Boulder Great Books Discussion Group - All Readings

 

Boulder Great Books actually began in 1988, started by Carol Heepke, for the Boulder Public Library. The group did the readings from the five volume Great Books Discussion Series and then decided to go through that series again starting in September, 1993. So this list actually covers all of the readings done by the group since it was founded. The home page for the group is http://www.sackett.net/BoulderGreatBooks.htm
 

September 27, 1993    Organizational Meeting and Introductory Reading

                       

October 12 1993

  Chekhov                                Rothschild's Fiddle

                (Questions for discussion are in the Great Books Discussion Series 1.)

    (Year parenthetical notes are selections from the Great Books 10 Year Reading Program.)

October 26, 1993                   

  Aristotle                                On Happiness          

 

November 9, 1993                  Great Books, Vol 7                             (Year 1 # 1)

 Plato                                       The Apology

 

November 23, 1993               

  Conrad                                  Heart of Darkness

 

December 7, 1993                  

  Kant                                      Conscience

 

January  18, 1994

  Marx                                     Alienated Labor                                                                   

 

February  1, 1994

  Bible                                      Genesis                                                                                             

 

February 15, 1994      Great Books, Vol 54, pp 767-802

  Freud                         Civilization and Its Discontents     (Year 9 # 18)

 

March 1, 1994            Great Books, Vol 38

  Rousseau                               The Social Contract                                     (Year 1 # 14)

 

March 15, 1994                     

  Darwin                                  The Moral Sense of Man and the Lower Animals

 

March 29, 1994                      Great Books, Vol  27

  Shakespeare                          Othello                                                          (Year  8 #  7)

 

April 12, 1994            Great Books, Vol 35

  Hume                                    Of Justice and Injustice

 

April 19, 1994            (This was my first time at the alternate Tuesday group)

  Woolf                                    Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own

 

April 26, 1994                       

  Tocqueville               The Power of the Majority

 

May 3, 1994                           Delmore Schwartz

  Schwartz                               In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

 

May 10, 1994                         Georg Simmel

  Simmel                                  Individual Freedom

           

May 17, 1994             Great Books, Vol 7, pp 1 - 13

  Plato                                        Charmides (Temperance)

 

May 24, 1994             Great Books, Vol 5, pp 131 - 142

  Sophocles                              Antigone                                                                    (Year 2 # 3)

 

May 31, 1994                         pp 1 - 63

  Mortimer Adler                      Six Great Ideas

 

June 7, 1994                Great Books, Vol 5, pp 488-506, 583-599

  Aristophanes              Clouds, Lysistrata                                        (Year 1 #2)

 

June 14, 1994              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 14 - 25

  Plato                                        Lysis (Friendship)

 

June 21, 1994              Adler  pp 64 - 98

 

June 28, 1994              Great Books, Vol 24, pp 1 - 126

  Rabelais                                   Gargantua and Pantagruel [Book I - II] (Year 1 #10)

 

July 5, 1994                Great Books, Vol 7, pp 26 - 37

  Plato                                        Laches (Courage)

 

July 12, 1994              Adler  pp 99 - 134

 

July 19, 1994              Great Books, Vol 9, pp 339 - 348

  Aristotle                                  Ethics [Book I]

 

July 26, 1994              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 38 - 64

  Plato                                        Protagoras

 

August 2, 1994                       Adler pp 135 - 154

 

August 9, 1994                       Great Books, Vol 5, pp 40 - 51

  Aeschylus                               Prometheus Bound                                       (Year 3#1)

 

August 16, 1994                     Great Books, Vol 7, pp 65 - 84

  Plato                                        Euthydemus

 

August 23, 1994                     Adler pp 155 - 208

 

August 30, 1994                     Great Books, Vol 22, pp 1 - 155

  Chaucer                                   Troilus and Cressida                                   (Year 3 #10)

 

September 6, 1994      Adler  pp 209 - 243

 

September 13, 1994    Organizational Meeting and Introductory Reading

 

September 20, 1994    Great Books, Vol 20, pp 205 - 239               (Year 3 # 9)

  Saint Thomas Aquinas            Summa Theologica  [Part I - II, QQ 90 - 97] 

 

September 27, 1994    Great Books, Vol 7, pp 200 - 219                  (Year  1# 1)

  Plato                                      The Crito

 

October 4, 1994                      Great Books, Vol 12, pp 105 - 245

  Epictetus                                 Discourses                                                     (Year 7 #  6)

 

October 11, 1994                    John Dewey

  Dewey                                  The Virtues

                        (Questions for discussion are in the Great Books Discussion Series 2.)

 

October 18, 1994        Great Books, Vol 7, pp 85 - 114

  Plato                                        Cratylus

 

October 25, 1994        Great Books, Vol 5

  Euripides                               Iphigeneia at Aulis  

 

November 1, 1994      Great Books, Vol 32, pp 381 - 412

  Milton                                     Aeropagitica                                      (Year  2 # 12)

 

November 8, 1994      Great Books, Vol 9, pp 445-455

  Aristotle                                Politics                                                           (Year  1 # 5)

 

November 15, 1994    Great Books, Vol 30, pp 1 - 55

  Bacon                                      Advancement of Learning   (Year  8 # 8)

 

November 22, 1994               

  Dostoevsky              Notes from Underground

 

November 29, 1994    Great Books, Vol 7, pp 115 - 141

  Plato                                        Phaedrus

 

December 6, 1994                  

  Bible                                      Exodus

 

December 13, 1994     Grace Paley - “An Interest in Life  (15 pages)

 

December 20, 1994     Bhagavad-Gita. Mascaro translation.

 

December 27, 1994     Great Books, Vol 14, pp  32-64, 540-604        (Year 1 # 6)

  Plutarch                                   The Lives of  the Noble Grecians and Romans

 

January  3, 1995                    

  Dickinson                              Emily Dickinson:  Selected Poems (chosen by Bruce Feistner)

                                                 Poetry and Art: 281, 285, 448, 569, 1126

                                                 Nature: 130, 1333, 520, 311, 986, 812, 258, 328

                                                 Religion and Philosophy: 135, 67, 193, 338, 376, 502, 501, 632, 817

                                                 Men and Women: 203, 249, 401, 640

                                                 Death: 465, 712, 822, 1017, 1539

                                                 Mind and Consciousness: 280, 341, 750, 414, 751, 410, 1071, 1695

                    from T H Johnson (ed) The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

 

January 10, 1995        Great Books, Vol 7, pp 142 - 173

  Plato                                        Ion and Symposium                                     (Year  7 # 2)

 

January  17, 1995                  

  Hobbes                                  Origin of Government                                                                    

 

January 24, 1995        Great Books, Vol 18, pp 1 - 61

  St. Augustine                          Confessions [Book I - VIII]              (Year  1 # 8)

 

January  31, 1995                  

  Melville                                 Billy Budd                                                                

 

February 7, 1995        Great Books, Vol 25, pp 55 - 80,115 - 125  (Year 1 # 11)

  Montaigne                               Essays [Pedantry; Education of Children; Relish of Good  & Evil]

 

February 14, 1995      Great Books, Vol 39, pp 1 - 41

  Smith                                     Wealth of Nations                            (Year 1 # 17)

 

February 21, 1995      Great Books, Vol 7, pp 174 - 199

  Plato                                        Meno and Euthyphro                                   (Year 2 # 5)

 

February 28, 1995      Great Books, Vol 27

  Shakespeare                          Antony and Cleopatra                      (Year 7# 11)

 

March 7, 1995            Great Books, Vol 12, pp  253 - 310

  Marcus Aurelius                     Meditations                                                   (Year 2 # 10)

 

March 14, 1995                     

  Kierkegaard               The Knight of Faith

 

March 21, 1995                      Great Books, Vol 19, pp  3 - 75

  Saint Thomas Aquinas            Summa Theologica [Part I, QQ 1 - 13]       (Year  6 # 8)

 

March 28, 1995                      Great Books, Vol  6

  Herodotus                             The Persian Wars                             (Year  3 # 2)

 

April 4, 1995              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 200 - 251

  Plato                                        Apology, Crito, and Phaedo (Year 1 # 1) & (Year 5 # 1)

 

April 11, 1995            Great Books, Vol 35

  Locke                                    Of Civil Government                       (Year 1 # 13)

 

April 18, 1995            Great Books, Vol 11, pp  811 - 848

  Nicomachus                            Introduction to Arithmetic  (Year 2 #  8)

 

April 25, 1995            Great Books, Vol 36

  Swift                                     Gulliver's Travels                             (Year 2 # 15)

 

May 2, 1995               Great Books, Vol 53, pp 396 - 420, 540 - 635

  William James                         Principles of Psychology                  (Year  4 # 18)

           

May 9, 1995                          

  Thoreau                                 Civil Disobedience

           

May 16, 1995             Great Books, Vol 7, pp 252 - 294

  Plato                                        Georgias                                                                    (Year  8 # 2)

 

May 23, 1995             Selection from Suzanne Langer's

  Langer                                   Philosophy  in a New Key                          

 

May 30, 1995             Great Books, Vol 27, pp 351-393

  Shakespeare                          Coriolanus                                        (Year 7 #11)

 

June 6, 1995                Great Books, Vol 53, pp 851-897

  William James                       Principles of Psychology                              (Year  5# 18)

 

June 13, 1995              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 295 - 341

  Plato                                      The Republic [Books I - III]                         (Year 1 # 3)

 

June 20, 1995              Great Books, V 26, pp 597-630                    

  Shakespeare              As You Like It                                               (Year 6 # 10)  

 

June 27, 1995              Great Books, Vol 28, pp 197 - 210

  Galileo                                  Two New Sciences                                        (Year 4 # 9)

 

July 11, 1995              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 342 - 401

  Plato                                      The Republic [Books IV - VII]         (Year 4 # 2)

 

July 18, 1995              Great Books, Vol 26, pp 568-596

 Shakespeare                           Julius Caesar                                                (Year 7 # 11)

 

July 25, 1995              The Way:  An Ecological World View

  Edward Goldsmith                Chapters 1 - 13  (plus Chapters 14 - 37 as interested)

 

August 1, 1995                       Great Books, Vol 50, pp 415-434                  (Year 1 # 18)

  Marx-Engels                          Manifesto of the Communist Party

                                               

August 8, 1995                       Great Books, Vol 7, pp 401 - 441

  Plato                                      The Republic [Books VIII - X]

 

August 15, 1995                     A Theory of Justice

  John Rawls                           Selections

 

August 22, 1995                     Great Books, Vol 7, pp 442 - 485

  Plato                                      Timaeus and Critias                         (Year 10 # 2)

 

August 29, 1995                     Great Books, Vol 42, pp 253-287                  (Year 2 # 18)

   Kant                                     Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals  

 

September 5, 1995      Great Books, Vol 7, pp 486 - 510

  Plato                                      Parmenides

 

September 12, 1995    Organizational Meeting and Introductory Reading

  Sappho                                  Selected Poems

 

September 19, 1995    Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

  Nikki Giovanni                     Selected Poems

 

September 26, 1995                John Dewey

   Dewey                                 Habits and Will

                        (Questions for discussion are in the Great Books Discussion Series 3.)

 

October 3, 1995                      Great Books, Vol 31, pp 1 - 40

  Descartes                              Rules for the Direction of the Mind  (Year 9 #  9)

 

October 10, 1995        Great Books, Vol 43

  Mill                                       On Liberty                                         (Year  2 # 18)

 

October 17, 1995        Great Books, Vol 7, pp 512 - 550

  Plato                                      Theaetetus                                                    (Year  4 #  3)

 

October 24, 1995        Woman & Fiction, Short Stories by and about Women, ed. Susan Cahill.  pp 195-229.

  Doris Lessing                        To Room Nineteen           

 

October 31, 1995        Selected Influential Speeches  (Pericles, Lincoln, ...)

                       

November 7, 1995      Great Books, Vol 27

  Shakespeare                          Hamlet                                                           (Year  1 # 12)

 

November 14, 1995    Great Books, Vol 46, pp 153 - 206

  Hegel                                     Philosophy of History                      (Year 6 # 17)

 

November 21, 1995   

  Bible                                      The Gospel of Mark

 

November 28, 1995    Great Books, Vol 7, pp  551 - 608

  Plato                                      Sophist and Statesman        (Year 9 # 1)  & (Year 3 # 4

 

December 5, 1995       Great Books, Vol 6

  Thucydides                           History of the Peloponnesian War (Year  3#  3)

 

December 12, 1995     Great Books, Vol 12, pp 1 - 61

  Lucretius                              On the Nature of Things  [Books I-IV]      (Year 2 # 9)

 

December 19, 1995     Tao Te Ching

  Lao-Tzu                               

 

January  2, 1996                    

  Maya Angelou                      Selected Poems

 

January  9, 1996                     Great Books, Vol 7, pp  609 - 652

  Plato                                      Philebus and Laws I                                     (Year  7 #  3)

 

January 10, 1996

  Mario Vargas Ilosa    Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

 

January  16, 1996                  

  Clausewitz                            What is War?                                                                       

 

January 23, 1996        Great Books, Vol 40, pp 179 - 234               (Year  1 # 15)

   Gibbon                                 Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire  [Ch 15-16]

 

January  30, 1996      

  Chekhov                                Uncle Vanya                                                                         

 

February 6, 1996        Great Books, Vol 8, pp 25-31

  Aristotle                                On Interpretation  [Ch 1-10]                       (Year 3 # 5)    

 

February 13, 1996     

  Maimonides              On Evil                                                                                  

 

February 14, 1996

  Juan Rolfo                             Pedro Paramo

 

February 20, 1996      Great Books, Vol 7, pp  653 - 697

  Plato                                      Laws II - V                                                                             

 

February 27, 1996      Great Books, Vol 4

  Homer                                   The Iliad                                                                    (Year 2 # 1)

 

March 5, 1996                        Selected Essays

  Ralph Waldo Emerson          Self-Reliance, Compensation, The Over-Soul

 

March 12, 1996                      Great Books, Vol 38 “Spirit of Laws” Books 1, 3, and 8

  Montesquieu                         Principles of Government   (Year 9 # 13)

 

March 19, 1996                      Great Books, Vol  22, pp 159-232, 256-295, 372-382

  Chaucer                                Canterbury Tales                                         (Year  10 # 8)

 

March 26, 1996                      Great Books, Vol  22

  Chaucer                                Canterbury Tales                                         (Year  10 # 8)

 

April 2, 1996              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 697 - 757

  Plato                                      Laws VI - IX                                                  

 

April 9, 1996              Great Books, Vol 5

  Aeschylus                             Agamemnon                                                  (Year 2 # 2)

 

April 16, 1996            Great Books, Vol 33, pp 181-4,186-9,191-2,195-200, 203, 205-10, 212-18,

  Pascal                                    pp 222-5, 227, 229-32, 237-51, 255, 259, 264-75, 277-87, 290-1, 296-302,

                                                pp 318, 321-322, 326-327      Pensees          (Year  2 #  13)

 

April 23, 1996           

  Henry James             The Beast in the Jungle                                                     

 

April 30, 1996            Great Books, Vol 10, pp  xiii-26, 44-63, 144, 154-160

  Hippocrates              Oath, Ancient Medicine,Airs Waters and Places, Epidemics, Law, Sacred Disease  (Year  5 #  4)

 

May 7, 1996               Great Books, Vol 23

  Machiavelli                           The Prince                                         (Year  1 #  9)

 

May 14, 1996             Great Books, Vol 7, pp 757 - 814                 (Year  6 #  3)

  Plato                                      Laws X - XII and The Seventh Letter        

           

May 21, 1996            

  Tolstoy                                 The Death of Ivan Ilych                                                                  

 

May 28, 1996 Great Books, Vol 43, pp 1-3, 11-20, 29-53, 62-66, 103-5, 153-6, 162-5, 205-16

                        Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist  (Year  1 #  16)

 

June 4, 1996                Great Books, Vol 7, pp 26-37

  Plato                                      Laches                                                                       

 

June 11, 1996              Great Books, Vol 26, pp  352-375

  Shakespeare                          A Midsummer Night's Dream

 

June 18, 1996              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 252-294                   

  Plato                                      Gorgias                                                          (Year 8 # 2)    

           

June 25, 1996              Great Books, Vol 27, pp  205-243

  Shakespeare                          Othello                                                                      (Year 8 # 7)

           

July 2, 1996                Great Books, Vol 9, pp 339-348, 426-436                

  Aristotle                                Nicomachean Ethics,  Books I and X.         (Year 1 # 4)

 

July 9, 1996                Great Books, Vol 26, pp  406-433

  Shakespeare                          The Merchant of Venice     

 

July 16, 1996              Great Books, Vol 9, pp 348-366                    (Year 2 # 7)

  Aristotle                                Nicomachean Ethics, Book II; Book III, Ch. 1-12. 

