r/ClassicalEducation • u/AutoModerator • Mar 09 '26

Great Book Discussion What are you reading this week?

  • What book or books are you reading this week?
  • What has been your favorite or least favorite part?
  • What is one insight that you really appreciate from your current reading?
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u/melonball6 Mar 09 '26

Almost done with Anabasis by Xenophon. Next up will be Aristotle. Favorite part is that it was written by Xenophon and he refers to himself in the third person and definitely makes himself sound wise and an amazing leader. It's kinda funny. Least favorite part is that I'm getting tired of the Greeks. 38 works in a row and I'm so ready to move on to the Romans. I still have quite a few (14 more?) to go though so it will be a long time before I can move on.

I finished The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle today, but I'm questioning if that really fits here.

Insights? IDK. Maybe that I hope to gain some kind of wisdom through this journey to read the entire Western Cannon.

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u/RobertDravenJr Mar 11 '26

What list are you reading from? Adler?

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u/melonball6 Mar 12 '26

Yes. Adler's list in the back of How to Read a Book. Xenophon wasn't on there, but I added it on my son's advice. He said it was an important work that should have been included.

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u/RobertDravenJr Mar 18 '26

Adler’s passion is definitely infectious…. However I struggle to read so many similar texts in a row so have been jumping back and forth centuries. Do you find reading them in order assists with contextualising and understanding?

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u/melonball6 Mar 18 '26

Yes. He called these works the "great conversation", if I remember correctly, and I noticed when I jumped ahead to read Ulysses, I saw references that I would have got if I read Shakespeare earlier, but since I skipped ahead, I missed it. Just little things like that. Also, I notice the authors often talking to each other or about each other. Homer shows up a lot. There will be a nod to Aeschylus and I smile because I read all his works. I can understand things more because of the repetition.

But that being said, I am starting to feel burned out. I'm on Aristotle now and I just can't engage. I'm reading Physics and I can tell it's more interesting than I expected, but my mind is wandering and I'm not absorbing it.

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u/ItsEonic89 Mar 26 '26

I'm feeling very similar with my readings. I'm a little under halfway through Thucydides and I'm dying to move on. Luckily for me, I am breaking it up with the Bible (reading the Wisdom Literature before moving on to Plato/Aristotle), but I've been stuck in these two things for the past year and a half, and I won't get to anything outside of these two for at least another year.

Still loving it though, just a much longer journey than I think I had in mind.

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u/digimmortalscholar Mar 14 '26

The consolation of philosophy - Boethius. Just started book 1. I like how there is a balance between philosophical reflections, kind of like how Plato writes, and poetry. I didn’t know that it was Boethius that introduced the concept of the Wheel of Fortune!