3 Ways to Systematically Read the Great Books

Approaching the great books of the West (or East for that matter) is a daunting task, especially for those with little experience in the arts and sciences that regularly sample this vast body of works. While there are a variety of lists of great books – all of them instructive to peruse in themselves – there are few guides offered to the prospective reader on systematic plans for tackling such lists. Admittedly, some of the classic book lists are so long, they might as well simply point the interested reader to the Library of Congress. The goal of a systematic approach to reading is primarily to 1) order and 2) condense all the potential works into a coherent study. The ordering of works is instructive in itself as it makes apparent the ideological trends from age to age or across themes. Condensing the readings, including omitting whole works or selecting only parts of works, is vital for both concentrating the reading on key themes and for a practical awareness of the reader’s time.

Here, I a provide a guide to the various methods of approaching such lists and the great books as a whole. An underlying assumption is that one is attempting to work through some pre-defined list of books, rather than some nebulous, unending goal.

Chronological Reading

The first method and most obvious route through the great books is to start with those books written first, read them in their entirety, and progress through increasingly modern works. The chronological approach is a natural assumption. Most readers possess some knowledge of where major ideas stand today in the culture and can identify in their first readings the seeds of many modern elements.

This approach to reading the great books has the following advantages.

1. Chronological reading familiarizes the reader with each author by in-depth study, as works by the same author are read together, or nearly so.
2. The reader develops a good sense of the work’s place in history/time.
3. The reader understands how a work interacted with contemporaries of the author.

Some of the disadvantages of this approach include the following.

1. Progress through history may be slow, potentially resulting in many years of separation between reading older and newer texts.
2. A wide variety of subjects are read, purely dictated by chronology rather than any cohesive focus on a subject. Reading purely chronologically is a shotgun approach in terms of subject-matter, but does give the reader a better sense of the relative development of multiple subjects.

Cyclical Reading

An alternative to pure chronological reading is what I call “cyclical” reading, which is reading a subset of books chronologically, but returning to the beginning again to read another subset of books chronologically. For example, if there are 30 books one would like to read, he or she would divide the set into three subsets, each which roughly samples across the time periods represented in the larger set. In this way, by reading one subset at a time, the reader visits each time period three times over the course of their reading journey instead of only once.

This reading method has several advantages.

1. Cyclical reading practices spaced-repetition, a well-known learning method for better retaining information.
2. The reader doesn’t feel the slow pace of chronological reading.
3. The reader understands the progression of ideas fairly well, but not as clearly as in purely chronological reading.
4. The reader will understand a work’s place in history with a bird’s eye view, knowing (upon the second or third cycle) what comes before and after a particular work.
5. When forming subsets for each cycle, the reader can order and rearrange (albeit to a very limited degree) the subjects and themes he or she will progress through by deciding which works to group or spread between different cycles. For example, given three works of early philosophy, one could place one in each cycle, or all three in one cycle heavy on philosophy.

However, it also has some disadvantages, too.

1. The chronological development of ideas is not as clear to the reader.
2. The reader will have a harder time recalling the specifics of the historical time period a work resides in.

Thematic Reading

The third type of systematic reading I think worth consideration is really an extreme of the second. Readers will divide the works into subsets according to the principal subject matter of the work and read through them cyclically. Here, each cycle will cover a different subject. For example, Cycle 1 might cover philosophy; Cycle 2 could cover history; Cycle 3 would cover fiction, etc.

Thematic reading has the following advantages, many of which it shares with cyclical reading, though perhaps to varying degrees.

1. Thematic reading practices spaced-repetition, a well-known learning method for better retaining information.
2. The reader doesn’t feel the slow pace of chronological reading.
3. The reader understands the progression of ideas fairly well, but not as clearly as in purely chronological reading.
4. The reader will understand a work’s place in history with a bird’s eye view, knowing (upon the second or third cycle) what comes before and after a particular work.
5. Notably, the reader can dedicate a whole cycle to a particular subject, likely achieving the most in-depth course of study. The connections between ideas within a subject will be the most clear.

The disadvantages of thematic reading include:

1. The chronological development of ideas is not as clear to the reader.
2. The reader will have a harder time recalling the specifics of the historical time period a work resides in.
3. Notably, the reader never returns to the same subject again after leaving the cycle dedicated to that subject. This may result in lower recall of the particulars on that subject.

Partial Readings vs. Whole Works

Most readers feel the need to read books in their entirety. usually stemming from a fear that they are missing something if reading only selections of works. While I’ll write a future post all about partial vs. complete readings, I want to at least point out that any of the three systematic approaches outlined above may be completed with partial readings; reading whole works, especially extraordinarily long ones like Gibbon, is not a necessity. Particularly, thematic reading may be best accomplished with selections of works, as this will focus the attention of the reader on the most important and instructive parts of the book. Selections serve to condense the readings to a faster-paced course while maintaining much of the depth of the full work. For example, I think the general reader has much more to gain from the first 38 chapters of Gibbon than the remaining ones, at least for the western reader.

Conclusions

Cyclical reading appears to be the most predominant method proposed by various book reading programs, such as 10 Year Reading Plan of the Great Books of the Western World and suggestions by Susan Wise Bauer. Nonetheless, many find the arduous but rewarding journey of pure chronological reading rewarding, and I believe anyone keenly interested in particular subjects may prefer the focus provided by thematic reading.

Until next time, read on.