 

July 23, 1996              Great Books, Vol 17, pp 1 - 34

  Plotinus                                 First Ennead                                                  (Year 7 # 7)

 

July 30, 1996              Great Books, Vol  12, pp 105-138

  Epictetus                               The Discourses, Book I.                               (Year 7 # 6)

                                               

August 6, 1996                       Flannery O'Connor's “A Good Man is Hard to Find” &

 O'Connor                               Everything That Rises Must Converge
                                                  from The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

                                                                       

August 13, 1996                     Great Books, Vol 19, pp 609-643 Part 1-II, QQ. 1-5

  Aquinas                                 Summa Theologica,  “Treatise on the Last End” (Year 7 # 8)

 

August 20, 1996                     Doris Lessing's “The Day Stalin Died

  Lessing

 

August 27, 1996                     Great Books, Vol 23, pp 61-65, 66-71, 71-79, 84-96

  Hobbes                                  Leviathan, Part I, Ch. 6, 8, 10-11, 13-15.     (Year 2 # 11)  

                                               

September 3, 1996      Philosophy is Everybody's Business,  Vol II #3, Spring 1996

  Adler                                     Mortimer Adler on Love

 

September 10, 1996    Organizational Meeting and Introductory Reading

                                    Woman & Fiction, Short Stories by and about Women, ed. Susan Cahill.

   Flannery O'Connor Revelation  (and excerpts from her letters: “Habit of Being”).

 

September 17, 1996    Ntozake Shange's

  Shange                                   For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf

 

September 24, 1996               

   Schopenhauer                       The Indestructibility of Our Inner Nature

                        (Questions for discussion are in the Great Books Discussion Series 4.)

 

October 1, 1996                      Great Books, Vol 25, pp. 28-36, 89-98, 99-100,  (Year 1 # 11)

  Montaigne                             115-125,162-167, 200-208, 300-307, 340-343, 344-347, 388-395.

                                                Essays: “To study philosophy,” “Moderation,” “Cannibals,” 

“To avoid pleasures,”  “Relish of good and evil,” “Drunkenness,”
            “Cruelty,” “Glory,” “Virtue,” “Anger,” “Repentance.”

 

October 8, 1996                      Great Books, Vol 5

  Euripides                               Medea                                                            (Year  4 # 1)

 

October 15, 1996        Great Books, Vol 31, pp  451-463                 (Year 7 # 13)

  Spinoza                                 Ethics, Part V.

                       

October 29, 1996                    Great Books, Vol 35, pp  450 - 509               (Year 4 # 14)

  Hume                        An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

 

October 22, 1996                   

  Weber                                    The Spirit of Capitalism    

 

November 5, 1996                 

  Moliere                                 The Misanthrope                                                                 

 

November 12, 1996    Great Books, Vol 40, CH 1->5 & 28,  pp 1 - 51, pp 630 - 634

  Gibbon                                  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Year  6#  15)

 

November 19, 1996    Great Books, Vol 40,  CH XV & XVI, pp 179-234

  Gibbon                                  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Year  1#  15)

                                    (Questions for discussion are in Vol 1 of the Great Ideas Program.)

 

November 26, 1996    Great Books, Vol 35, pp. 87-92, 103-112,

  Locke                                    176-178, 188-189, 228-233, 303-304, 317-319

                                                An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,

“Epistle to the Reader”; Book I, Ch. 2; Book II, Ch. 20, Ch. 21, § 42-44,

                                                Ch. 28; Book III, Ch. 11, § 16-17; Book IV, Ch. 3, § 18-20.

 

December 3, 1996       Bible - The Book of Job                                (Year  7#  1)

 

December 10, 1996     Great Books, Vol  42, pp 251-287                 (Year 2 # 17)

  Kant                                      Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

 

December 17, 1996     Selection from the Koran: Surah 4, 18, 25, and 36.

 

January  7, 1997                     Doris Lessing's “The Temptation of Jack Orkney

  Lessing                                 

 

January  14, 1997       Great Books, Vol 42, pp 337-355                  (Year 7 # 16)

  Kant                                      The Critique of Practical Reason, Part I, Book II.

 

January  21, 1997       Great Books, Vol 43,  pp 445 - 475

  Mill                                       Utilitarianism           (Chapters 2 and 4)      (Year  7#  18) 

 

January 28, 1997        Great Books, Vol 46, pp 55-63, 133-135       (Year 9 # 16)  

   Hegel                                    Philosophy of Right,  “The Family,” & Additions101-115.

 

February 4, 1997                    George Bernard Shaw

  Shaw                         Caesar and Cleopatra                                                                                 

 

February 11, 1997      Great Books, Vol 49, pp 304-330                  (Year 10 # 15)

  Darwin                                  The Descent of Man, Part I, Ch. 4-5.

                                                                                               

February 18, 1997      Great Books, Vol 18

  St. Augustine            The City of God  (Book 14) 

 

February 25, 1997      Great Books, Vol 32, pp 93 - 216 (Books I -> VI)(Year 3 # 12)

  Milton                                   Paradise Lost                                                                        

 

March 4, 1997            Great Books, Vol 7

  Plato                          Symposium                                                   (Year 7 # 2)

 

March 11, 1997                      Great Books, Vol 32, pp 217 - 333 (Books VII -> XII)

  Milton                                   Paradise Lost                                                             (Year 3 # 12)

 

March 18, 1997                      Isak Dinesen's “Sorrow-Acre” in Winter' Tales

  Dinesen                                

 

March 25, 1997                      Isak Dinesen's “Echoes” in Last Tales and                          

  Dinesen                                 The Blue Jar” in Sudden Fiction International (ed. R. Shapard)

 

April 1, 1997              Great Books, Vol 25,  pp 516 - 543

  Montaigne                             Essays:  Of Experience                                                                           

 

April 8, 1997              Great Books, Vol 25, pp 42-51,80-82, 406-434  (Year 1 # 11)

  Montaigne     Essays:  “Custom,” “Foolishness,” “Upon some verses of Virgil.”                                                                         

 

April 15, 1997                       

  Diderot                                  Rameau's Nephew                                                   

 

April 22, 1997            Toni Cade Bambara's

 Cade Bambara                        A Girl's Story,” & “The Sea Birds Are Still Alive

 

April 29, 1997            Great Books, Vol 43                                       (Year  1 #  16)

  Hamilton,Jay,Madison         The Federalist Papers (1, 2, 10, 15, 51, 69, 70)                                                                 

 

May 6, 1997               Great Books, Vol 5, pp 225 - 236, 270 - 281, 340 - 352 (Year 4 # 1)

  Euripides                               Hippolytus, Trojan Women, The Bacchantes

           

May 13, 1997             Great Books, Vol 27              

  Shakespeare              The Tempest

           

May 20, 1997             Bible - Isaiah, Amos                                      (Year  7#  1)

 

May 27, 1997                        

  Gogol                        The Overcoat                                                           

 

June 3, 1997                Cynthia Ozick's “The Shawl” and

  Ozick & Sachs                      selected poems from Nelly Sachs' “O The Chimneys”

 

June 10, 1997              Great Books, Vol 8, pp. 499-511, 522-532, 547-548, 587-590.

  Aristotle                                Metaphysics                                                  (Year 4 # 5)

 

June 17, 1997              Great Books, Vol 26, pp 285-319.

  Shakespeare              Romeo and Juliet

 

June 24, 1997              Great Books, Vol. 19, pp. 94-104.                 (Year 4 # 7)

  Aquinas                                 “Treatise on God,”  Part I, QQ. XVI-XVII.           

 

July 1, 1997                Great Treasury of Western Thought

                                                Selection from “Philosophy and Philosophers

 

July 8, 1997                Great Books, Vol. 25, pp. 208-294.               (Year 4 # 8)

  Montaigne                             The Essays, “Apology for Raimond de Sebonde”

 

July 15, 1997              Great Books, Vol  31, pp. 41-67.                   (Year 4 # 11)

  Descartes                              Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason

 

July 22, 1997              Nadine Gordimer's July's People  (For background, see:

  Gordimer                               http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1991/ )

 

July 29, 1997              Great Books, Vol 52, pp. 122-137, 146-170. (Year 3 # 17)

  Dostoevsky  “Grand Inquisitor & “Russian Monk” from Brothers Karamazov

                                               

August 5, 1997                       Great Books, Vol 31, pp. 355-372.                (Year 6 # 11)

  Spinoza                                 Ethics, Part I             

                                                                       

August 12, 1997                     Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Partyand

  Mansfield                              selections from her Journal                                                  

 

August 19, 1997                     Great Books, Vol Vol. 35, pp. 307-395.        (Year 6 # 14)

  Locke                        An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,  Book IV

 

August 26, 1997                     Journal for the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas

  Adler                                     “Multiculturalism”                                    

           

September 2, 1997      Great Books, Vol 35,  pp. 403-444.               (Year 5 # 14)

  Berkeley                                The Principles of Human Knowledge

 

September 9, 1997      Organizational Meeting and Introductory Reading

  Jackson                                 Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery”

 

September 16, 1997    Great Books, Vol 52, pp 348-401 (The complete novel is Year  3 # 17)

  Dostoevsky              A Judicial Error,”  Book XII in The Brothers Karamazov

 

September 23, 1997    Ecclesiastes

   Bible                                     Ch 1-6; 9:1-12; 11; 12:1-8

                        (Questions for discussion are in the Great Books Discussion Series 5.)

 

September 30, 1997    Great Books, Vol 35, pp 450-487, 488-509   (Year 4 # 14)

  Hume                        An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding  (Sections I - IX, X - XII)

 

October 7, 1997                      Great Books, Vol 5                                         (Year  2 # 3)

  Sophocles                              Oedipus the King

 

October 14, 1997                   

  Erdrich                                  Louise Erdrich's  American Horse

 

October 21, 1997        Great Books, Vol 42, pp 256-270                  (Year  2 # 17)

  Kant                                      First Principles of Morals  

 

October 28, 1997        Great Books, Vol 42, pp 1-33                        (Year 4 # 15)

  Kant                                      Critique of Pure Reason

 

November 4, 1997

  Freud                         On Dreams

 

November 11, 1997    Ludwig Wittgenstein's Vermischte Bemerkungen,

 Wittgenstein                           translated by Peter Winch as Culture and Value

 

November 18, 1997    http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/stories/kafka-E.htm

  Kafka                        Metamorphosis

 

November 25, 1997    “Modern Moral Philosophy”  and 

“The Question of Linguistic Idealism” in

  Anscombe                             The Collected Philosophical Papers of G E M Anscombe

 

December 2, 1997       Great Books, Vol 47, pp 1-114          (Year  8 #  17)

  Goethe                                  Faust, Part 1

 

December 9, 1997       Great Books, Vol 47, pp 115-294      (Year 10 # 14)

  Goethe                                  Faust, Part 2

 

December 16, 1997     Gospel According to Saint Matthew, and  

  New Testament                    The Acts of the Apostles                  (Year  1 # 7)

 

January  6, 1998                     Mary Lavin's “Happiness

  Lavin                                               

 

January  13, 1998       Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's “The Englishwoman


Jhabvala

 

January  20, 1998       “A Simple Heart”

  Flaubert                                 from French Stories and Tales

 

January 27, 1998        Great Books, Vol 13, pp 103-235                  (Year 5 #  6)

  Virgil                                     The Aeneid   Books I - VI

 

February 3, 1998        Of Personal Identity

  Hume                        from “Of the Understanding” in A Treatise of Human Nature

 

February 10, 1998      Great Books, Vol 13, pp 236-379                  (Year 5 #  6)

  Virgil                         The Aeneid   Books VII - XII

 

February 17, 1998      Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche                              Prologue and First Part

 

February 24, 1998      “The Flies” in No Exit and Three Other Plays

  Sartre                         Jean-Paul Sartre's ”The Flies”

 

March 3, 1998            Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

  Beauvoir                                Introduction and Chapter 9 (“Dreams, Fears, Idols”)

 

March 10, 1998          “The Choice To Be Ethical,” “Sartre's Choice,” and “The Existentialist Choice”

  Barnes                                   from Hazel Barnes'  An Existentialist Ethics

 

March 17, 1998          Great Books, Vol 21, pp 1-52                                    (Year 5 # 10)

  Dante                                    The Inferno in The Divine Comedy

 

March 24, 1998          Great Books, Vol 49, pp 32-64, 152-153  (Intro -> Ch 6 & Ch 15   is Year 5 # 16)

  Darwin                                  The Origin of Species, Ch. 3-4,  and a selection from Ch. 10

 

March 31, 1998         

  Burke                        Reflections on the Revolution in France

 

April 7, 1998              Selected poems from Wislawa Szymborska's

  Szymborska                          view with a grain of sand

 

April 14, 1998            The Education of Henry Adams

  Adams                                  

 

April 21, 1998            Great Books, Vol 5, pp 542-563, 583-599     (Year 1 # 2)

  Aristophanes            The Birds and Lysistrata

 

April 28, 1998            Great Books, Vol 27, pp 244-283                              (Year  8 #  7)

  Shakespeare              King Lear

 

May 5, 1998   Great Books, Vol 5, pp 327-339, 394-410, 156 -169 (Year 10 # 1)

  Euripides & Sophocles         Euripides:  Electra and Orestes, Sophocles:  Electra         

 

May 12, 1998             Great Books, Vol 9, pp 684-689  (pp 681 - 699  is Year 2 # 6)

  Aristotle                                On Tragedy                                                                          

           

May 19, 1998             Christa Wolf's Cassandra

  Wolf

 

May 26, 1998             Great Books, Vol 7                 (Books I & II are Year 1 # 3)

  Plato                                      Selection from Books II, III and  IV of The Republic 

 

June 2, 1998†◊            Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Spinoza of Market Street

  Singer

 

June 9, 1998†◊            Soren Kierkegaard - Either/Or

  Kierkegaard                                                  

 

June 16, 1998              Great Books, Vol 26, pp 320-351                  (Year 10 # 9)

  Shakespeare              The Tragedy of King Richard the Second

 

June 23, 1998†◊                      Joseph Skvorecky - Emoke

  Skvorecky    

 

June 30, 1998†◊                      Flora Annie Steel - Tom-Tit-Tot and Caporushes

  Steel

 

July 7, 1998†◊             Yukio Mishima - Patriotism

  Mishima

 

July 14, 1998              Great Treasury of Western Thought Selection from “Love

                                               

July 21, 1998              Great Books, Vol 26, pp 254-284

  Shakespeare              Love's Labour's Lost

 

July 28, 1998              Great Books, Vol 7, pp 149-173                    (Year 7 # 2)

  Plato                          Symposium

 

August 4, 1998†◊        William Shakespeare - Sonnet 116, 

  Poetry                                   Sylvia Plath - The Applicant

                                                Gregory Corso - Marriage,

                                                and Gwendolyn Brooks - To Be in Love

 

August 11, 1998†◊      Great Books, Vol 60 (of the 1990 edition)

  Woolf                                    First half of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

 

August 18, 1998†◊      Second half of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

 

August 25, 1998†◊      First half of

  Nabokov                               Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

 

September 1, 1998†◊   Second half of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita


†◊ reading  from Love and Marriage  Great Books Reading and Discussion 50th Anniversary Series.


