a civilizing list
Wednesday 
around evening time 
Mystie
On Scriptorium Daily, John Mark Reynolds posts his short list — as a college professor — of must-read books. Here’s the list, and * means I’ve read it, + means I own it, and ^ means I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of it. Wow, this is really pretty embarrassing, since I am an English major and all:
Iliad, *+Odyssey, History of the Peloponnesian War, Ethics (Aristotle), Metaphysics (Aristotle), ^Meno, Republic, ^Timaeus, *+Oedipus Rex, Bacchae, Orestia, On Friendship and On Duties (Cicero), *+Aeneid, Meditations, History of the Church (Eusebius), Confessions, City of God, Histories (Tacitus), Consolation of Philosophy, Summa Theologica (selections!), *+Divine Comedy [only Inferno], *+Canterbury Tales, *The Prince, +The Institutes (selections from Calvin), *+Shakespeare (Hamlet, Lear, As You Like It, Henry V, Julius Caesar), *+Fairy Queen (at least Book I) [only Book I and I must insist upon Faerie], Leviathan, ^Second Treatise on Government, ^Pensees.
Ten Works of You Should Read to be Civilized:
*+1-3. Some poetry by Donne, Blake, Wordsworth, and Dickenson (counts as 3!)
*+4. Pride and Prejudice
*5. Tale of Two Cities [I listened to it]
*6. Jane Eyre
7. Moby Dick [never]
8. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [I'm not sure if reading it at 9 or 10 counts...I don't remember it hardly at all]
9. Brothers Karamazov
10. Anna Karenina
Modern Top 10 (US student):
*1. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
*+2. Federalist Papers
3. Reflections on the Revolution in France [this has been on my "want to read" radar for awhile]
4. Wealth of Nations
5. Communist Manifesto
6. Origin of Species
^7. On the Genealogy of Morals
^8. Civilization and Its Discontents
^9. No Exit
*10. Lincoln’s speeches (especially Gettysburg, which should be memorized, and the Second Inaugural) [not much of a fan of Lincoln myself]
(MCL)
with 
(personal library)
