Four years ago, I started this site to organize my reading. The list started as about 20 classic novels that I had always wanted to read and never had time for. Since then, it has expanded into what we see today. 

I'm hoping to write short articles about each text, and what I got out of reading it. If you click into a book and see a blank page, that means I haven’t written anything yet. If you’re wondering, why is this mostly empty? It’s mostly a personal reference document that I hope to getting around to filling all the way out. I have a lot of hidden notes on each book that need to be refined. Hopefully, for now, this can have use as a reference document. 

There were a lot of books I didn’t read during my undergrad, or didn’t read well, and I wanted to go back and give them another shot. To great success! It’s been a very interesting couple of years reading them, and I feel like I have learned a lot about life in the process. Maybe someday this question will get its own page on the blog, but for now there are a lot of better people who’ve written about the classics. I’ll link a few below. 

Such a reader does not read for easy pleasure or to expiate social guilt but to enlarge a solitary existence. - Harold Bloom

If you want to read your way through the classics, there is nothing preliminary you need to read to get started. Just dive right in. I read these books to get a better understanding of what's chosen as a canonical work and why. If you're new and are looking for a gentle introduction to ideas of The Western Canons, I would recommend starting with Denby's Great Books, linked here:

Harold Bloom was an American professor, literary critic and controversial defender of the Western canon. In the 21st century, to talk about the canon is to talk about Bloom. His book, however, is not for the everyday reader. You will probably get the most out of The Western Canon if you've already read all of the books he talks about.

If you don't have five years to spare, there are some 

 where he talks generally about his ideas of the concept of the canon.  

The Western Canon is the collection of books considered to be essential in the Western world. There is much debate over what texts should be included in the canon, and if it's existence is both arbitrary and exclusionary. For Harold Bloom, suspects including Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton hold a quantifiable aesthetic superiority. He does recognize that there are inequalities of representation within the canon, but that to change is political activism that only threatens the Humanities. 

His definition of a canonical work is one that is most essential for scholastic study by young students. He wants to ensure that students of literary studies read works of highest aesthetic excellence.  Bloom asks the same question every reader asks. What is important to read in our short lives? Fundamentally, Bloom wants the same thing as us, to spend the precious moments of our lives with the books that will most thoroughly enrich it. 

Bloom, The Western Canon - 1994

If you're interested in reading the classics and don't know where to start, reading this book is a gentle introduction. Denby is a middle-aged movie critic that returns to Columbia University to revisit the first-year literature and humanities curriculum, and re-read the classic books assigned to Freshman. He's the kind of man who thinks he came to himself "in a dark wood where the straight way was lost," but really, it's just a mid-life crisis. You'll hate him for it.

When you're reading anything, especially something old, take the part of you that engages with society and leave it on the shelf. Reading is ultimately a solitary process and you're meant to engage only with yourself. At the beginning, it's hard to reconcile that these books could have value in anything other than being dusty if we don't place them in society. But, we don't inherit our ideas, and neither do the books we read.

Read this book. Hate him. Write a negative review on his Amazon page because I was too chicken.

David Denby’s, Great Books - 1996

Obviously, the main thing you learn when reading the classics is how to read the classics. I thought I would give some tips here that I picked up that will hopefully help you on your journey. 

It is against God to read something in abridgment. The abridger wants to alter history in his image. Don’t let an abridgment influence what’s being said! It’s only an extra 1000 pages, or like two weeks of your life. But, what is time, when what you gain is truth. 

Don’t bother reading introductions. Same principal. Why would you read someone’s interpretation of a book right before you read the book. It’s ok to read the introduction 

 you’ve read the book, because by then you’ll already know the contents of the book and if the author of the introduction is full of baloney or not.    

I think it’s important to remember, you can read literally anything. You can read a receipt, you can read an email, you can read a textbook, you can read Hegel. You can read Hegel in German. Might as well get the information straight from the source. 

In general, why read someone’s opinion about something, when you can have your own opinion about something.

 (part of their Gen Ed program), St. John’s College 

, and just some random books I’m curious about.

Wherever possible, I linked PDF copies of the texts. 

 is an excellent resource for public domain books. If you're comfortable with a terminal, I created a 

 that downloads and organizes files from the Project Gutenberg.

I hope this can be of some interest to you. If you are interested in learning more or have any comments or suggestions, please send me an email at: 

boring books

New? Read My Introduction
2023

About The Project

Why The Classics?

How to read The Classics?

About The List

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