September 8, 1998      Organizational Meeting and Introductory Reading

  Gabriela Mistral                    Selected poetry from Desolation

 

September 15, 1998    Great Books, Vol 4, p v, pp 183-249 (Year 6 #  2)

  Homer                                   Homer's Odyssey  Books I - XI

 

September 22, 1998◊◊ The Continuing Silence of a Poet

   A. B. Yehoshua       

 

September 29, 1998    Great Books, Vol 4, pp 250-322                    (Year 6 #  2)

  Homer                                   Homer's Odyssey  Books XII - XXIV

 

October 6, 1998◊◊       Gwen and Somewhere, Belgium
Jamaica Kincaid

 

October 12, 1998

  Jhabvala                                Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust

 

October 13, 1998        Great Books, Vol 5, pp 52-91                        (Year 2 # 2)

  Aeschylus                             Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides

 

October 20, 1998        Great Books, Vol 2, pp 486-514

                                                The Idea of Family  from the Syntopicon

 

October 27, 1998        Gateway to the Great Books, Vol 3, pp 153-193

  Eliot                                      George Eliot's “The Lifted Veil

 

November 3, 1998      First half of

  Phyllis Rose              Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages

 

November 9, 1998      Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk

  Mahfouz

 

November 10, 1998    First half of

  Camus                                   Albert Camus' The Plague

 

November 17, 1998    Second half of

  Phyllis Rose                          Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages

 

November 24, 1998    Second half of

  Camus                                   Albert Camus' The Plague

 

December 1, 1998       Bhagavad-Gita  (translated by Edwin Arnold)

 

December 8, 1998       pp 1 - 185 (Vintage Classic, trans & abridged by E. Seidensticker)

  Shikibu                                  Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji  Chapters 1 to 6

 

December 15, 1998     pp 186 - 360 

  Shikibu                                  Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji  Chapters 7 to 12

 

January  5, 1999         Great Books, Vol 55  (of the 1990 edition),  pp 237-294

  Bertrand Russell                   The Problems of Philosophy

                                                http://www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html

 

January  7, 1999         Great Books, Vol 2

                                                The Idea of Good and Evil  from the Syntopicon

 

January  12, 1999       Great Books , Vol 29, pp v-201                     (Year 5 #  12)

  Cervantes                              Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote   First Part

 

January  19, 1999       Great Books, Vol 5

  Euripides                               Iphigeneia at Aulis

 

January 21, 1999        Great Treasury of Western Thought

                                                Selection from “Good and Evil

 

January 26, 1999        Great Books , Vol 29, pp 203-429     (Year 10 #  11)

  Cervantes                              Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote   Second Part

 

February 2, 1999        Great Books, Vol 18, pp 61-125

  St. Augustine                        Confessions  Books IX - XIII

           

February 4, 1999        Great Books, Vol 2

                                                The Idea of Justice  from the Syntopicon

 

February 9, 1999        Great Books, Vol 32, pp 337-378                  (Year 6 # 12)

  Milton                                   John Milton's Samson Agonistes

 

February 16, 1999◊◊              

  Andrea Lee                New African  and

 William Faulkner                    Barn Burning

 

February 18, 1999      Great Treasury of Western Thought

                                                Selection from “Justice

 

February 23, 1999      Great Books, Vol 37, pp v-204                      (Year 9 # 12)

  Fielding                                 Henry Fielding's Tom Jones  Books I - IX

 

March 2, 1999◊◊                                

  Franz Kafka              Letter to his Father and The Judgement

 

March 9, 1999             Great Books, Vol 37, pp 204-405                  (Year 9 # 12)

  Fielding                                 Henry Fielding's Tom Jones  Books X - XVIII

 

March 16, 1999◊◊                   William Butler Yeats -

  Poetry                                   Among School Children and A Prayer for my Daughter,

                                                Derek Walcott - A Letter from Brooklyn,

                                                Randall Jarrell - The Lost Children, and

                                                Sharon Olds - Exclusive

 

March 23, 1999                      Great Books, Vol 48, pp 1-209                      (Year 4 # 16)

  Melville                                 Herman Melville's Moby Dick  CH 1-60

 

April 6, 1999              Great Books, Vol 48, pp 210-420                  (Year 4 # 16)

  Melville                                 Herman Melville's Moby Dick  CH 61-135

 

April 13, 1999◊◊                    

  Jane Austen              Persuasion

 

April 20, 1999

  Deledda                                 Grazia Deledda's The Mother

 

April 27, 1999                       

  Sandra Cisneros        The House on Mango Street

 

May 4, 1999               Great Ideas Today, 1967:  pp 374 - 425

 Schrödinger                            Erwin Schrödinger's “What Is Life?

 

May 11, 1999◊◊                      First half of

  Heinrich Böll             Billiards at Half-Past Nine

                                                                                   

May 18, 1999             Great Books, Vol 59  (of the 1990 edition), pp 411-466

  Cather                                   Willa Cather's A Lost Lady

 

May 25, 1999◊◊                      Second half of

  Heinrich Böll             Billiards at Half-Past Nine

 

◊◊ reading  from Parent and Child in the Great Books Reading and Discussion 50th Anniversary Series.

 

June 1, 1999                Great Books, Vol 26, pp 434 - 467   (Year 10 # 9)

   Shakespeare                         William Shakespeare, Henry the Fourth, Part I

 

June 8, 1999                Khushwant Singh,  Train to Pakistan

  Singh                                                 (180 pages)

 

June 14, 1999              Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo or the Seasons in the City
Calvino

 

June 15, 1999              Great Books, Vol 26, pp 468 - 503   (Year 10 # 9)

  Shakespeare                          William Shakespeare, Henry the Fourth, Part II

 

June 22, 1999              Ana Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters

  Castillo                                              (132 pages)   

 

June 29, 1999              Great Treasury of Western Thought  Idea of “Revolution

 

July 6, 1999                1970 Great Ideas Today   A. J. Toynbee, “Revolutionary

  Toynbee, Illich                      Change,” and Ivan Illich, “The Need for Cultural Revolution

           

July 13, 1999              Claire de Duras, Ourika

  de Duras                                            (80 pages)

                       

July 20, 1999              Schumacher  Small is Beautiful

  Schumacher                                       (352 pages)

 

July 27, 1999              Selection from Isabella Bird's

  Bird                                       Six Months in the Sandwich Islands

           

August 3, 1999           Selection from  Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tuscon

  Kingsolver

 

August 10, 1999         Maxine Hong Kingston “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe

  Kingston                               from Woman Warriors  (40 pages)

 

August 17, 1999         Frank Waters, The Man Who Killed the Deer

  Waters                                   (266 pages)

 

August 24, 1999         Ntozake Shange  oh she gotta head fulla hair

  Shange                       Terry McMillan “Ma' Dear

  McMillan                  Ann Petry “The Witness

  Petry                                     (from Gloria Naylor's Children of the Night)

 

August 31, 1999                     Ellyn Bache, Culture Clash  (131 pages)

  Bache

 

September 7, 1999      Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

  Nietzsche                              (Dover Thrift Edition - translated by Helen Zimmern)
[Note: This was a horrible translation.  Get one by Walter Kaufmann instead.]

 

September 14, 1999    Introductory meeting and

  Soyinka                                 Selected poetry from Wole Soyinka, Mandela's Earth

 

September 21, 1999    1998 Great Ideas Today, pp 404 - 434, Margaret Mead -

  Mead                                     Applied Anthropology: The State of the Art

 

September 28, 1999 * Clifford Geertz -

  Geertz                                   Deep Play:  Notes on the Balinese Cockfight

 

October 5, 1999                     Great Books, Vol 35, pp. 1 - 22, 380-388  (Year 8 # 11)

  Locke                        A Letter Concerning Toleration” and CH 18 and 19

                                    from “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

 

October 12, 1999                    Katherine Mansfield -

  Mansfield                              In a German Pension: 13 Stories

 

October 19, 1999        William James, Varieties of Religious Experience

  James                                                (Lectures I to X)        

 

October 26, 1999        William James, Varieties of Religious Experience

  James                                                (Lectures XI to end)              

 

November 2, 1999 *  Carlos Fuentes, The Two Shores

  Fuentes        

 

November 9 1999       Gateway to the Great Books, Vol 6, pp 714 - 732

  Thoreau                                 A Plea for Captain John Brown

 

November 16, 1999    Olive Gilbert -

  Truth                                     The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

                       

November 23, 1999 *            W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Du Bois

 

November 30, 1999    Great Books V19, pp 3 - 10; V 20, pp 380 - 401 

  Aquinas                                 Summa Theologica  (Part I, Q1; Part II-II, QQ 1-3)

 

December 7, 1999       Confucius, The Analects

  Confucius                              (Dover Thrift Edition - W. Soothill translator)

 

December 14, 1999     Christina Rosetti, Goblin Market and Other Poems

  Rosetti                                              (Dover Thrift Edition)

 

December 21, 1999     The Mabinogion 

                                                (Dover Thrift Edition - translated by Lady Charlotte Guest)

 

January 4,  2000 *    Doris Lessing, The Antheap

  Lessing                                             

 

January  11,  2000      James Joyce, Ulysses  (First half)     

  Joyce                        

 

January  18, 2000       James Joyce, Ulysses  (Second half) 

 

January  25, 2000       Mary Wollstonecraft -

  Wollstonecraft                      A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

 

February 1, 2000        Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

  Gilman                                              (Dover Thrift Edition)

 

February 8, 2000        Lady Mary Wortley Montagu          

   Montagu                              Selections from her Letters from the Levant

 

February 15,  2000 * Jonathan Swift

  Swift                                     A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

                                               

February 18, 2000      Zora N. Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
     Reference: http://teacherweb.com/CA/NewburyParkHighSchool/bond/LookingforZora-AWalker-3.pdf.

 

February 22,  2000     1988 Great Ideas Today  pp 406 - 467

  Wharton                                Edith Wharton, “Ethan Frome      

 

February 29, 2000      Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

  Wharton                                            (Dover Thrift Edition)

 

March 7, 2000            Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

  Greene

                                               

March 14, 2000 *      Derek Walcott, Poetry

  Walcott                                 “The Schooner Flight” and “A Far Cry from Africa”

 

March 21, 2000                      Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë -                   

  Brontë                                   Best Poems of the Bronte Sisters

                  

March 28, 2000                      Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

  Browning                              Sonnets from the Portuguese (Dover Thrift Edition)

 

April 4, 2000              Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

 

April 11, 2000 *        Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

   

April 18, 2000            Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

  Kincaid

 

April 25, 2000                        Selection from V. S. Naipaul, Miguel Street

                                                           

May 2, 2000               Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse

  Seth                                       (307 pages (588 sonnets))

                                               

May 9, 2000               Walt Whitman, Selected Poems

  Whitman                                           (Dover Thrift Edition) 

 

May 16, 2000 *        First half of E.M. Forster, A Passage to India                                                                    

May 23, 2000 *        Second half of E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

           

May 30, 2000                         Amitav Ghosh,  The Shadow Lines

  Ghosh

 

* = Reading from Great Books Foundation's Clashes of Culture in the Great Books Reading and Discussion 50th Anniversary Series.

.

 

June 6, 2000                Clarice Lispector, Hour of the Star  (96 pages)

  Lispector

 

June 13, 2000†*                      Leo Tolstoy, “After the Ball

  Tolstoy

 

June 20, 2000              Great Books, Vol 27, pp 1 - 28         (Year 6 #  10)

  Shakespeare                          William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

 

June 27, 2000†*          Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Evil, Guilt, and Power

  Nietzsche

                       

July 11, 2000              Graham Greene, Heart of the Matter  (242 pages)

  Greene

 

July 18, 2000†*          Robert Musil, “Moosbrugger

  Musil

 

July 25, 2000              Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day  (182 pages)

  Desai

           

August 1, 2000†*        Charles Johnson, “The Sorcerer's Apprentice

  Johnson

 

August 8, 2000           Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (166 pages)

  Shelley                                  Frankenstein  (Dover Thrift Edition)

 

August 15, 2000†*      Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Stavrogin's Confession

  Dostoevsky

 

August 22, 2000                     Poetry:  Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

  Coleridge†*                           The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

                                                Anne Sexton,

  Sexton                                   The Interrogation of the Man of Many Hearts

                                                Eavan Boland,

  Boland                                   The Famine Road,” “Child of Our Time,”

                                                The Hanging Judge

 

August 29, 2000†*      Marguerite Yourcenar, Coup de Grace  (151 pages)

  Yourcenar

 

September 5, 2000      R.K. Narayan  (250 pages)

  Narayan                                The Man-Eater of Malgudi

 

September 12, 2000    Introductory meeting and  Edna St. Vincent Millay,

  Millay                                   Renascence and Other Poems (Dover Thrift 66 pages)

 

September 19, 2000    The Writing of Fiction (128 pages)

  Wharton                                and “The Eyes” and “Pomegranate Seed”

            from The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

 

September 26, 2000    Virginia Woolf, Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories

  Woolf                                                (Dover Thrift Edition - 64 pages)

 

October 3, 2000†*      John Edgar Wideman   (199p)

  Wideman                               Philadelphia Fire

 

* readings are from The Evil and the Guilty   Great Books Reading and Discussion Program.

 

October 10, 2000 °†    Marcel Proust, “Overture”

  Proust                                   Remembrance of Things Past, Vol I

 

October 17, 2000        Mikhail Bulgakov, pp 1-180

  Bulgakov                               The Master and Margarita

October 24, 2000        Mikhail Bulgakov, pp 181-367

  Bulgakov                               The Master and Margarita

 

October 31, 2000        Derek Walcott,  (325 pages)

  Walcott                                 Omeros

 

November 7, 2000 °†  Sigmund Freud, “The Rat Man

  Freud

 

November 14, 2000    Great Books Vol 54, pp 767 - 802

  Freud                         Civilization and Its Discontents

 

November 21, 2000 °† Gustav Herling “The Island

  Herling

 

November 28, 2000    Great Books Vol 14, pp. 648-691

  Plutarch                                 The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.  

                                                “Agis,” “Cleomenes,” “Tiberius Gracchus,” “Caius Gracchus”

 

December 5, 2000       The Epic of Gilgamesh  (115 pages)

 

December 11, 2000     J Coetzee, Disgrace

  Coetzee

 

December 12, 2000     Jorge Luis Borges  pp 3 -58 (first six stories)

  Borges                                   Selection from Labyrinths

 

December 19, 2000     Iris Murdoch, "On God and Good" from

  Murdoch                               Sovereignty of Good  (36 pages)

 

January  2,  2001 °†    David Grossman, “Momik

  Grossman

 

January  9,  2001        Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child  (133 pages)

  Lessing

 

January  16, 2001 °†   Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

  Dillard

 

January  23, 2001       Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

  Tagore                                               (Dover Thrift edition, 128 pages)

 

January  30, 2001                   Poetry:

  Wordsworth °†                      William Wordsworth “Intimations of Immortality          

  Rich °†                                   Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck

  Lowell °†                               Robert Lowell, “For the Union Dead

  Walker                                   Alice Walker, “Remember?”, & “Poem at Thirty-Nine

  Dobyns                                 Stephen Dobyns, “Unexpected Holiday”, & “Dance Dance

  Glück                                    Louise Glück, “Arboretum”, & “Summer Night

  Atwood                                 Margaret Atwood, “A Woman's Issue

  Dent                                      Tory Dent, “What Calendars Have Become

 

February 6, 2001        Great Books Vol 5, pp 170 - 195

  Sophocles                              Trachiniae” and “Philoctetes

February 13,  2001     Great Books Vol 5, pp 237 - 247, pp 365 - 377

  Euripides                               Alcestis” and “Heracles Mad

 

February 20,  2001 °†             Toni Morrison, pp 1-170

  Morrison                               Song of Solomon

February 27, 2001 °†              Toni Morrison, pp 171-337

  Morrison                               Song of Solomon

 

March 6, 2001                        Muriel Spark,   (150 pages)

  Spark                                   The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

 

March 13, 2001                     Mia Yun, House of the Winds  (250 pages)

  Yun

 

March 20, 2001 °†                  Gabriel Garcia Marquez, pp 1-190

  Marquez                               One Hundred Years of Solitude

March 27, 2001 °†                  Gabriel Garcia Marquez, pp 191-383

  Marquez                               One Hundred Years of Solitude

 

April 3, 2001              Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore  (141 pages)

  Fitzgerald

 

April 10, 2001                        Willa Cather, O Pioneers 

  Cather                                               (Dover Thrift Edition - 128 pages)

 

April 17, 2001                        Willa Cather, Death Comes to the Archbishop 

  Cather                                               (297 pages)

 

April 24, 2001                        Bernard Malamud, God's Grace  (221 pages)

  Malamud

 

May 1, 2001               Great Books Vol 23, pp 3 - 37

  Machiavelli                           The Prince

  More                         Thomas More, Utopia  (Dover Thrift 85 pages)

 

May 8, 2001               Amy Tan, Joy Luck Club  (288 pages)

  Tan

 

May 15, 2001             Great Books Vol 38, pp 387-439

  Rousseau                               The Social Contract

 

May 22, 2001             Leo Tolstoy, (Dover Thrift Edition - 144 pages)

  Tolstoy                                 Kreutzer Sonata and Other Short Stories

 

May 29, 2001             Great Books Vol 13, pp. 3 -34          (Year 10 #  5)

  Virgil                                     The Eclogues

 

°† Readings are from Living with the Past  (questions only, for Morrison and Marquez) in the 50th Anniversary Series.

 

June 5, 2001                Shakespeare, “Two Gentlemen of Verona

  Shakespeare

 

June 12, 2001              Ivan Turgenev “A Month in the Country

Turgenev                                 (135 pages)

 

June 19, 2001  Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (first third of book) (Year 5 #  17)

June 26, 2001              Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (second third of book)

July 10, 2001              Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (rest of book) (Year 6 #  18)

  Tolstoy

Reference: http://www.ccel.org/t/tolstoy/confession/confession.html

 Leo Tolstoy's Confession - Tolstoy's account of his spiritual crisis in 1879 at age 51.  This crisis occurred after writing  War and Peace, before writing the three short stories Boulder Great Books read in May ("The Death of Ivan Illych", "The Kruetzer Sonata", and "How Much Land Does a Man Need?").

http://www.pushkins-poems.com/panpete.htm  Pictures of St. Petersburg from the 19th century -  The 1805 view shows St. Petersburg as it would have been at the start of War and Peace.

