Rachel Herrington is reading the St. Johns curriculum. You can join her.
An exciting new Substack.
Rachel Herrington (the little seamstress) is about to read her her way through the St. John’s College Great Books curriculum.
What might this kind of challenge look like, on a practical level? At the very least, reading the books in the order they’re presented, with weekly or bimonthly posts reflecting on what I’ve been reading. (Some of these works I’ve read already; for those works, I’ll just have to decide on each work individually as to whether or not to reread them at this time or just write a few impressions of my recollections of my earlier reading experience.) Unlike with the Dickens Club, I’m not venturing into this with anything like set timetables for a group readalong, and I can’t take a pause from daily life to have a special sabbatical for it. Such is life as a blue-collar worker with the heart of an academic.
Rachel, along with her husband Boze, organised the Dickens Chronological Reading Club I was pleased to be part of a few years ago. This time around you can read her posts on Dispatches from Biblioll College and participate in the comments. (Here is the curriculum.)
Rachel is one of the best readers I know of. If you want some sort of group to be part of to read your way through some of the Western Canon, this is a good opportunity. She has just started The Iliad.
And here is the story of how Rachel got started on serious literature.
I’ve been something of an autodidact ever since about the age of fifteen when I quit public school in order to discover poetry, Shakespeare, Homer, John Henry Newman, Dickens, Austen, and many others. I was dreadfully shy, and perhaps a move from Wisconsin to Oregon right in the middle of ninth grade didn’t help matters. But as one who had just started discovering the glories of Shakespeare and some of the language’s greatest authors, I was angered when my new English teacher replaced the reading of Great Expectations with a forgettable angsty novel, and then skimmed over Romeo and Juliet, assuring us that he’d give us “a Cliffs’ Notes version of it so that you’ll never have to worry about Shakespeare again.”
I didn’t return to high school after that year.
Again, sign up at Dispatches from Biblioll College to follow along.
During the Dickens Club, by the way, I wrote about Bleak House, (twice), Barnaby Rudge (which we all loved very much), David Copperfield (it is a Carlylean book), and Martin Chuzzlewit (which has many dull parts, but some of Dickens’s best humour).
And Zena Hitz, a St. John’s tutor, appeared on The Common Reader podcast, to talk about reading the Great Books.
Good luck. I am a class away from completing the online MALA graduate program. It’s tough enough to do with a group in class and organized assigned readings. I would imagine much tougher to do on your own. There are a lot of really challenging works (Kant!) but it sounds like you are cut out for it. Will be interested to follow your progress.
Wow 🤩 fantastic idea. Thanks for sharing the post. Not sure I am ready for this but will certainly have the list close to me to choose wisely my readings.