AIBU to feel uneducated after coming across this list of 'Great Books' that HIGH SCHOOL students are meant to have finished??

[HopefulAnnie]

www.welltrainedmind.com/great-books/

Website is called Well Trained Mind as well haha!

I have read maybe 12 books here and have barely heard of the rest. I can't believe this is a high school reading list, I feel so thick but these books seem somehow advanced to me.

I'm going to try and start from the 9th grade and read a couple and work my way up.

How many of these books have you guys read?

The Mabinogion is in medieval Welsh. Tricky.

I also think it's a wanky list, as LRD puts it.

The post refers specifically to the "classical" student. Today, very few state schools teach classics. So unless the student is going to read this stuff - Aristotle, Virgil etc - off their own bat, then they're just not going to get read. I can't imagine the average teenager getting much out of those books anyway - you might as well wait to the age when you're going to find them interesting. I read some Virgil when I studied O-level Latin and I didn't find it anything but dull.

Also: it's very US-centric. Also: it's very male-centric.

Also: the 1850 to present day list is pretty random. Why on earth would you tell students to read The Return of the Native rather than Middlemarch, for example?

I have a feeling they're doing it all in translation, somehow.

hack - yes, it is really male-centric!

I was so busy thinking of the wankyness I didn't notice. Especially that medieval/early Modern section. What about:

• Christine de Pizan
• Margery Kempe
• Julian of Norwich
• Marie de France?

I just noticed Of Mice and Men isn't on there, and Austen is. GCSE English teachers take note!

Having now read the explanation before the list, I can see that it's not a general 'You really should read this' article, as people have pointed out. There are plenty of lists usually on Facebook quizzes which are aimed more at the general reader. I think the BBC did one for its Good Reads project a few years ago. That might be closer to reality for most people.

BBC Reading Challenge

That list has its issues, mind. Dan Brown, anyone?

I agree it is perhaps more aspirational than realistic?

I have read most of the Greek ones as I did Classical Civ at uni, but without context I think they would be bewildering and they are heavy going. My degree is in Literary Studies and I haven't read more than half of the later texts. I may have to start now!

You didn't read the Faerie Queene with delight and enthusiasm aged 18, name?

Colour me shocked. I long for a parallel universe where he finished the full 24 books.

Said no English Lit student ever.

What a weird, weird list. That 9th grade list (what age would that actually translate to?) is almost guaranteed to put children off reading for life.

I bet there's very few educated people who've read all of those. Especially by the time they were 18 or 19. A lot of the books on there won't get touched on in a typical education.

And seconding comments about the daftness of the list being ordered chronologically rather than by complexity of the reading material.

The BBC one does have Enid Blyton's The Faraway Tree collection to counteract the complete works of Shakespeare....

Although I find it a bit surreal seeing those two in the same reading challenge list!

lol@ ain't nobody got time for that

The thing about the BBC one is that the BBC apparently never drew up such a list. Neither did it say that most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books. Yet this slightly ridiculous list, with the BBC attribution, has been cited all over the place for years. Makes me wonder if it's a sinister plot by people who hate the BBC...

I do read this and think I wasted my teens, though, does anyone else?

All that free time sitting around doing fuck all. I had no responsibilities. I could have sat in the library all day and read everything going, and then I'd be able to laze around now.

I have only read 47 and I do consider myself reasonably well read. Many of them were read at university, however, as part of my degrees and I doubt very much I would have got much out of them during my high school years.

I agree with many of the people saying this list is out of touch with the present day, the realities of high school education and the multi-cultural world we live in.

Really, hackmum? Oops.

Not to mention the fact that women write very influential books too.

all for the classics but a lot of this stuff is very inaccessible. And classics can get dated; the ghastly Pride and Prejudice always comes up despite the awful characters and terrible messages. Let's move on from Austen, shall we?

the 'Twelve Caesars' in translation is very readable, as of course are Graves' Claudius books. A far better way into Roman times.

no science fiction from the great 1950s (or later), no British history (admittedly this is an American list), no modern classics because good books are still being written... Lazy list.

Has anybody else had a look around that site that has the list of classics? It seems to be run by two home educators (both women, surprisingly) so it's all about how you home educate your child in classics. Probably they're trying to make some point about the superiority of home education to make the rest of us mortals who opt for the state system (where, if my DD is typical, they only read two books: Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies, and then under duress) inadequate.

I'm still struggling (geddit?) to see the relevance of Mein Kampf to a Classical Education. Historical political tracts can sometimes be worth reading, but least having The Communist Manifesto on your bookshelves is unlikely to have your dinner guests worried you might lock them in the cellar.