 

July 17, 2001                          Short Stories:  Anton Chekhov,

  Chekhov                                Ward 6”, “The Betrothed”, “Duschechka

  Bunin                                    Ivan Bunin, “Sunstroke

           

July 24, 2001              Margaret Atwood, Handmaid's Tale (311 pages)

  Atwood

 

July 31, 2001              Lermontov, A Hero for our Time 

  Lermentov                             (186 pages - Nabokov translation)

 

August 7, 2001                       Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (256 pages)

  Zamyatin

 

August 14, 2001                  Selected Poetry - Vladimir Mayakovski & Anna Akhmatova

  Mayakovski, Akhmatova

 

August 21, 2001                     Andrei Bely - Petersburg  (356 pages)

  Bely

 

August 28, 2001                    Selected Poetry - Olga Bergholtz & Izabella Akhmadulina

  Bergholtz, Akhmadulina

 

September 4, 2001      Great Books Vol 5:  Aeschylus pp 27 - 51 (Year 3 #  1)

  Aeschylus                             Prometheus and Seven Against Thebes

 

September 11, 2001    Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac

  Brookner                                           (184 pages)

 

September 18, 2001    Toni Morrison Paradise        (318 pages)

Reference: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/paradise/paradise/rgg.html Random House guide to reading Paradise - includes questions for discussion.

 

September 25, 2001 ††           Aristotle, “The Highest GoodNicomachean Ethics -

  Aristotle                                Book 1, Chapters 1-3, 5, 7-11, 13; and Book 2, Chapter 7.  

 

October 2, 2001                      Great Books Vol 9: pp 527 - 548       (Year 9 #  3)

  Aristotle                                Politics Books VII and VIII

 

October 9, 2001                      Jhumpa Lahiri  (198 pages) - Interpreter of Maladies:

   Lahiri                                    Stories of Bengal, Boston and Beyond

 

October 16, 2001        William Faulkner As I Lay Dying      (267 pages)

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0-679-73225-X&view=rg Random House reading guide - includes questions for discussion.

 

October 23, 2001        Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha

  Hesse                                    (Dover Thrift Edition - 81 pages)

 

October 30, 2001        Vikram Chandra Love and Longing in Bombay (272 pages)

           

November 6, 2001 †† Gita Mehta, A River Sutra

 

November 13, 2001    Kamala Markandaya Nectar in a Sieve       

 Markandaya                                       (190 pages)

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/pdf/nectar_in_a_sieve.pdf  Glencoe Literature Library study guide  - aimed at English teachers (pdf).

 

November 19, 2001    Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

  Abbey

 

November 20, 2001    R.K. Narayan, Mr Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi

  Narayan                                            (219 pages)

Reference: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14016  "The Great Narayan" - This February 22, 2001 article in "The New York Review" by Pankaj Mishra   discusses many of Narayan's books.

 

November 27, 2001    Great Books Vol 14:  Plutarch pp 691 - 725, 262 - 292

  Plutarch                                 Demosthenes, Cicero, Aristedes, Marcus Cato

 

December 4, 2001       Magnus Magnusson, Laxdaela Saga (272 pages)

 

December 11, 2001     Sigrid Undset Kristin Lavransdatter: The Bridal Wreath

  Undset                                              (vol 1 of a trilogy, 283 pages)

 

December 18, 2001     Margaret Atwood Surfacing (224 pages)

 

January  8, 2002 ††    John Berger, “The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol
  Berger

 

January  15,  2002      Rudolfo A. Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima         

  Anaya                                               (262 pages)

 

January  22, 2002 ††  Mary Lavin, “Happiness” and Alice Munro, “Simon's Luck

   Lavin, Munro                       and “Friend of my Youth” from Selected Stories

 

January  29,  2002      Great Books    Vol 18:  Augustine pp 397 - 524

  Augustine                              City of God  (Books XV - XIX)       (Year 6 #  7)

  Pascal                                    and Vol 33:  Pascal   pp 62 - 71 Provincial Letter IX

 

February  5, 2002 ††  Reynolds Price, “Endless Mountains

  Price

February 12,  2002     Iris Murdoch, Under the Net   (286 pages)

 

February 19,  2002     Iris Murdoch The Sea, the Sea  (first half - pages 1 to 262)

February 26,  2002     Iris Murdoch The Sea, the Sea  (2nd half - pages 262 to 502)

http://www.sackett.net/MurdochNotes.pdf
  Penguin Reading Guide - contains discussion questions, an introduction to the book, and a brief biography of Iris Murdoch.

When She Was Good, by Martha C. Nussbaum, an article on Iris Murdoch in the January 2002 issue of The New Republic.

 

March 5, 2002 ††       Poetry Selections from:  Emily Dickinson, (258 - certain Slant, 341 - great pain, 712 - stop for Death),

  Atwood                                 Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House, and

  Huong                                   Ho Xuan Huong, Spring Essence

 

March 12, 2002                      A.S. Byatt “Art Works” from The Matisse Stories

  Byatt

 

March 19, 2002 ††     George Eliot, pp 1-380

March 26, 2002 ††     George Eliot, pp 381-776

  Eliot                                      Middlemarch            

Note: There is a chapter in Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, a book we discussed in the group a few years back, about Mary Ann Evans and George Henry Lewes.

 

April 2, 2002              Great Books Vol 44:  Boswell,  Life of Samuel Johnson

  Boswell                                 pp 83b-c, 107a, 118a, 144d-145a, 164d, 299b-d, 354-364,

                                                373-384, 391-407, 423c-d, 498-515, 540b-542a, 584-587     (Year10 # 13)

 

April 9, 2002 ††         David Malouf,  An Imaginary Life 

  Malouf                                              (154 pages)

 

April 16, 2002            Natsume Soseki, Kokoro  (248 pages)

 

April 23, 2002            Dorothy West, The Wedding          

  West                                                (225 pages)

http://www.randomhouse.com/resources/bookgroup/wedding_bgc.html  Random House Readers Companion  - questions and background on the author and book.

 

April 30, 2002            Great Books Vol. 54:  Freud, Psycho-Analysis

  Freud                         pp. 1-20, 38-59, 526-539, 569-585, 818-840.            (Year 3 #  18)

 

May 7, 2002               Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

  Welty                                                (180 pages)

 

May 14, 2002                         Feynman Lectures in Physics, “Symmetry in Physical Law

  Feynman                               and “The Principle of Least Action          

Notes: The February 1989 issue of "Physics Today" was devoted to Richard Feynman.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9807044.pdf  Byers, Nina  "E. Noether's Discovery of the Deep Connection Between Symmetries and Conservation Laws".

 

May 17, 2002                         V.S. Naipaul,  A Bend in the River

  Naipaul

May 21, 2002 ††                 William Shakespeare, “As You Like It    (Year 6 #  10)
  Shakespeare

 

May 28, 2002             Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell (153 pages)

  Thomas

 

†† readings are from Great Books Foundation's Happiness and Discontent in the 50th Anniversary Series.

 

 

June 4, 2002                Great Books Vol. 30, pp. 105-114, 137-153

  Bacon                                    Francis Bacon  Novum Organum  (Year 4 #  10)

 

June 11, 2002              Great Books Vol. 27, pp 284 - 310   (Year 3 #  11)

  Shakespeare                       William Shakespeare, “Macbeth

 

June 18, 2002              Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Truth and Beauty:

  Chandrasekhar                      Aesthetics and Motivations in Science  (170 pages)

 

June 25, 2002              The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

  Wigner                                   in the Natural Sciences” Eugene Wigner (17 pages),

  Weyl                                     and the first third of Weyl's Symmetry (pp 1 - 38)

 

July 2, 2002                Herman Weyl  Symmetry  (pp 41 - 156)

  Weyl                                     (156 pages)

 

July 9, 2002                Flatland : A Romance of Many Dimensions

  Abbott                                 Edwin A. Abbott  (83 pages - Dover Thrift Edition)

 

July 16, 2002              Barbara McClintock's Nobel lecture (20 pages)

  McClintock               http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1983/mcclintock-lecture.html        

 

July 23, 2002              Rachel Carson  The Sea Around Us

  Carson                                               (244 pages)

 

July 30, 2002              Selection from Naomi Oreskes (ed.) Plate Tectonics:

  Geology                                An insider's history of the modern theory of the Earth

 

August 6, 2002                       Jane Goodall  In the Shadow of Man

  Goodall                                             (304 pages)

 

August 13, 2002                     Articles on Entropy  in vol I of The World of Physics

  Clausius                                Rudolf Clausius “The Second Law of Thermodynamics

  Boltzmann                            Ludwig Boltzmann “Statistical Mechanics

  Planck                                   Max Planck “The Second Law of Thermodynamics

  Bridgman                               P W Bridgman “Statistical Mechanics and the 2nd Law

 

August 20, 2002                     Denise Schmandt-Besserat How Writing Came About

  Schmandt-Besserat                           (158 pages - abridged - ISBN: 0292777043)

 

August 27, 2002                     Leonard Adleman “Computing with DNA

  Adleman                                August 1998 Scientific American

 

September 3, 2002      Rita Mae Brown  In Her Day

  Brown                                               (178 pages)

 

September 10, 2002     Chinua Achebe   Anthills of the Savannah

  Achebe                                              (216 pages)

 

September 17, 2002    James Baldwin Giovanni's Room  

  Baldwin                                             (224 pages)

 

September 24, 2002 ##James Baldwin  The Fire Next Time         

 

October 1, 2002      Zona Gale “Miss Lulu Bett 

  Gale                                       http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gale/lulu/lulu.html

 

October 8, 2002                      Maya Angelou All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

   Angelou                                            (210 pages)

 

October 15, 2002        Great Books    Vol  6, pp 1-88  (Books I and II)

  Herodotus                             The History of Herodotus    (Year2 #  4)

 

October 22, 2002        Ama Ata Aidoo, Leila Aboulela, Ifeoma Okoye, Anna Dao  in

  Aidoo, Aboulela                    Opening Spaces : An Anthology of Contemporary

  Okoye, Dao              African Women's Writings ed Yvonne Vera (186 pages)

 

October 29, 2002        Nella Larsen  Passing

  Larsen                                               (208 pages)

 

November 4, 2002      Leila Aboulela  The Translator

  Aboulela       

 

November 5, 2002      Ama Ata Aidoo  (134 pages)

  Aidoo                                    Our Sister Killjoy : Or, Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint

 

November 12, 2002    Plato “Crito” and “Phaedo” from

  Plato                                      Trial and Death of Socrates (Dover Thrift Edition)

 

November 15, 2002    Michael Ondaatje  Anil's Ghost

  Ondaatje

 

November 19, 2002 ##           Plato “Euthyphro” and “Apology” from

  Plato                                      Trial and Death of Socrates  (Dover Thrift Edition)         

 

November 26, 2002    Great Books Vol  17, pp 252-360                  (Year 5 #  8)

  Plotinus                                 Plotinus “Sixth Ennead

 

December 3, 2002       Wisdom of the Buddha: The Unabridged Dhammapada

    Müller                                 F. Max Müller  (64 pages - Dover Thrift Edition)

 

December 10, 2002     Buchi Emecheta Joys of Motherhood 

  Emecheta                                           (224 pages)

 

December 17, 2002     Great Books Vol 39  Adam Smith Wealth of Nations

  Smith                                     Introduction.  Book I, Chapters 1 and 8.  Book III. 

 

January  7, 2003         Booker T. Washington  Up from Slavery 

  Washington                                       (160 pages - Dover Thrift Edition)

Reference: W.E.B. Du Bois - http://www.bartleby.com/114/3.html  “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”

 

January  14,  2003      Octavia Butler Kindred

  Butler                                                (264 pages) 

 

January 17, 2003        Peter Hessler  River Town:  Two Years on the Yangtze

 

January  21, 2003 ##  Alice Munro  "A Real Life" and

  Munro                                   "The Moon in the Orange Street Skating Rink"

 

January  28,  2003      Elizabeth Bowen  House in Paris 

  Bowen                                               (245 pages) Ref:  Byatt in Passions of the Mind

 

February  4, 2003 ##  Virginia Woolf  A Room of One's Own

  Woolf            ref: http://www.cygneis.com/woolf/jrlect.htm 
A lecture by Joel Rich given in the University of Chicago First Friday series, February 1992.

 

February 11,  2003     Virginia Woolf  Mrs. Dalloway

  Woolf                                                (212 pages)

 

February 18,  2003 ## Anton Chekhov  A Dull Story        

 

February 25,  2003     Aleksander Pushkin Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse

  Pushkin                                 (240 pages - transl. J Falen)  or online transl. by C. Johnston

                                                http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt  

 

March 4, 2003 ##                 Poetry Selections:  Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and

  Eliot, Hughes                       Langston Hughes  http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83

 

March 11, 2003          J. Nozipo Maraire Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter                           

   Maraire                                            (194 pages)

 

March 18, 2003 ##               Jane Austen, pp 1-225  (Chapters 1 to 28)

March 25, 2003 ##                 Jane Austen, pp  224-446

  Austen                                  Emma            

 

April 1, 2003                         Mpho 'M'atsepo Nthunya  Singing Away the Hunger:

  Nthunya                                The Autobiography of  an African Woman  (200 pages)

 

April 8, 2003 ##                     Ralph Ellison, pp 1-295 (Chapters 1 to 13)

April 15, 2003 ##                   Ralph Ellison, pp 296-581    

  Ellison                                   Invisible Man                       

 

April 22, 2003            Sigmund Freud Totem and Taboo

  Freud                                     (176 pages - Dover Thrift Edition)

 

April 29, 2003            Toni Morrison Beloved

  Morrison                                           (275 pages)

 

May 6, 2003               Maxine Clair Rattlebone

  Clair                                                  (213 pages)

 

May 13, 2003                          Rene Maran  Batouala

  Maran                                               (149 pages)

 

May 20, 2003                         Great Books Vol 50 pp 1- 84.  Karl Marx       (Year 8 # 16)

  Marx                                     Capital  Prefaces and Parts I and II

 

May 27, 2003             Samuel R. Delany  Babel-17 (173 pages)

  Delany

 

## readings are from Great Books Foundation's Identity and Self-Respect in the 50th Anniversary Series.

 

June 3, 2003                Great Books Vol. 26, pp 503 -  531

  Shakespeare                          William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing

 

June 10, 2003              Great Books Vol. 27, pp 29 - 72

 Shakespeare                           William Shakespeare, “Hamlet        (Year  1 # 12)

 

June 17, 2003              Aphra Behn, “The Emperor of the Moon

  Behn                                                  (65 pages)

 

June 24, 2003              Alexander Pushkin,  Boris Godunov 

  Pushkin                                             (132 pages)

                                               

July 1, 2003                George Bernard Shaw, “Man and Superman

  Shaw                                                 (170 pages)

 

July 8, 2003                Garcia Lorca,   “Blood Wedding

  Lorca                                                 (106 pages)

 

July 15, 2003              Eugene O'Neill, “The Iceman Cometh

  O'Neill                                              (196 pages)

 

July 22, 2003              Lorraine Hansberry, “Raisin in the Sun   

  Hansberry                                         (151 pages)

 

July 29, 2003              Edward Albee, “The Zoo Story

  Albee                                                 (127 pages)                            

 

August 5, 2003                       Wendy Wasserstein, “The Heidi Chronicles

  Wasserstein                                       (95 pages)

 

August 12, 2003                     Yasmina Reza, “Art 

  Reza                                                  (96 pages)

 

August 19, 2003                     Margaret Edson, “Wit

  Edson                                                (85 pages)      

 

August 26, 2003                     Suzan-Lori Parks, “Topdog/Underdog

  Parks                                                 (112 pages)

 

September 2, 2003      David J. Chalmers “Facing Up to the Problems of Consciousness

  Chalmers                                           http://consc.net/papers/facing.html   

  Gothier                      Consciousness, Science, and the Nature of Explanation”

                                                Marion Gothier - http://sackett.net/GothierConsciousness.pdf

 

September 9, 2003      Selection from Barbara Tuchman Practicing History

  Tuchman                               “How we entered WW I” and “If Mao had come to Washington”   

 

September 16, 2003    Great Books Vol 31, pp 77-81, 96-103, 373-394.

