#greatbooks — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #greatbooks, aggregated by home.social.
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#TannerGreer: "I’ll take a stab. The concept of the Great Books was invented in the 1910s and 1920s and is not some civilizational tradition as often claimed; the implicit version of western civilization it teaches is a false one, giving the Greeks too much credit and erasing the Germanic contribution wholesale;
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So, the article was behind a paywall, but damn! More of this, please...!
From the #ChronicleOfHigherEd - St. John’s College Is Weird. Maybe Yours Should Be More Like It.
Its #GreatBooks approach is #anachronistic, and spreading
By Beth McMurtrie
"Seeking to understand the unique culture of learning that distinguishes St. John’s College, The Chronicle of Higher Education's Beth McMurtrie traveled to the Annapolis campus in January, where she watched 13 sophomores and two tutors gather around a table in McDowell Hall to discuss Dante's Purgatorio.
"Tutor Emily Langston opened that evening's seminar by reading a passage about Dante seeking freedom, and then asked the room a deceptively simple question: In what sense is he free? And has his understanding of freedom changed?
" 'The students opened their marked-up paperbacks, flipping pages as they considered the questions. There was not a laptop or a cell phone in sight. Then they began an increasingly rare activity on college campuses today. They discussed, for more than two hours, a complicated work and the deeper questions it presents.'
"McMurtrie also spoke with multiple Johnnies and tutors, weaving their reflections throughout the resulting profile while exploring how the college's Great Books-based pedagogy has become a model for other institutions—and how a time-tested classical education can be revolutionary in modern times."
More about #SaintJohns #GreatBooks #Curriculum
St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum
"St. John’s College is best known for its reading list and the Great Books curriculum that was adopted in 1937. While the list of books has evolved over the last century, the tradition of all students reading foundational texts of Western civilization remains. The reading list at St. John’s includes classic works in #philosophy, #literature, political science, psychology, #history, religion, economics, math, chemistry, physics, biology, #astronomy, #music, #language, and more.
To see the reading list organized by class year and subject matter, scroll down. Or view a simple list organized alphabetically by author. Learn more about classes at St. John’s and the subjects students study."
https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/undergraduate/great-books-reading-list
#ReadABook #NoSmartphones #Education #FoundationalTexts #ClassicalEducation #NoAI #AnapolisMD -
Someone at SNL has been reading @scalzi , they slipped some dairy disaster into a Kaiju skit, but no criminal empires with or without cats
Maybe the dolphins in the Weekend Update ...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K86uKcbc__E
In this deep dive, AI breaks down the "Physics of Opposites" that drives the narrative of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. At its heart, the novel is a collision between the Christ-like innocence of Prince Myshkin and the destructive, earthly passions of Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna.
#Dostoevsky #TheIdiot #ClassicLiterature #BookAnalysis #RussianLit #Philosophy #PrinceMyshkin #LiteraryCriticism #BookTube #GreatBooks #Existentialism #LiteratureDeepDive
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25 Modern Classics That’ll Actually Wreck You (In the Best Way)
25 modern classic books that belong on every reading list, from gut-punch literary fiction to genre-bending thrillers. Cormac McCarthy, Zadie Smith, Gillian Flynn, and more. These aren't dusty assignments, they're the books people are still talking about. Here's your no-BS guide to what's actually worth reading. -
"If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity. So blow your nose."
--Truman Capote, "In Cold Blood" -
A Sense of Doubt blog post-4040 - Did Alzheimer's Affect Terry Pratchett's Discworld? https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-sense-of-doubt-blog-post-4040-did.html #Discworld #Alzheimers #writing #GreatBooks #TerryPratchett
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If It’s Such Great Literature, Why Does It Only Have 3.5 Stars?
"Do “mediocre” Goodreads ratings represent a lukewarm response to some titles, or reflect a readership passionately divided into polarised factions?"
#Literature #ClassicLit #GreatBooks #LiteraryCriticism #GoodReads #Ratings #Books https://grrlscientist.medium.com/about-those-3-star-books-that-are-considered-to-be-great-literature-4a9c1119b563
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If It’s Such Great Literature, Why Does It Only Have 3.5 Stars?
"Do “mediocre” Goodreads ratings represent a lukewarm response to some titles, or reflect a readership passionately divided into polarised factions?"
#Literature #ClassicLit #GreatBooks #LiteraryCriticism #GoodReads #Ratings #Books https://grrlscientist.medium.com/about-those-3-star-books-that-are-considered-to-be-great-literature-4a9c1119b563
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If It’s Such Great Literature, Why Does It Only Have 3.5 Stars?
