but not most. I'll confess that a few I have little interest in, but many I do. Never mind that I forgot my pen and paper the other night at Barnes and Noble, right?
1) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (she recommends the translation by John Rutherford)
2) The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
3) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
4) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I knew there was a reason I liked Bauer!)
5) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
6) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
7) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
8) Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
9) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
10) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
11) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (she recommends the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
12) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (she recommends the translation by Constance Garnett, revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova)
13) The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
14) The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
15) Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
16) The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
17) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
18) The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
19) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20) Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
21) The Trial by Franz Kafka (she recommends the translation by Breon Mitchell)
22) Native Son by Richard Wright
23) The Stranger by Albert Camus (she recommends the translation by Matthew Ward)
24) 1984 by George Orwell
25) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
26) Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
27) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (she recommends the translation by Gregory Rabassa)
28) If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (she recommends the translation by William Weaver)
29) Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
30) White Noise by Don Delillo
31) Possession by A.S. Byatt
What do you think of her recommendations? I feel there are some surprising omissions but, for the most part agreed with her list though I also realize another scholar might put together a very different list. And since I haven't read most of them, nor am I a great academic, who am I to judge the quality of the list?
I'm looking at the list from a less scholarly angle: I just want to find books to read that I'll enjoy and although Oprah Book Club-ish fiction is, well, fun, I prefer to mix books that are a little weightier into what I read more often than not. Bauer said something in The Well-Trained Mind that really stuck with me, and what she said, basically, was that if you only feed your child Twinkies and McDonalds don't be surprised if they grow accustomed to that food and become overweight and develop health troubles. It's the same with with books. If your child consistently reads books with unchallenging vocabulary and simple sentence structure, don't be surprised if it's more difficult for them to tackle good books when they're adults.
What books on this list did you, my readers, enjoy? Or which ones are you interested in? Why?
Thursday, May 17, 2007
The Well-Educated Mind
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9 comments:
in the same vein, check out the list begun by mortimer adler and robert hutchins (univ of chicago)in their Great Books of the Western World series of the 1920s and 1930s. the divisions, i believe, were science, mathematics, language and philosophy. original texts only. seveal lifetimes later ...
correction
"several" not seveal
I enjoyed Don Quixote. It was required reading for one of my Spanish classes and I dreaded it's length, at first, but then really got into the characters. It is a story about the journey and life adventures of a man who is not all "with it".
The characters are colorful and unique, the text is comedic at times and sentimentally sweet. I don't know how the translation reads (I had to read it in spanish), but I'm sure its just as good.
Jane Eyre is also a good one but it starts out a bit slow. She is written as a headstrong and stubborn character, but you end up rooting for her to be happy. I liked it!
I am quite impressed with this list. The books that I have read on the list were fabulous! Most, however, were read in HS or college. Others on the list that I have not gotten to, I have been wanting to. Like, Song of Solomon, Anna Karenina and P&P (nope, not yet). Perhaps I need to change my own literary strategy.
Please don't tell me you're having Madeleine read these next year.
I remember being deeply moved by The Scarlet Letter and Uncle Tom's Cabin in HS, but Pilgrim's Progress? ick.
I read The Stranger, and for some strange reason, I think I read it in French (L'Etranger). I barely remember it, but I recall enjoying its depth.
I like this list better than the other blog book list that was circulating. Thanks!
Terri, We read The Stranger together in AP English ;), though I'm sure you could have read it in French also.
Thanks for the heads-up on Don Quixote, Sar. It wasn't one I'd marked to read anytime soon, but I might just do that now (though in English, not in Spanish). Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books and I've read it multiple times... it's only a notch below P&P in my book.
Thanks for the other list too, Dad, it will be interesting to compare them.
Oh, and no, I do not have Madeleine slated to read any of these next year, LOL. I think we'll stick with children's classics for at least a year or two. ;)
I felt pretty good after reading this list. The only ones I hadn't read were Nos. 3,26,28, & 31. My favorite?
Pride and Prejudice. Hands Down.
Lately I have been reading a lot of biographies, I especially enjoyed "John Adams" good read and an interesting time to consider.
My favorite fiction book? The Red Tent. Must read.
LOL, thanks, Supermom. I guess that AP English was a repressed memory!
I was surprised by some of the modern choices, Don Delillo? I loved White Noise, but I wouldn't consider him THE modern master. The New York Times Book Review ran an interesting article last year where authors chose the most important novel of the 20th century. A unique take on defining a new classic.
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