  Descartes, Spinoza               Descartes and Spinoza on Consciousness

                                                Descartes 2nd and 6th Meditations from Meditations on First Philosophy

                                                Spinoza 2nd part of Ethics  (pp 69-103 is Year 8 # 9 in 10 Year Program)

  Nagel                                     and Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

                        Ref: Yujin Nagasawa, “Thomas vs. Thomas: A New Approach to Nagel's Bat Argument”  

                                    (where an argument of Aquinas' is proposed to counter Nagel)

 

September 23, 2003    Pat Barker  Regeneration  (252 pages)

 

September 30, 2003    Susan Hurley

  Hurley          Essays citing Kant and Wittgenstein on “The Myth of Giving

                           http://www.bristol.ac.uk/philosophy/hurley/index.html

                                                (Essays 2 and 6 in Hurley's Consciousness in Action)        

 

October 7, 2003                      Penelope Lively  Moon Tiger  (208 pages)

 

October 14, 2003        Selma Lagerlöf

  Lagerlöf          The Treasure http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04/thtrs10.txt

 

October 21, 2003        The Unknown Masterpiece and Gambara

  Balzac                                               Honoré de Balzac (160 pages)

 

October 28, 2003        Arthur Lovejoy The Great Chain of Being  (Chapters I - V)

November 4, 2003      Arthur Lovejoy The Great Chain of Being  (Chapters VI - XI)

                                                Ref: http://sackett.net/Lovejoy.pdf  

 

November 12, 2003 #* Nikolai Gogol “The Overcoat  (42 pages)

  Gogol           

 

November 18, 2003    Simone Weil  The Need for Roots 

  Weil                                                   (320 pages)

 

November 25, 2003    Jorie Graham The Dream of the Unified Field

  Graham                                             Selected Poems

 

December 2, 2003       Poetry - Louise Glück The Wild Iris

  Glück                                                (63 pages)

 

December 9, 2003       Great Books Vol  53, pp 146 - 226 (Chapters IX, X)

  James                        William James Principles of Psychology - “The Stream of Thought”

and first half of “The Consciousness of Self” 

                                                (12th reading in Vol 9 of the Great Ideas Program)

                        Condensed version at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/jimmy11.htm

  Hardcastle        Attention versus Consciousness:  A Distinction with a Difference

Ref:     http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/ptopic?topic=locating-consciousness

 

December 16, 2003     Great Books, Vol 21, pp 53-105                    (Year 6 # 9)

  Dante                                    Purgatory in The Divine Comedy

                        Ref: http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/rguides/us/huge_book_of_hell.html      

 

January   6, 2004        Doris Lessing  The Four-Gated City  (Parts I and II)

January 13, 2004        Doris Lessing  The Four-Gated City  (Parts III and IV)

Ref: http://www.harpercollins.com/readers/browseGuides.aspx?type=author&sort=lq

 

January  20,  2004      Patricia Smith Churchland

  Churchland  Can Neurobiology Teach us Anything about Consciousness?”

                         http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/church.neuro.html

 

January  27, 2004 #*  Gregor von Rezzori  Troth

  von Rezzori

 

February  3, 2004       Pearl Buck  Pavilion of Women (316 pages)                      

 

February  10, 2004     Euripides  “The Bacchae” #*  Sophocles  “Ajax”

  Euripides, Sophocles                                   

 

February 17, 2004      Eugene Ionesco's “Rhinoceros  (107 pages)

  Ionesco                                 

 

February 24, 2004 #* Flannery O'Connor  Greenleaf”,  Good Country

  O'Connor                              People and  Everything That Rises Must Converge   

 

March 2, 2004                        Leo Tolstoy  Anna Karenina  Parts I - IV                          

March 9, 2004                        Leo Tolstoy  Anna Karenina  Parts V - VIII

  Tolstoy                                 (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation)

 

March 16, 2004 #*     Poetry - Yeats “Lapis Lazuli”, Stevens “Sunday Morning”,

                                                Robert Frost “Design”, Elizabeth Bishop  The Armadillo

                                                (and read the first half of Master and Margarita)                              

March 23, 2004 #*     Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita

  Bulgakov                                           (367 pages)

 

March 30, 2004                      Great Books Vol 36 pp 183 - 382

  Sterne                                    Laurence Sterne  Tristram Shandy Books I to IV

April 6, 2004              Great Books Vol 36 pp 383 - 556

  Sterne                                    Laurence Sterne  Tristram Shandy Books V to IX

                                    (Year 8 # 12 in the Great Books 10 Year Reading Program)

 

April 13, 2004                        Jamaica Kincaid   At the Bottom of the River

  Kincaid                                              (82 pages)

Ref: http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/rguides/us/autobiography_of_my_mother.html

 

April 20, 2004            Richard Feynman The Character of Physical Law

  Feynman                                           (167 pages)

 

April 27, 2004 #*       Chinua Achebe  Things Fall Apart 

  Achebe                                              (192 pages)

 

May 4, 2004               Gish Jen  Typical American (296 pages)

 

May 11, 2004             Anita Desai Fasting, Feasting 

  Desai                                     (228 pages)

  Ref: http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/desai_fasting_feasting.shtml

 

 

May 18, 2004                         Rosemary Mahoney  (325 pages)

  Mahoney                              The Early Arrival of Dreams: A Year in China

                                    (reference:  Peter Hessler River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze)

 

May 25, 2004                          Edward N. Lorenz  The Essence of Chaos

  Lorenz                                               (227 pages)

 

#* readings are from Great Books Foundation's Order and Chaos in the 50th Anniversary Series.

 

June 1, 2004                Anne Morrow Lindbergh - North to the Orient 

  Lindbergh                                          (168 pages)

                                                Further reading:  Gift from the Sea (144 pages)

 

June 8, 2004                Great Books Vol. 21, pp 106 - 157

  Dante                        Dante Alighieri, “Paradise

 

June 15, 2004              Carol Shields - Small Ceremonies

  Shields                                               (181 pages)

                                                Further reading:  The Stone Diaries  (361 pages)

 

June 22, 2004              Great Books Vol. 26, pp 285 - 319

  Shakespeare              William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet

                                               

June 29, 2004              George Bernard Shaw, “Caesar and Cleopatra

  Shaw                                     (120 pages)

                                               

July 6, 2004                Francis Bacon, “The Essays  (78 pages)

  Bacon            http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/bacon_essays.html

 

July 13, 2004              Great Books Vol. 27, pp 311 - 350

  Shakespeare              William Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra

 

July 20, 2004              John M. Synge “Playboy of the Western World” (75 pages)

  Synge                        http://www.ireland-information.com/irishliterature.htm 

                                                            [Also available in a Dover Thrift Edition]

 

July 27, 2004              Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest

  Wilde                                    (63 pages)  [Available in Dover Thrift Edition]

                                                Or http://www.ireland-information.com/irishliterature.htm

 

August 3, 2004                       Elizabeth Bowen - The Last September 

  Bowen                                               (320 pages)

 

August 10, 2004                     Selected Poetry:  Eavan Boland “That the Science of Cartography is Limited
  Boland             http://www.nortonpoets.com/ex/bolandeinatime.htm
  McGuckian                                   Medbh McGuckian “Gatepost” and “Open Road
  Heaney                                  Seamus Heaney - “Digging
                           http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/heaney-opened.htm
  Yeats                          W. B. Yeats “The Stolen Child” (1889) and
                                                            “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death” (1939)
                                    http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=overview&author=64

 

August 17, 2004                     James Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

  Joyce                                     (275 pages) [Available in a Dover Thrift Edition]

 

August 24, 2004                     Sean O'Casey “Juno and the Paycock

  O'Casey                                            (86 pages)

 

August 31, 2004                     Edna O'Brien, House of Splendid Isolation           

  O'Brien                                             (232 pages) [BPL Main has this as a book on tape.]

 

September 7, 2004       Ann Patchett, Bel Canto (336 pages)

           

September 14, 2004    J. M. Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K    (184 pages)          

 

September 21, 2004    Seamus Heaney (ed.)  Beowulf: A New Verse Translation

  Heaney                                              (215 pages)

 

September 28, 2004    Barbara Ehrenreich,  (242 pages)

  Ehrenreich                             Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America

 

October 5, 2004           Michael Ondaatje,  Coming Through Slaughter (156 pages)

  Ondaatje 

 

October 12, 2004        Louisa May Alcott,  A Modern Cinderella  (46 pages)

  Alcott                                    http://sackett.net/AlcottModernCinderella.pdf

                                    Elizabeth Gaskell,  The Manchester Marriage” (24 pages)
  Gaskell                                  http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gaskell/elizabeth/harrison/chapter1.html

 

October 19, 2004        Duong Thu Huong,  Paradise of the Blind  (272 pages)

 

October 26, 2004        Nathaniel Hawthorne,  Young Goodman Brown

  Hawthorne                                        http://sackett.net/HawthorneBrown.pdf

  Kipling                                  Rudyard Kipling,  The Phantom Rickshaw

                                                            http://sackett.net/KiplingPhantom.pdf

  Saki                                       Saki,   Tobermory

http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/sakitobermory.html

 

November 2, 2004      Kate Chopin,  The Awakening  (125 pages - Dover Thrift Edition)

 

November 9, 2004      Katherine Anne Porter,   He”,

  Porter                                    The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”,

                                    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/porterhe.html 

                        http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/kaporterjiltinggranny.html

                                                and      Theft” (7 pages)

            Reference:  The Grand Inquisitor chapter in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov.

 

November 16, 2004   Fyodor Dostoevsky,  Notes from Underground
  Dostoevsky                          http://sackett.net/DostoevskyNotes.pdf    

             (Questions for discussion are in the Great Books Discussion Series 2.)

 

November 23, 2004    Metamorphosis” and “A Hunger Artist
  Kafka                        Franz Kafka
            http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/kafkahungerartist.html
http://www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/kafkametamorphosis.html

 

November 30, 2004    Albert Camus,  The Myth of Sisyphus  (138 pages)

                                                                       

December 7, 2004       Pär Lagerkvist,  Barabbas  (140 pages)

            Reference:  Chapter 2 in Bulgakov's  Master and Margarita.

 

December 14, 2004     Selections from the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

  Swami Nikhilananda             (207 pages)                            

 

January   4, 2005        Charles Dickens,  Great Expectations

  Dickens                                             (400 pages -  Dover Thrift Edition)

 

January  11,  2005      Carson McCullers,  Reflections in a Golden Eye  (136 pgs)

  McCullers                             Further reading:  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter  (368 pages)

 

January 18, 2005        Anne Tyler,  Earthly Possessions  (208 pages)

  Tyler                         Further reading:  her Pulitzer Breathing Lessons  (336 pages)

 

January  25,  2005      Bharati Mukherjee, The Middleman and Other Stories  (208 pages)

  Mukherjee                 Further reading:   Holder of the World  (304 pages)

 

February 1, 2005        Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird 

  Lee                                                    (288 pages)

                                   

February  8, 2005       Honoré de Balzac, “An Old Maid” (100 pages - 1836)

  Balzac           http://www.literature.org/authors/de-balzac-honore/old-maid/index.html

                        Related story: “Jealousies of a Country Town” (120 pages - 1837)

                        http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=2978

 

February  16, 2005    Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette,  The Vagabond

  Colette                                              (224 pages)

 

February 23,  2005     Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot

  Beckett                                              (111 pages)

 

March 2, 2005            Leo Tolstoy,  Hadji Murad

  Tolstoy                                             (192 pages)

 

March 9, 2005            Samuel Johnson,  History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia  (183 pages)

  Johnson, Davis                     Lydia Davis - “Samuel Johnson is Indignant  (1 line)
                                     

March 16, 2005                      Juan Rulfo,  Pedro Paramo

  Rulfo                                                 (124 pages)

[Note: The rare books room at Norlin Library has a wonderful illustrated edition.]

                                                           

March 23, 2005          Sarah Orne Jewett,  The Country of the Pointed Firs

  Jewett                                               (232 pages)

 

March 30, 2005          John Steinbeck,  East of Eden (pages 1 - 300)

April 6, 2005              John Steinbeck,  East of Eden (pages 301 - 602)     

  Steinbeck       Reference:  Steinbeck's Journal of a Novel: the East of Eden Letters (242 pages)

 

April 13, 2005            Suzanne K. Langer,  Selection from Philosophical Sketches

  Langer                                   Reference:  Langer's Philosophy in a New Key  (334 pages)           

 

April 20, 2005            Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

  Seneca                                               (261 pages)

                                   

April 27, 2005     Martha Craven Nussbaum,  Selection “Form and Content,

  Nussbaum     Philosophy and Literature”, Iris Murdoch, selection from

  Murdoch                   The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts”,

  Hume            and David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste” [Selections are from

                                                Aesthetics: the Big Questions, edited by Carolyn Korsmeyer]

  Wittgenstein              Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Lecture on Ethics

                                                http://sackett.net/WittgensteinEthics.pdf  

 

May 4, 2005               Sharon Olds and Naomi Shihab Nye,  Selected Poems

  Olds              The Ferryer, Take the I Out, Physics, True Love, The Solution,

                                    The Pope's Penis, Sex Without Love

                                    http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/205

  Nye     Blood, Making a Fist, San Antonio, Streets, Two Countries, Kindness

                        http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/174

 

May 11, 2005           Mary Oliver,  Selected Poems: Wild Geese, A Visitor, Mockingbirds, The

            Journey, Climbing the Chagrin River, The Swan, When Death Comes, The Dipper

  Oliver            http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oliver/online_poems.htm             

                  http://csbhagya.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/featured-poems-two-poems-by-mary-oliver/

  Duffy                 The World's Wife, poems by Carol Ann Duffy (76 pages)

 

May 18, 2005                         Gunnar Ekelöf, Late Arrival on Earth  (47 pages - poetry)

  Ekelöf

May 25, 2005                         Saul Bellow, Herzog 

  Bellow                                               (371 pages)

 

June 1, 2005                            Jack London,  To Build A Fire

  London                                  http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html

                                    Annie Proulx,  The Half-Skinned Steer” (23 pages),

  Proulx                        The Mud Below” (41 pages) and “The Brokeback Mountain

                                                (30 pages) from her Close Range: Wyoming Stories

Further Reading:  Proulx's The Shipping News (337 pages)

 

June 8, 2005                Terry Tempest Williams, An Unspoken Hunger (144 pages)

                                    Williams interview: http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/williams.html

 

June 15, 2005              Henri Poincare, Science and Method

                                                            (220 pages)

 

June 22, 2005           William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure

 

June 29, 2005              William Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night

 

July 6, 2005                Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart   (148 pages)

                                                W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming

                                                http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/yeats/yeats5.html 

 

July 13, 2005  Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory

                                                            (178 pages)

 

July 20, 2005                                    Edna Ferber, “April 25th, As Usual          (23 pages)

                                                Dorothy Canfield, “The Artist        ( 9 pages)

                                                Zora Neale Hurston, “Sweat                     (12 pages)

                                                Gertrude Stein, “The Good Anna    (52 pages)

 

July 27, 2005              Colette, Break of Day (141 pages)

 

August 3, 2005                       Honoré de Balzac, Pere Goriot  (306 pages)

 

August 10, 2005           Selection from Vera Rubin, Bright Galaxies Dark Matters

            Ref: The Vera Rubin lecture at http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/

 

August 17, 2005                     Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: the unity of knowledge

                                                            (298 pages)

 

August 24, 2005                   Machado de Assis, Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

                                                            (240 pages)

 

August 31, 2005                     Lynn Margulis, Microcosmos 

                                                            (282 pages)

 

September 7, 2005        John Gardner, Grendel  (192 pages)

 

September 14, 2005 &&          Ecclesiastes

   Bible                                     Ch 1-6; 9:1-12; 11; 12:1-8

 

September 21, 2005    Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden

  Tsukiyama                                        (224 pages)

 

September 28, 2005    Lorrie Moore, “You're Ugly, Too  (26 pages) and

  Moore                                   How to Be an Other Woman  (24 pages)

                                                Ugly is in Like Life and Other is in Self-Help

  Goethe          The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily

                        http://wn.rsarchive.org/RelAuthors/GoetheJW/GreenSnake.html

 

October 5, 2005 &&    Sophocles,  Oedipus the King

 

October 12, 2005        Yann Martel,  Life of Pi  (319 pages)

 

October 19, 2005 &&  Sigmund Freud, “On Dreams

 

October 26, 2005        Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems  -  178, 216, 216A, 303,

                                                 435, 486, 520, 640, 712, 754, 911, 919, 985, 997,

                                                1078, 1123, 1417, 1537, 1669, 1723, 1647 from

 Dickinson                    http://sackett.net/EmilySelections.pdf  or T H Johnson (ed) The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

  Willis             Connie Willis, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” (9 pages)