"Do “mediocre” Goodreads ratings represent a lukewarm response to some titles, or reflect a readership passionately divided into polarised factions?"
#Literature #ClassicLit #GreatBooks #LiteraryCriticism #GoodReads #Ratings #Books https://grrlscientist.medium.com/about-those-3-star-books-that-are-considered-to-be-great-literature-4a9c1119b563
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>> The notion that students should mainly be acquiring “skills” or “competencies,” so prevalent in high-level discussions of education policy and in ranking school systems, rings hollow to anyone who has ever cared enough to become a teacher: one teaches because one has fallen in love and, like any lover, one wants to shout it from the rooftops, because in loving something we come to see that it is good, that it is something a person should want for themselves. <<
https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/the-left-case-for-great-books/
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#GreatBooks Road to Reality written by Roger Penrose bit.ly/2J92N5X?utm_ca… #Mathematics #Semantics #BrainFunction #HumanReasoning #SharedFacts
The Road to Reality - Wikipedi... -
'He turned in the doorway. "What, son?"
"How could they do it, how could they?"
"I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it - seems like only the children weep. Good night."'
--Author Harper Lee as Atticus Finch talking to his son Jem about the conviction of Tom Robinson in "To Kill a Mockingbird" -
I'm reading @juergen_hubert 's books, starting with "Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles". His translation of German folklore to English, complete with commentary and footnotes, is utterly fabulous.
As someone who's read a lot of folklore books, across multiple cultures, I highly recommend "Sunken Castles" for writers and lovers of folklore alike. Solid research, notes on where the story is set in modern geography, great context, witty asides all make for a very engaging, inspiring read. The stories come to life from his carefully light, detailed approach.
This book is helping me create myths and folktales for my own fictional world. I'm having a blast reading it!
Print:
https://thescribblinglion.com/product/sunken-castles-evil-poodles-jurgen-hubert/
Ebook:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08CL2HS28/
#folklore #GermanToEnglish #translations #selfpublished #folklore_translations #writing #history #GhostStories #GreatBooks #BookRecs
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Thomas Jefferson thought of policing in terms of “constables.” Now police are bristling with military technology and are a standing army that occupies the United States. The irony: consider that Jefferson thought that even a national military was unnecessary. #Jefferson #GreatBooks
There is no “low” hometown. There is HSAC. The sirens you hear off in the distance are an agent’s yapping dog that is just staring around to take a bite out of our kids! Starving people are called criminals while jackboot Responders collect tax as comfortably protected military child-molesters. They get all the tech; we get all the poverty. What we need is not Federal slimming so much as a reduction in the predatory and wasteful spending that goes to abusive local departments.
Tangles, WebLoc, #geofencing #FusionCenters
Carpenter V. United States (2018)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Advisory_Council
(DHS site)
https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/dhs-8th-anniversary-fact-sheet.pdfbanks more dangerous than "standing armies" as if that was a given
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0053 -
Love, Sex and the Alien Apocalypse launches this Friday! Order your copy now! #greatreads #scifi #sciencefiction #greatbooks #funreads https://www.amazon.com/Love-Alien-Apocalypse-First-Contact-ebook/dp/B0DML9FCHZ
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I'm on a winning streak; 70% of my book choices have been in the "wow, would recommend" category over the last two months
Normally this hovers in the 33-45% range.
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@kdnyhan @ProfSimonFisher
This was a great book on eels!
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-book-of-eels-patrik-svensson
#greatbooks -
Author Elizabeth C. Bunce wins Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award for In Myrtle Peril
In 2021 her novel Premeditated Myrtle won the Edgar Award at the 75th annual honors (awarded by the Mystery Writers of America. That year she was also a finalist for both the Agatha Award... #bookstodon #mystery #awardwinningnovel #greatbooks #literature #ecbunce @ecbunce #KillerNashville #SilverFalchionAward #2023BookAwards @KillerNashville
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My favorite quote for today:
“Politics is a matter of choices, and a man doesn't set up the choices himself. And there is always a price to make a choice. You know that. You've made a choice, and you know how much it cost you. There is always a price.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men -
While I think the gravitational force to #RightWing extremism is powerful, there are some who I think are persuadable. Minds do change. How? A great book to read is “How Minds Change” by David McRaney. I’d say it was the most meaningful book I read last year
I’ll check out “The Wave”. I’m not familiar with Morton Rhue
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It's time for #PrideMonth and great #reads! Check out these #scifi, #fantasy, #urbanfantasy, #spaceopera, #dystopian, and #superhero #books!
#LGBTQIA
#readerscommunity
#greatbooks
https://books.bookfunnel.com/pridesffreads/7we3y806cq -
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "You're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
--Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932
