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On Monday 6/15, I'm hosting a workshop to kick off a reading group for classic essays: RSVP here.

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My personal reading syllabus

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Here are three maxims that shaped why and how I built the syllabus below:

  • You become your syllabus. An essay writer should read differently from a general reader. Every inspiring quote becomes a seed that could launch an essay, or at least be woven into one. This syllabus is an attempt to shape the books that I want to shape me. I've organized the book into four genres (and each has subdomains): I read Essays to understand the form, since that's the same form I'm creating with; I read History so that a literary curator can help me build maps of people and concepts across different disciplines; I read Non-Fiction to go deep on the ideas I want to write more essays on; and I read Fiction to understand the different emotions and moods that words can render (also, fiction teaches allegory, which is about embedding concepts into tangible symbols; I imagine DFW is the essay writer he is because he was primarily a fiction writer.)

  • Converse with the authors. A Montaigne essay is often filled with dozens of quotes. His essays likely originate from his commonplace book, his collected quotes from Seneca, Plutarch, Epicurius, Augustine, etc. I've been reading on Kindle for two reasons: (1) because when my daughter is sleeping on me, it's much easier to read one-handed; (2) all my highlights get synced form Kindle to Readwise to my own app. This makes it easy to resurface highlights and write short, original essays in response to them. They're all gathered on my website. This helps enforce the idea that it's not about having read the book, but about using the book as a way to inspire original writing. And of course, by writing about and in response to books, I remember them much better.

  • Non-linear reading. Since the end goal is to read to produce writing, I don't necessarily need to finish all 121 books here or go in any particular order. For many of the books in Histories, I'm reading a chapter per month over 2 years. For some works in Non-Fiction, I've done an inspectional read and have selected just a handful of chapters that I think are most relevant to me. Generally, there are many textbooks running in parallel, and then each month includes one work each from Essays, Non-Fiction, and Fiction. I built a "syllabuilder app" to plot out what was possible to read in a given month (which is why I track page numbers below). This month I have 19 books I'm reading simultaneously. In any given day I might jump around 3-4 books. Overall it's less than 1,200 pages per month, or 40 per day, which matches a graduate level syllabus (probably 60-90 minutes per day of reading). I'd say this is like a reading list for a Master of Liberal Arts with a focus on the essay, moral philosophy, and civilizational thinking. This is roughly 6 semesters worth of reading, so it can be done in 2-3 years. The goal is to "finish" this by the 2028 election (acknowledging that I have permission to stop any book if it's not fruitful).

I. ESSAYS

1a) Essay Books

1b) Anthologies & Criticism

II. HISTORIES

2a) Humanities

2b) Civics

2c) Spirit

III. NON-FICTION

3a) Virtues and Ethics

3b) Psyche and Attention

3c) Craft and Education

3d) Politics & Economics

3e) Technology and AI

IV) FICTION

4a) Modern Fiction

4b) Classic Fiction

4c) Science Fiction

Footnotes

  1. (3 units: Nature=115p, Vol I=170p, Vol II=150p) ↩

  2. (selected 230p) ↩

  3. (5U I=15p; 1580=35p; 1900=56p; '60=53p; '90=60p; 219p) ↩

  4. (In+F,Ad/Lm/Hz,Bk/Brg,Th/Bl/L=4u56p/m, 224p) ↩

  5. Books I–III (eudaimonia/virtue), Book VI (phronesis, practical wisdom), Books VIII–IX (friendship), and Book X (contemplation), 2019 (140p) ↩

  6. Ch 1-5,9,14-18, 1981 (176p) ↩

  7. (1-5,15-22 = 225p) ↩

  8. (The Hedgehog and the Fox, Two Concepts of Liberty, Historical Inevitability, The Counter-Enlightenment) ↩

  9. (1851-1854 = ~115p ) ↩

  10. (2,4,5,6,11,12=235p) ↩

  11. (406p, so break into 2 unit cards for 203 words each, Parts I-II and Parts III-IV) ↩

  12. (Ch 1,2,4,6,9,11,14,16,18 = 221 pages ↩

  13. (245p) ↩

  14. (I, parts of III-V, VI-VIII = 274p) ↩

  15. (first half = 248p)) ↩

  16. (excerpts at 200p) ↩

  17. (excerpts at 150p ↩

  18. ("The Dead", "Araby" "The Sisters" "A Painful Case" "Eveline" "Counterparts" "A Little Cloud" "Clay") " (111p) ↩

  19. (Hills Like White Elephants, A Clean Well-Lighted Place, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Indian Camp, Big Two-Hearted River, Old Man at the Bridge, A Day's Wait, Now I Lay Me, The Gambler the Nun and the Radio, Cross-Country Snow (104p) ↩

  20. (The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, Flowering Judas, Theft, Noon Wine, Pale Horse Pale Rider = 135p) ↩

  21. (The Bear Came Over the Mountain, Family Furnishings, = 68pp) ↩

  22. Break It Down, Story, The Thirteenth Woman, Kafka Cooks Dinner, Varieties of Disturbance, We Miss You & selected shorts = 80p ↩

  23. (The Death of Ivan Illyich, Father Sergius, Alyosha the Pot, Hadji Murat = 232 ↩

  24. (Notes from the Underground, The Peasant Marey, A Gentle Creature, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man = 176p) ↩

  25. (A Boring Story, The Darling, The Man in a Case, Gooseberries = 86p) ↩

  26. Harrison Bergeron, Welcome to the Monkey House, Long Walk to Forever, Miss Temptation, All the Kings Horses, Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog, New Dictionary, More Stately Mansions, Report on the Barnhouse Effect, The Euphio Question, Unready to Wear, The Kid Nobody Could Handle, EPICAC, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow = 168p) ↩

  27. (The Library of Babel, Funes the Memorious, The Garden of Forking Paths, The Imortal, Death and the Compass = 64p) ↩

  28. Bloodchild, Speech Sounds, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, Amnesty = 115p) ↩

  29. (Story of Your Life, Understand, Hell Is the Absence of God = 100p) ↩

  30. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, The Wife's Story, Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight, Nine Lives, Vaster Than Empires and More Slow = 150p ↩

  31. (Alphinland, Revenant, Dark Lady, The Dead Hand Loves You = 130p) ↩

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