 

November 2, 2005      Pat Barker,  Border Crossing  (215 pages)

 

November 9, 2005 &&            Great Books, Vol 47, pp 1-114         

  Goethe                                  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1

 

November 16, 2005    Alice Elliot Dark,  In the Gloaming” (16 pages)

                                                Gish Jen,  Birthmates                    (16 pages)

                                                Pam Durban,  Soon                        (20 pages)

            John Updike, “Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow?     (19 pages)

 

November 23, 2005    Samrat Upadhyay,  Arresting God in Kathmandu

 Upadhyay                                          (192 pages)

 

November 30, 2005    Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things  (336 pages)    

 

December 7, 2005       Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses  Chapters I - V

December 14, 2005                 Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses   Chapters VI - IX

  Rushdie                                             (547 pages)                

 

January 4, 2006          Dava Sobel,  Galileo's Daughter  (374 pages)

 

January 11, 2006 && Great Books, Vol 42, pp 256-270     

  Kant                                      Immanuel Kant, “First Principles of Morals

 

January 18, 2006 && Gustave Flaubert, “A Simple Heart

  Flaubert                                 from French Stories and Tales           

 

January 25, 2006 &&  David Hume, “Of Personal Identity

  Hume                        from "Of the Understanding" in A Treatise of Human Nature

 

February 1, 2006        Caryl Churchill, “Cloud Nine  (87 pages)

 

February 8, 2006 && Thus Spoke Zarathustra Prologue and Part I         

February 15, 2006      Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra  Parts II, III, & IV (Walter Kaufmann translation)

 

February 22, 2006      Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying  (288 pages)

 

March 1, 2006            Romain Gary, The Life Before Us (“Madame Rosa”)  (182 pages)

 

March 8, 2006 &&      Dante, “The Inferno” in The Divine Comedy

                                                Refs: http://infernodante.com                        

            and  http://italian.about.com/library/anthology/dante/blinfernoindex.htm

 

March 15, 2006                      N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn  (212 pages)

             Ref: R.M. Nelson, Place and Vision: The Function of Landscape in Native American Fiction

 

March 22, 2006 &&    Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France

 

March 29, 2006                      Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place  (96 pages)

 

April 5, 2006 &&                    Adams,   The Education of Henry Adams             

 

April 12, 2006            Milan Kundera,  Unbearable Lightness of Being (320 pages)

 

April 19, 2006                        Luisa Valenzuela, Symmetries: Stories  (167 pages)

 

April 26, 2006 &&      Aristotle, “On Tragedy  Great Books, Vol 9, pp 684-689

                                                Selection from Simon Goldhill, Love, Sex & Tragedy

 

May 3, 2006 &&                     William Shakespeare, “King Lear   

 

May 10, 2006                         Emily Brontë,  Wuthering Heights  (336 pages)

 

May 17, 2006 &&       Plato, Selection from Books II, III and  IV of The Republic

 

May 24, 2006             Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (341 pages)

                                    and Selected Essays from Dancing at the Edge of the World

                        Ref: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html

 

May 31, 2006             William Gibson, Neuromancer  (271 pages)

                        Ref: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/neuromancer.html

 

&& Readings are from the Fifth Series in the Great Books Reading and Discussion Program Sets. 

 

June 7, 2006                Patricia McKillip, In the Forests of Serre 

  McKillip                                                       (295 pages)

 

June 14, 2006              Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time 

  Piercy                                                            (369 pages)

 

June 21, 2006              William Shakespeare, “As You Like It

 

June 28, 2006              William Shakespeare, “The Tempest

  Shakespeare

 

July 5, 2006                Rachel Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban  (125 pages)

 

July 12, 2006  D H Lawrence, “The Princess” & “Odour of Chrysanthemums

                                    Mary Lerner, “Little Selves” & Grace Coates, “Wild Plums

                                    Story Dates: Princess 1925, Odour 1914, Selves 1916, Plums 1929

 

July 19, 2006              Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education 

  Flaubert                                                         Parts I and II (310 pages)

 

July 26, 2006              Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems from the Book of Hours

  Rilke                                                  (51 pages)

                                                Monastic Life: 1, 6, 7, 9, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 36, 44, 63.

                                                Pilgrimage: 7, 12, 22, 24, 25, 32, 33.

 

August 2, 2006                       J P Donleavy, The Ginger Man 

  Donleavy                                                      (352 pages)

 

August 9, 2006                      Great Books Vol. 3, pages 1102 - 1117

                                                The Idea of Wisdom  from the Syntopicon 

 

August 16, 2006                     Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows (pages 1 to 250)

August 23, 2006                     Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows (pages 251 to 500)

 

August 30, 2006                     Amos Oz, The Hill of Evil Counsel 

  Oz                                                                 (210 pages)

 

September 6, 2006      Bernice Rubens, The Sergeants' Tale (224 pages)

 

September 13, 2006    Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member (224 pages)

 

September 20, 2006 #†           Great Books, Vol 5, pp 52-91

  Aeschylus                             Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides    

 

September 27, 2006    Andre Malraux, Man's Fate

  Malraux                                                         (368 pages)

                                    Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Condition_humaine

 

October 4, 2006          Great Books, Vol 27, pp 586 - 609

  Shakespeare              Shakespeare's Sonnets

 

October 11, 2006        Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation (272 pages)

 

October 18, 2006 #†   Great Books, Vol 7, pp 191-199, 643c-644a, 683a-686b

  Plato                                     Euthyphro and selection from Laws                   

 

October 25, 2006        Gail Tsukiyama, Women of the Silk (288 pages)

 

November 1, 2006 #† Great Books, Vol 6, pp 504-508 and Vol 9, pp 376-387

  Thucydides and Aristotle     The Melian Conference and Nicomachean Ethics

                                    Questions for Thucydides in GBF's Politics, Leadership and Justice

                                                Reread Canto XI in Dante's Inferno

 

November 8, 2006                  Gloria Naylor, Mama Day  (312 pages)

 

November 15, 2006 #† Old Testament, Exodus, 19-20; Deuteronomy, 5-6          

                                                 New Testament, Matthew, 15: 1-20, 22:15-40; Romans,  7-8       

 

November 22, 2006    Virginia Woolf, The Waves (300 pages)

 

November 29, 2006 #†  Great Books, Vol 9, pp 553-584 and Vol 14, pp 32-48, pp 64-77

  Aristotle and Plutarch  The Athenian Constitution and Lycurgus, Solon

 

December 6, 2006       William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury  (336 pages)

 

December 13, 2006 #†   Great Books, Vol 20, pp 205-208, 220-239

  Aquinas                                 Summa Theologica, Part I-II, QQ 90, 94-97                      

 

January 3, 2007          John Donne, Holy Sonnets plus “A Valediction of Weeping,”

  Donne                                               and “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

  Brodsky                                Joseph Brodsky, “The Great Elegy to John Donne

 

January  10, 2007       Zadie Smith,  White Teeth  (464 pages)

 

January 24, 2007 #†   Great Books, Vol 23, pp 86-96, 130-148

  Hobbes                                  Leviathon  Chapters 14, 15, 26-28

 

February 14, 2007                 A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic 

  Ayer                                                              (160 pages)

 

February 28, 2007 #† Great Books, Vol 26, pp 406-433

  Shakespeare              The Merchant of Venice

 

March 14, 2007          Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author

  Pirandello                                          Dover Thrift Edition (64 pages) 

 

March 28, 2007 #†                 Great Books, Vol 38, pp 1-3, 102-125, 262-269

  Montesquieu             The Spirit of Laws Books I, XIV- XVII, XXIX

 

April 4, 2007              Edna Ferber, So Big

  Ferber                                                            (272 pages)

 

April 18, 2007 #†                   Great Books, Vol 38, pp 367-385, and 395-406

  Rousseau                   A Discourse on Political Economy and The Social Contract Book II

 

May 2, 2007                           Barbara Pym,  Excellent Women 

  Pym                                                              (256 pages)

 

May 16, 2007             Margareta Ekstrom (98 pages)

  Ekstrom                                The Day I Began My Studies in Philosophy and Other Stories

 

May 30, 2007 #†                    Great Books, Vol 42, pp. 403-434    

  Kant                                      The Science of Right

 

June 6, 2007                Mary Robison, Tell Me: 30 Stories 

  Robison                                                         (240 pages)

 

June 20, 2007              Great Books, Vol 27, pp 142-173

  Shakespeare              William Shakespeare, “All's Well, that Ends Well

 

July 18, 2007              Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

  Seth                                                               (1488 pages)

 

August 8, 2007           Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (357 pages)

  Desai                         Reading Guide: http://sackett.net/DesaiInheritanceGuide.pdf

 

August 22, 2007 #†    Great Books, Vol 43, pp 5-9 and 11-20

            Articles of Confederation and The United States Constitution            

                        and                  R.K. Narayan, The Guide (224 pages)

 

September 12, 2007    Hannah Arendt  (321 pages)

            Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 

 

September 26, 2007 Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian 

 McCarthy                                                      (352 pages)

 

October 10, 2007 #†               Great Books, Vol 46, pp 55-80 and 132-141

  Hegel                                    The Ethical Life” in The Philosophy of Right

 

October 24, 2007                   Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist 

 Gordimer                                                                    (252 pages)

 

November 7, 2007                  Jeffrey Bennett, On the Cosmic Horizon:

  Ten Great Mysteries for Third Millenium Astronomy  (pp 1 - 98)

            (Table of Contents: http://www.jeffreybennett.com/books_cosmic_horizon.html )

 

November 14, 2007 #†                       Great Books, Vol 52, pp 348-401

  Dostoevsky              A Judicial Error” in The Brothers Karamazov      

 

November 28, 2007                Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

  Robinson                                                       (247 pages)

 

December 5, 2007                   Jeffrey Bennett, On the Cosmic Horizon

 Bennett                                                                      (pp 99 - 184)

 

December 12, 2007     The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises 

 Nikos Kazantzakis                                        (143 pages)

 

#† Reading questions in The Great Ideas Program Volume 5 - “Philosophy of Law and Jurisprudence.”

 

January 9, 2008          Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (776 pages)

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (Pevear Volokhonsky translation preferred)

 

January 16, 2008        Mary McCarthy,  The Oasis (136 pages)

 

January 30, 2008        The Acquisitive Society  (192 pages)

 R. H. Tawney                        [In Vol 57 of the 60 volume set of the Great Books]

 

February 6, 2008        Albert Camus, The Fall  (160 pages)

 

February 20, 2008      Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class

  Veblen                                               Dover Thrift Edition  (256 pages)

 

March 12, 2008          Monica Ali, Brick Lane  (369 pages)

 

March 26, 2008 †#     Oath, Ancient Medicine, and Sacred Disease

  Hippocrates                          Great Books Vol. 10, pp. xiii, 1-9, 154-160 and

  Camus                                   Albert Camus, The Stranger (123 pages)

 

April 2, 2008              Dodie Smith,  I Capture the Castle  (343 pages)

           

April 16, 2008 †#       Plato, “The Meno” Great Books Vol. 7, pp. 174-190

                                       Reference: Alexandre Koyré, Discovering Plato pp 1 - 7.

 

April 30, 2008            Stephanie Kallos, Broken for You (400 pages)

 

May 14, 2008 †#       Aristotle, GB V 8, pp. 642-656; V 9, pp. 161-169

  Aristotle                                On the Soul” and “On the Parts of Animals

 

May 28, 2008             Hilary Mantel, A Change of Climate (336 pages)

 

June 4, 2008 †#          Galen, Great Books V 10, pp. 167-199

  Galen                         On the Natural Faculties  Books I and II

 

June 18, 2008  Jill Paton Walsh, A Desert in Bohemia (322 pages)

 

July 2, 2008 †#          Aquinas, Great Books Vol. 20, pp. 1-25

   Aquinas                                Summa Theologica, Part I-II,  QQ. XLIX-LIV.

 

July 16, 2008              Shakespeare, “Henry VIII

 

July 30, 2008              Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety (341 pages)

 

August 6, 2008 †#      Hobbes, Great Books Vol. 23, pp. 49-76

  Hobbes                                              Leviathan, Part I, Ch. 1-10

 

August 20, 2008 †#     Locke, GB Vol. 35, pp.121-147, 178-186, 220-222

  Locke                An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, Book II

 

September 10, 2008    Patricia Grace, Potiki (192 pages)

            Maori Glossary: http://sackett.net/GracePotikiGlossary.pdf

            A talk to young writers by Patricia Grace: http://www.ou.edu/worldlit/onlinemagazine/2009may/grace.html

 

September 24, 2008 †#          Harvey, GB Vol. 28, pp. 267-304

  Harvey                      On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals

 

October 8, 2008                      Harriet Doerr, The Tiger in the Grass: Short Stories and Other Inventions (224 pages)

 

October 22, 2008 †#              Darwin, GB Vol 49, pp. 32-64, 255-319

  Darwin                                              The Origin of Species, Ch. 3-4 and

                                                            The Descent of Man, Ch. 1-4

 

November 12, 2008    Amy Herrick The Happiness Code

  Herrick                                                           (310 pages )

            Reading Guide:         http://sackett.net/HerrickHappinessCode.pdf

 

November 26, 2008 †#           William James, GB Vol 53, pp. 146-179,

                                                                        191-194, 204-223, 743-757, 796-829

  James                        The Principles of Psychology, Ch. 9-10, 25-26

 

Dec 10, 2008   The Treasure of Montsegur: A Novel of the Cathars

  Burnham                               Sophy Burnham          (304 pages)

 

January 14, 2009  †#        Freud, Great Books Vol 54, pp. 1-20, 38-59,

 Freud                                                                         526-539, 569-585, 818-840

                  Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis, Ch 3 and

   General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, Lectures 13-14, 20-21

 

†# Reading questions in The Great Ideas Program Volume 9 - “Biology, Psychology, and Medicine.”

 

January 28, 2009       Sylvia Plath (US) The Bell Jar  (288 pages)

 

February 4, 2009        Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Germany)

  Jhabvala                           Heat and Dust  (190 pages)

 

February 18, 2009 *?          Gao Xingjian (China - 2000) Soul Mountain

  Xingjian                                                              Chapters 1 to 44

March 4, 2009 *?                Gao Xingjian Soul Mountain Chapters 45 to 81

 

March 18, 2009            George Eliot Daniel Deronda Books I to IV

 

April 8, 2009                    George Eliot Daniel Deronda Books V to VIII

 

April 22, 2009                                   Buddha's “Long Discourses” (“Digha Nikaya”)

                                    http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/index.html   

                                                                        [May 2nd is Vesak (“Buddha Day”)]

 

May 6, 2009 *?                                 Pearl Buck (US - 1938)  A House Divided            

 

May 20, 2009                                    Edith Wharton (United States)

  Wharton                                                                The House of Mirth                  (352 pages)

 

June 10, 2009                                  Roddy Doyle  (Ireland)

  Doyle                                                                       Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (288 pages)

 

June 24, 2009                                  Anne Tyler (United States)                   (336 pages)

  Tyler                                                       Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant 

 

July 8, 2009                      Shakespeare's “Hamlet”

 

July 22, 2009                                    Gita Mehta (India) A River Sutra  (304 pages)

 

August 12, 2009 *?    Jose Saramago (Portugal - 1998) Blindness

 

August 26, 2009          Willa Cather (United States) (352 pages)

  Cather                                                   The Great Short Works of Willa Cather 

 

September 2, 2009 *?               Paul Heyse (Germany - 1910)

  Heyse                                                    The Fury” and “Andrea Delfin” (2 novellas)

                           [Delfin is available at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3156

                                                                                  and Fury at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5431]

 

September 16, 2009 *?           Anatole France (France - 1921)

  France                                                                    The Gods are Athirst (113 pages)

                                                      [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24010]

 

September 30, 2009 *?           Doris Lessing (England - 2007)

  Lessing                                                                  The Grass is Singing        

 

October 14, 2009               Carl Jung (Switzerland)

  Jung                                        Modern Man In Search of a Soul (252 pages)

 

October 28, 2009 *?               Grazia Deledda (Italy - 1926)

  Deledda                                          The Mother  (252 pages)

 

November 4, 2009                   Nikki Giovanni (US) (96 pages, poetry)

  Giovanni                                                      Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day 

 

November 18, 2009 *?         Pablo Neruda (Chile - 1971)

  Neruda                                             The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems

 

December 2, 2009 *?             Rudolf Eucken (Germany - 1908) (30 pages)

  Eucken   Ethics and modern thought; a theory of their relations

 

December 16, 2009                Jiddu Krishnamurti Think on These Things

  Krishnamurti                                                          (272 pages)

 

January 6, 2010                     Simone de Beauvoir (France) (162 pages)

 de Beauvoir                           The Ethics of Ambiguity

          http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/index.htm

 

January 20, 2010 *?               Jean Paul Sartre (France - 1964)

  Sartre                                  Existentialism is a Humanism

          http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

 

*? Also search for the author at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/
and read the biographical material and the nobel address if they are available.

 

February 10, 2010                   Iris https://store.greatbooks.org/the-bell-great-books-discussion-guide.html (England) The Bell (320 pages)

  Murdoch              Reading Guide: http://www.sackett.net/MurdochNotes.pdf

 

February 24, 2010 *$        Pride

                           A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner

                           Good Country People, Flannery O'Connor

 

March 10, 2010         James Salter, American Express, and

  Salter                       Via Negativa from Dusk and Other Stories

 

March 24, 2010 *$              Envy

                           Roman Fever, Edith Wharton

                           Smokers, Tobias Wolff

 

April 14, 2010            Shakespeare, Othello

 

April 28, 2010 *$                 Anger

                           Mary Postgate, Rudyard Kipling

                           Hairball, Margaret Atwood

 

May 12, 2010   The five-dollar smile, Shashi Tharoor

                           Nineteen thirty-seven, Edwidge Danticat

 

May 26, 2010 *$                 Sloth

                           The House with the Mezzanine, Anton Chekhov

                           Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason

 

June 2, 2010    Why I Live at the P.O., Eudora Welty

         http://members.multimania.co.uk/shortstories/weltyliveatpo.html

Porcelain Cups, James Branch Cabell

         http://members.lycos.co.uk/shortstories/cabellporcelain.html

 

June 16, 2010           Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

 

June 30, 2010           Thornton Wilder, Our Town

 

July 14, 2010 *$                 Greed

                           The Rocking-Horse Winner, D.H. Lawrence

                           The Inherited Clock, Elizabeth Bowen

 

July 28, 2010   Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot

  Giraudoux                (134 page play)

 

August 4, 2010 *$              Gluttony

                           Fat, Raymond Carver

                           Famine, Xu Xi

 

August 18, 2010       Great Books, Vol 24, pp 1 - 126

  Rabelais                  Gargantua and Pantagruel [Books I and II]

 

September 8, 2010 *$      Lust

                           Not a Good Girl, Perri Klass

                  For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander

 

*$ Selection is from the Great Books Foundation's Seven Deadly Sins Sampler.

 

September 22, 2010        Elizabeth Jenkins,

  Jenkins                     The Tortoise and the Hare (288 pages)

 

October 6, 2010       Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses (258 pages)

 

October 20, 2010     C S Lewis, Till We Have Faces (324 pages)

 

November 10, 2010           Thornton Wilder, Someone from Assisi (Lust), and

                                    The Wreck on the Five-Twenty-Five (Sloth),

              from The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume I

 

November 17, 2010         Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (464 pages)

 

December 8, 2010   Geraldine Brooks, March  (304 pages) 

 

December 22, 2010          Sheng Yen,  (152 pages)

Getting the Buddha Mind: On the Practice of Chan Retreat


January 12, 2011 Virginia Hamilton, In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World (176 pages)
( reference: Barbara C. Sproul, Primal Myths)

January 26, 2011 !! Introduction and
                      !! Rules for the Direction of the Mind René Descartes

February 02, 2011 !! Katahdin and Death of a Pine
Henry David Thoreau

February 16, 2011 !! Man and Nature George Perkins Marsh
                      !! The Biosphere Vladimir I. Vernadsky

March 02, 2011 Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See (256 pages)

March 16, 2011 !! The Climax Concept Frederic E. Clements
                      !! The Ecosystem A.G. Tansley

March 30, 2011 Noether's Theorem

http://www.sackett.net/Noether.pdf
BBC Podcast discussing the life and ideas of Emmy Noether.

April 06, 2011 Poetry - Mary Oliver and Gary Snyder
Mary Oliver: Wild Geese, A Visitor, Mockingbirds, The Journey, Climbing the Chagrin River, The Swan, Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh, The Dipper.
Gary Snyder: December At Yase (1992), For/From Lew (1983), For Lew Welch In A Snowfall (1992), There Are Those Who Love To Get Dirty (1986), Riprap (1959), Axe Handles (1983).

April 20, 2011 !! The Land Ethic and Odyssey Aldo Leopold

May 04, 2011 !! The Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin
                      !! The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth Kenneth E. Boulding

May 18, 2011 Neal Stephenson, Zodiac (320 pages)

June 08, 2011 Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters : An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People (408 pages)

June 22, 2011 (A 2011 Colorado Shakespeare Festival Play)

Nikolai Gogol “The Inspector General
          http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gogol/nikolai/g61i/

July 06, 2011 !! The Closing Circle Barry Commoner
                      !! The World's Biggest Membrane Lewis Thomas

July 20, 2011 !! Intricacy Annie Dillard
                      !! The Recognition of Gaia James E. Lovelock

August 10, 2011 Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (496 pages)

August 24, 2011 Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men (320 pages)

September 14, 2011 Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch (352 pages)

September 28, 2011 !! The End of Nature Bill McKibben
                      !! The Words Nature, Wild, and Wilderness Gary Snyder
                      !! Water Songs Terry Tempest Williams

October 12, 2011 Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn (224 pages)

October 26, 2011 !! Cutover Jan Zita Grover
                      !! The Politics of Wilderness and the Practice of the Wild Edward Grumbine

November 02, 2011 !! Dimensions of Deformity Gordon L. Miller

!! Selection is from the Great Books Foundation's Keeping Things Whole: Readings in Environmental Science

November 16, 2011 Ruth Rendell, A Judgement in Stone (208 pages)

November 30, 2011 David Holmgren, Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change (136 pages)

December 14, 2011 Sumbul Ali-Karamli, The Muslim Next Door (287 pages)


January 04, 2012 A. S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye
                               (177 page story in the 275 page book of the same name)

January 18, 2012 *! Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner's Tale

February 08, 2012 Margaret Drabble, The Sea Lady (345 pages)

February 22, 2012 *! David Hume, Excerpts from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

March 14, 2012 Lawrence Durrell, Justine (256 pages)

March 28, 2012 Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (120 pages)

April 04, 2012 *! Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry
  Linda Hogan, Journey, Inside, Rapture, To Light, Heartland, Advice from the Shoulder
  Eavan Boland, Lava Cameo, Pomegranate
            See http://sackett.net/Selection040412.htm.

April 18, 2012 *! Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece
            (Also available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23060)

May 02, 2012 *! Leo Tolstoy, Second Epilogue to War and Peace
   (This is the conclusion to War and Peace so you can also find it, for example, in Great Books Vol. 51 pp 675-696.)

May 16, 2012 *! Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King
                      *! Stephen Crane, The Open Boat

May 30, 2012 Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (205 pages)

June 06, 2012 *! Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author

June 20, 2012     A Colorado Shakespeare Festival Play
                              The Tragedy of King Richard the Third

June 27, 2012     A Shakespeare Roundtable with Ron Schwartz
                              The Tragedy of King Richard the Third

July 18, 2012 Nicola Barker, Darkmans (838 pages)

August 08, 2012 *! Sherwood Anderson, Death in the Woods
                      *! Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

August 22, 2012 L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (288 pages)

September 12, 2012 *! Simone de Beauvoir, Introduction to The Second Sex
                      and The Second Sex
, the 13 page Conclusion at the end of the book.

September 26, 2012 *! Grace Paley, An Interest In Life
                      ( a short story from The Little Disturbances of Man) and
                      *! Wislawa Szymborska, Selected Poems

                      (“The End and the Beginning”, “Hatred”, and “Reality Demands”)

October 10, 2012 Chitra Divakaruni, Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter
                              http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98apr/dutta.htm
                      and Sheila Kohler, Africans available in her One Girl: A Novel in Stories
               (Both stories are in The Best American Short Stories 1999, edited by Amy Tan.
                The audio version has the stories read by their respective authors.)

October 24, 2012 *! Michel Foucault, Excerpt from Discipline and Punish:
                      “The body of the condemned

November 14, 2012 *! Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (392 pages)

November 28, 2012 *! Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies
(If you have time, read all of the short stories in her book of the same name.)

December 12, 2012 Huston Smith, The World's Religions
                     Chapter IV - Confucianism
                     Chapter IX - The Primal Religions
                     Chapter X - A Final Examination

*! Selection is from the Great Books Foundation's The Great Conversations 3 (discussion guide only for Jane Eyre).


January 02, 2013 Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (268 pages)

January 16, 2013 2 Samuel 11-12:7, David and Bathsheba
John Donne, To His Mistress Going to Bed
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

January 30, 2013 Terri Windling, The Wood Wife (320 pages)

February 06, 2013 Sigmund Freud, Degradation in Erotic Life

February 20, 2013 Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (325 pages)

March 06, 2013 Fay Weldon, Sex

March 20, 2013 Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (288 pages)

April 3, 2013 Carol Shields, The Republic of Love (384 pages)

April 17, 2013 Margaret Atwood, Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing
Billy Collins, Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes
     e e cummings, selected poems (sackett.net/Selection041713.htm)

May 01, 2013 Brian Doyle, Mink River (320 pages)

May 15, 2013 Elaine Morgan, The Descent of Woman: The Classic Study of Evolution (288 pages)

May 29, 2013 Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (276 pages)

June 5, 2013 Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Girl Advocacy Again

June 19, 2013 Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
     Northrop Frye's Essay,
Recognition in The Winter's Tale

July 3, 2013 A Colorado Shakespeare Festival Play
    Shakespeare            A Midsummer Night's Dream

July 17, 2013 Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar (256 pages)

July 31, 2013 Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca (410 pages)

August 7, 2013 Mark Doty, Esta Noche
     Kevin Walzer, The Poetry of Timothy Steele   http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tsteele/TSpage4/Walzer.html

August 21, 2013 Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (Pages 1 to 342)

September 04, 2013 Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (Pages 345 to 603)

September 18, 2013 Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights (144 pages)

October 02, 2013 Susan Minot, Lust
     Jane Smiley, Lily http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/84jul/lily.htm (also available at http://www.sackett.net/SmileyLily.pdf)

October 16, 2013 Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight (160 pages)

October 30, 2013 Louann Brizendine, Love and Trust
     Rick Bass, “The Hermit's Story” (also available in The Best American Short Stories 1999, edited by Amy Tan)

November 06, 2013 Mona Simpson, First Love
Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

November 20, 2013 Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (368 pages)

December 04, 2013 Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet (189 pages)

December 18, 2013 C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (141 pages)


Selection is from the Great Books Foundation's Vital Ideas: Sex.

January 15, 2014 $$    Harriet Jacobs, The New Master and Mistress

       Alice Munro, Corrie (http://www.sackett.net/MunroCorrie.pdf)

 

January 29, 2014 Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (240 pages)

 

February 5, 2014 $$    Henry David Thoreau, Economy

                                     $$     Karl Marx, The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society

 

February 19, 2014      Joseph Heller, Catch 22 (415 pages)

 

March 5, 2014      The Idea of Wealth,

       online at sackett.net/Wealth.pdf Great Books Vol 2 (1990 edition, pp 820-848)

       and Great Treasury of Western Thought (pp 791-812) online at

http://www.sackett.net/WealthGTWT.pdf

 

 

March 19, 2014 Jung Chang, Wild Swans (First half)

April 2, 2014 Jung Chang, Wild Swans (Second half)

 

April 16, 2014 $$ Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (Selection)

 

April 30, 2014 Jill Fredston, (312 pages)

Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge

 

May 7, 2014 $$ Zora Neale Hurston, The Gilded Six-Bits

 

May 21, 2014 Edith Pearlman, Four short stories: Chance, Allog, Self-Reliance, Honeydew (The first three are in Pearlman's Binocular Vision)

 

June 4, 2014 $$ John Cheever, The Housebreaker of Shady Hill

         Berg and Ostry, “Inequality and Unsustainable Growth(20 pages)

 

June 18, 2014 A Colorado Shakespeare Festival Play

 Shakespeare      The Merry Wives of Windsor

 

July 2, 2014  Joy Harjo, 10 poems from She Had Some Horses

in How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2001
      The ten poems are: Call It Fear, Anchorage, For Alva Benson, The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window, White Bear, Skeleton of Winter, Remember, New Orleans, She Had Some Horses, and I Give You Back.
Reference: Harjo, Crazy Brave: A Memoir

 

July 16, 2014      Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves (352 pages)

July 30, 2014 Toni Morrison, Home (145 pages)
Note: available as an audio book read by Morrison.

August 6, 2014 $$ Barbara Ehrenreich, Selling in Minnesota
$$ Paco Underhill, Sex and the Mall

August 20, 2014 Rudyard Kipling, Kim (240 pages)

September 3, 2014 Qiu Xiaolong, Years of Red Dust: Stories of Shanghai (240 pages)

 

September 17, 2014 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

(Victor Watts translation, 155 pages)


October 1, 2014 Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel (304 pages)


October 15, 2014 Great Books Vol. 31 (1990 edition, pp 327-367)

Racine, “Phaedra” (Samuel Solomon translation)

or online Holcombe translation

Reference (Holcombe on translating Racine)


October 29, 2014 Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower (240 pages)

Angela Pneuman, “All Saints Day” (15 pages)

http://www.vqronline.org/fiction/all-saints-day/


November 5, 2014 $$ Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (Selection)

$$ Katy Lederer, The Heaven-Sent Leaf


November 19, 2014 Paula Fox, Desperate Characters (192 pages)


December 3, 2014 Naguib Mahfouz, Miramar (192 pages)


December 17, 2014 The Idea of God from the Syntopicon

Great Books Vol 1 (1990 edition, pp 433-451) online

at http://www.sackett.net/God.pdf

and Great Treasury of Western Thought (pp 1310-1336) online at

http://www.sackett.net/GodGTWT.pdf

$$ Selection is from the Great Books Foundation's Vital Ideas: Money.


January 7, 2015 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Prologue and Part I (70 pages, Walter Kaufmann translation)

January 21, 2015 Wu Cheng'en, selection from The Journey to the West, Volume 1
Chapters I - XV of the Anthony Yu translation (235 pages)
[Chapters I - XV in Arthur Waley's abridgement, Monkey, leaves out most of the Chinese poetry, so Yu is preferred]

February 4, 2015 ?* Lecture 19 — Wu Cheng'en's Monkey

February 18, 2015 Marguerite de Navarre, selection from The Heptameron
Prologue for Each Day and Stories 10, 14, 20, 21, 30, 36, 40, 44, 50, 60, 61, 70, 71, and 72 (132 pages, Penguin Edition)

March 4, 2015 ?* Lecture 20 — The Heptameron

March 18, 2015 Cao Xueqin, Chapters 1 to 8, The Story of the Stone, Volume 1

(200 pages, David Hawkes translation)
[Also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber but don't get the Chi-Chen Wang abridgement]

April 1, 2015 ?* Lecture 25 — Cao Xueqin's The Story of the Stone

April 15, 2015 Emily Dickinson, selected poems
(poems mentioned in
Poisonwood Bible, in Lecture 32 on May 6, and poems in the 20th fascicle).
The selection (14 pages) is at http://www.sackett.net/PoisonwoodVothEmily.pdf.

April 29, 2015 Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

May 6, 2015 ?* Lecture 32 — Dickinson's Poetry

May 20, 2015 Patricia S. Churchland (288 pages)
Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality

June 3, 2015 Lecture — P. S. Churchland, The Brains Behind Morality
https://mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/The+Brains+Behind+Morality/0_4q8ty6ra

June 17, 2015 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (384 pages)

July 1, 2015 University of Wisconsin Lecture on February 2, 2010 — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Lecture, and Question and Answer Session.

July 15, 2015 Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

July 29, 2015 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

August 5, 2015 ?* Lecture 45 — Achebe's Things Fall Apart

August 19, 2015 2 stories in Robert Danly, In the Shade of Spring Leaves
Child's Play and The Thirteenth Night

September 2, 2015 ?* Lecture 35 — Higuchi Ichiyo's “Child's Play”

September 16, 2015 Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk (1st half)

September 30, 2015 Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk (2nd half)

October 7, 2015 ?* Lecture 44 — Naguib Mahfouz's The Cairo Trilogy

October 21, 2015 Anna Akhmatova, Requiem (pages 130 to 151) in
Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova
, translated by J. Hemschemeyer

November 4, 2015 ?* Lecture 41 — Anna Akhmatova's Requiem

November 18, 2015 Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths

December 2, 2015 ?* Lecture 47 — Borges' Labyrinths

December 16, 2015 Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

?* Lecture from Great Courses' History of World Literature by Professor Grant L. Voth


January 6, 2016 !$ Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind (272 pages)

January 20, 2016 Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs (172 pages)

February 3, 2016 !$ Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address

and Martin Luther King, Jr. - Letter from Birmingham Jail (34 pages)

February 17, 2016 Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (194 pages)

March 2, 2016 Brian Doyle, The Plover (1st half (through Chapter V))

March 16, 2016 Brian Doyle, The Plover (2nd half (Chapters VI - VIII))

(Roughly 160 pages per meeting)

April 13, 2016 Kathleen Grissom, Kitchen House (384 pages)

April 20, 2016 !$ Isak Dinesen, Sorrow Acre (42 pages)

and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Headstrong Historian

(20 pages at http://sackett.net/AdichieHeadstrongHistorian.pdf )

May 4, 2016 Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate (256 pages)

May 18, 2016 !$ Wole Soyinka, Kongi's Harvest (111 pages)

June 1, 2016 Rheinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (198 pages)

June 15, 2016 !$ Thucydides, The Melian Dialogue (17 pages)

July 6, 2016 Pearl Buck, The Good Earth (Chapters 1 - 20, 200 pages)

July 20, 2016 Pearl Buck, The Good Earth (Chapters 21 - 34, 150 pages)

August 3, 2016 !$ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

August 17, 2016 !$ Amos Oz, Longing (87 pages)

Sept. 7, 2016 Confessions of Lady Nijo (288 pages)

September 21, 2016 Daniel Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows (174 pages)

October 5, 2016 Selection from Elisabeth Bumiller,

Chapters 1, 5-7, 9-10, and 12 (167 of 306 pages)

May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons:

A Journey Among the Women of India

October 19, 2016 Miriama Ba, So Long a Letter (90 pages)

November 2, 2016 !$ J. M. Coetzee, Age of Iron (208 pages)

November 16, 2016 Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Part I - 64 pages)

December 7, 2016 Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (304 pages)

December 21, 2016 !$ Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching (25 pages) and

H.D., Tribute to the Angels in Trilogy (51 page poem)

!$ Selection from Great Books Foundation's Politics, Leadership, and Justice


January 4, 2017          Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
                    Chapters 1 - 5 (90 pages)
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it
                    Chapters 1 - 2 (44 pages)

January 18, 2017          Jennifer Michael Hecht, poetry selection from Funny

February 1, 2017          David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
                    Chapters 1 - 5 (140 pages)

February 15, 2017          Susanna Tamaro, Follow Your Heart (208 pages)

March 1, 2017          Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
                    Chapters 6 - 9 (100 pages)
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition
                    Chapters 3 - 6 (119 pages)

March 15, 2017 The Idea of History (sackett.net/History.pdf) from the Syntopicon
(Reference: Great Treasury of Western Thought (sackett.net/HistoryGTWT.pdf))

April 5, 2017          Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Blu's Hanging (260 pages)

April 19, 2017          Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
                    Chapters 10 - 13 (142 pages)
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition
                    Chapters 7 - 9 (74 pages)

May 3, 2017          Claire Vaye Watkins, 3 stories from Battleborn:
                     “Ghosts, Cowboys,” “The Diggings,” and “Virginia City

May 17, 2017          David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
                    Chapters 6 - 9 (150 pages)

June 7, 2017          Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
                    Chapters 14 - 16 (77 pages)
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition
                    Chapters 10 - 12 (115 pages)

June 21, 2017          Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (192 pages)

July 5, 2017          Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy

July 19, 2017          Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan
                    (pages 1 to 142)

August 2, 2017          Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan
                    (pages 143 to 323)

August 30, 2017          David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
                    Chapters 10 - 12 (175 pages)

(1 week)
September 6, 2017          Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
                    Chapters 17 - 19 (93 pages)
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (110 pages)

September 20, 2017          Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life (sackett.net/NietzscheHistory.pdf)
Katherine Mansfield, The Daughters of the Late Colonel in The Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield or sackett.net/MansfieldColonel.pdf
Joy Williams “Gurdjieff in the Sunshine State” in Escapes or sackett.net/WilliamsGurdjieff.pdf

October 4, 2017          Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
                    Chapters 20 - Afterword (115 pages)
Noam Chomsky, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” (25 pages)

October 18, 2017          Short stories “The Shelter” by Duong Thu Huong, “The Stranded Fish” by Doan Quoc Sy, “The Color of Sorrow” by Nguyen Qui Duc, and “Remembrance of the Countryside” by Nguyen Huy Thiep from John Balaban and Nguyen Qui Duc, Vietnam: A Traveler's Literary Companion

November 1, 2017          Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies
                     Prologue through Chapter 4 (172 pages)

November 15, 2017          George Eliot, The Lifted Veil (40 pages)
                               http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2165
          http://www.sackett.net/EliotVeilQs.pdf (Questions for discussion)

December 6, 2017          Milton Viorst, In the Shadow of the Prophet
                     Chapters 1 through 5 (186 pages)

December 20, 2017          Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday
                    Chapters 5 through Epilogue (308 pages)


January 3, 2018 Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted (192 pages)

January 17, 2018 Milton Viorst, In the Shadow of the Prophet
                     Chapters 6 through 10 (172 pages)

February 7, 2018 Souad Mekhennet, I Was Told to Come Alone (340 pages)

February 21, 2018 David Hume, Of Personal Identity
Section 6 of Part IV of Book I of A Treatise of Human Nature

(http://www.sackett.net/HumeIdentity.pdf)

The Idea of Justice from the Syntopicon (sackett.net/Justice.pdf)
and
Great Treasury of Western Thought (sackett.net/JusticeGTWT.pdf)

March 7, 2018 Juan Gonzales, Harvest of Empire (2nd edition) - Parts I and II

March 21, 2018 Juan Gonzales, Harvest of Empire (2nd edition) - Part III and Epilogue

April 4, 2018 Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters (249 pages)

April 18, 2018 Selection from James P. Sterba, Ethics: The Big Questions
Virginia Held,
Caring Relations and Principles of Justice

http://www.sackett.net/HeldCare.pdf

Claudia Card, Particular Justice and General Care
http://www.sackett.net/CardJustice.pdf

Fred Feldman, Kantian Ethics
http://www.sackett.net/FeldmanKant.pdf

May 2, 2018 C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Chapters 1 to 8)

May 16, 2018 The Power Elite (Chapters 9 to end)

June 6, 2018 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (366 pages)

June 20, 2018 Antonya Nelson, In the Land of Men: Stories (240 pages)

July 18, 2018 Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (462 pages)

August 1, 2018 Lynsey Addario, It's What I Do (368 pages)

August 15, 2018 Mavis Gallant, selection from Paris Stories (182 pages)
“The Moslem Wife”, “Speck's Idea”, “The Remission”, “August”, Afterword

September 5, 2018 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (384 pages)

September 19, 2018 Joseph Henrich, Chapters 1 to 10 (184 pages)
The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Our Evolution

October 3, 2018 Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success
Chapters 11 to 17 (150 pages)

October 17, 2018 Paul Kingsnorth, The Wake (384 pages)

November 7, 2018 Isabel Allende, In the Midst of Winter (342 pages)

December 5, 2018 Andre Malraux, Man's Fate (356 pages)

December 19, 2018 Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures (320 pages)


January 3, 2019 Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism (184 pages)

January 17, 2019 Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle (176 pages)

February 7, 2019 Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project (295 pages)

February 21, 2019 Lan Samantha Chang, Hunger (105 page novella)

March 7, 2019 Mo Yan (first half of 409 pages)
March 21, 2019 Mo Yan (second half of 409 pages)
Sandalwood Death

April 4, 2019 Susan Neiman (Chapter 4 - 88 pages)
Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy

April 18, 2019 Great Books Vol. 58, pages ix to 71
Selection from J.G. Frazer,
The Golden Bough

May 2, 2019 Trygve Gulbranssen (313 pages)
Beyond Sing the Woods

May 16, 2019 Jonathan Bennett (123 pages)
Rationality: An Essay Towards an Analysis

June 6, 2019 John Judis The Populist Explosion (159 pages)

June 20, 2019 Nick Lane (first half of 360 pages)
July 3, 2019 Nick Lane (second half of 360 pages)
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

July 18, 2019 Laura Thatcher Ulrich A Midwife's Tale:
The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
(first half of 444 pages)

August 1, 2019 Laura Thatcher Ulrich A Midwife's Tale:
The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
(second half of 444 pages)

August 15, 2019 Carol Shields (361 pages) The Stone Diaries

September 5, 2019 Ellen Meloy (328 pages)
Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild

September 19, 2019 Richard Flanagan (first half of 352 pages)
October 3, 2019 Richard Flanagan (second half of 352 pages)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North

November 7, 2019 Annie Proulx, The Shipping News (355 pages)

November 21, 2019 Great Books Vol. 58, pages 397 to 455
December 5, 2019 Great Books Vol. 58, pages 455 to 527
Selection from Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology

December 19, 2019 Selection from Khushwant Singh
A History of the Sikhs, Vol. I, Parts I and II and Appendix 2

 

January 2, 2020 Edward Hallett Carr (224 pages)
What is History?

January 16, 2020 Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Parts One and Two)
February 6, 2020 Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Parts Three and Four)
February 20, 2020 Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Parts Five and Six)

March 5, 2020 Peter Godfrey-Smith (255 pages)
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Followup from PBS Nature: Octopus - Making Contact (available on BPL Kanopy)

April 2, 2020 Melanie Mitchell (169 pages)
Complexity: A Guided Tour (Parts I and II)
April 16, 2020 Melanie Mitchell (171 pages)
Complexity: A Guided Tour (Parts III through V)

May 7, 2020 Stuart Kauffman, A World Beyond Physics:
The Emergence and Evolution of Life

May 21, 2020 Peter Turchin, Ultrasociety Chapters 1 to 5
June 4, 2020 Peter Turchin, Ultrasociety Chapters 6 to 10

June 18, 2020 William James, two essays, “The Will to Believe” and
“Great Men and their Environment" from The Will to Believe

July 2, 2020 Henry George, Progress and Poverty
http://www.henrygeorge.org/pdfs/PandP_Drake.pdf (Parts 1 through 4)
Reference material: https://schalkenbach.org/henry-georges-works/
July 16, 2020 Henry George, Progress and Poverty
http://www.henrygeorge.org/pdfs/PandP_Drake.pdf (Parts 5 to the end)

August 6, 2020 Carl Becker,
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers

August 20, 2020 Selection from Kate Chopin's Short Stories,
Regret
” (4 pages), “The Story of an Hour” (3 pages),
A 'Cadian Ball
” + “The Storm” (16 pages), “A No-Account Creole” (26 pages),
A Point at Issue!
” (13 pages), “Desiree's Baby” (6 pages),
A Vocation and a Voice
” + “Wiser Than a God” (41 pages)

September 3, 2020 Gustaw Herling, “The Island” (84 pages)

September 17, 2020 Selection from Emma Goldman,
Anarchism and Other Essays
(Essays 1-5, 7-8, and 12)

October 15, 2020 Dierdre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality
Exordium and Chapters 1-23 (252 pages)

November 5, 2020 Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees (282 pages)

November 19, 2020 Nadine Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World(94 pages)

December 3, 2020 Mark Moffett, The Human Swarm (1st half, through Chapter 13)
December 17, 2020 Mark Moffett, The Human Swarm (2nd half, Ch 14 to end)

 

(3 weeks)
January 7, 2021 Jane Austen, Emma (Chapters 1 - 23, 232 pages)
January 21, 2021 Jane Austen, Emma (Chapters 24 - 58, 214 pages)

February 4, 2021 Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven
The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions Chapters 1 through 6 (245 pages)
February 18, 2021 Panksepp and Biven, Chapters 7 through 13 (256 pages)

March 4, 2021 Willa Cather, My Antonia (272 pages)

March 18, 2021 Philip Clayton, Mind and Emergence First 3 chapters
Harold J. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything First half

April 1, 2021 Clayton and Davies (editors), The Re-Emergence of Emergence Sections 1 and 2,
"The Physical Sciences" and "The Biological Sciences"
Harold J. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything Second half

April 15, 2021 Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (288 pages)

(3 weeks)
May 6, 2021 Steven Strogatz, SYNC: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order Preface through Chapter 5
(The paperback subtitle of this book is How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life)

May 20, 2021 Jane Hirshfield, Ledger: Poems (128 pages)

June 3, 2021 Steven Strogatz, SYNC: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order Chapter 6 through Epilogue

June 17, 2021 Tracy Chevalier, Burning Bright (Parts I through IV)
July 1, 2021 Tracy Chevalier, Burning Bright (Parts V through VIII)
and William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

July 15, 2021 Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

(3 weeks)
August 5, 2021 Beryl Bainbridge, The Bottle Factory Outing (179 pages)
(this novel is available as an eBook through Hoopla)

August 19, 2021 Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies (chapters 1 through 8)
(this novel is available as an eBook through Hoopla)
September 2, 2021 Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies (chapter 9 through Reader's Guide)

September 16, 2021 Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love (214 pages)

(3 weeks)
October 7, 2021 Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog (173 pages)

October 21, 2021 Pascal Boyer, Minds Make Societies (through Part 3)
November 4, 2021 Pascal Boyer, Minds Make Societies (Part 4 to end)

November 18, 2021 Stephen Bodio, Querencia (154 pages)
(this memoir is available as an eBook through Hoopla)

December            Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
December 2, 2021          Chapters 1 through 6
December 16, 2021          Chapters 7 through 11

 

January 6, 2022 Robert Jones, White too Long (242 pages)

January 20, 2022 Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason
(Chapters 1 - 10, 202 pages)

February 3, 2022 Briant will summarize for us the 2nd half of Enigma of Reason,
then we will discuss about half of Ants Among Elephants
February 17, 2022 Sujatha Gidla, Ants Among Elephants:
An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
(305 pages)

March 3, 2022 Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
(1st half, through Chapter 14 (240 pages))
March 17, 2022 Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
(2nd half, Chapter 15 through Epilogue)

(3 weeks)
April 7, 2022 Mark Humphries (232 pages) The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds

April 21, 2022 David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything (Chapters 1 to 4)
Adam Kuper, The Reinvention of Primitive Society (Parts I & II)
Part I “The Idea of Primitive Society” & Part II “Ancient Law, Ancient Society and Totemism”

May 5, 2022 Tove Jansson, The Summer Book (184 pages)

May 19, 2022 David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything (Chapters 5 to 8)
and C.R. Hallpike, Ship of Fools Part 1 “Talking Nonsense about Primitive Man”

June 2, 2022 Tarjei Vesaas, The Ice Palace (172 pages)

June 16, 2022 David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything (Chapter 9 to end)

July 7, 2022 Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing (320 pages)

July 21, 2022 Haruki Murakami, “Thailand” (27 pages) in after the quake
        Jane Pek, “The Nine-Tailed Fox Explains” (8 pages)
        Tessa Hadley, “Funny Little Snake” (10 pages)


August 4, 2022 Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (208 pages)

August 18, 2022 Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (1st half of 274 pages)
September 1, 2022 Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (2nd half)
         reference: Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (298 pages)


September 15, 2022 John Mearsheimer, (Chapters 1 through 4)
The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities


October 6, 2022 Jennifer Doudna, A Crack in Creation (246 pages) [CRISPR]

October 20, 2022 Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (217 pages)

November 3, 2022 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
Indigenous People's History of the United States (236 pages)
https://www.lcps.org/cms/lib/VA01000195/Centricity/Domain/10601/An%20Indigenous%20Peoples%20History%20of%20the%20United%20States%20Ortiz.pdf


November 17, 2022 Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Poetry (96 pages)

December 1, 2022 John Mearsheimer, (Chapters 5 through 8)
The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities


December 15, 2022 Eva Wong, Taoism: An Essential Guide (288 pages)

 

January 5, 2023 Christopher Coker, The Rise of the Civilizational State (205 pages)

January 19, 2023 Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (242 pages)

February 2, 2023 Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice (386 pages)

February 16, 2023 Briant Wolfe, Hacking Human Nature for Good: Overcoming Human Irrationality (30 pages)
plus Robert Sapolsky, Behave, chapters 9 - 14 (286 pages)

March 2, 2023 Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture Parts I and II (202 pages)

March 16, 2023 Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture Parts III and IV (199 pages)

 


To see Bill's favorites from this list:
http://www.sackett.net/FavoritesBillGreatBooks.htm.
To see Griff's favorite Shakespeare plays from this list:
http://www.sackett.net/FavoritesGriffShakespeare.htm.
To see a list of novels Heather liked better than War and Peace:
http://www.sackett.net/BetterThanWarAndPeace.htm.

 

This list, http://www.sackett.net/GreatBooksAll.htm,
was last updated on February 21, 2023.
Boulder Great Books Website:
http://www.sackett.net/BoulderGreatBooks.htm.