The Next Two Selections.

Dear Reader, I have been thinking about my bookgeekism blog a lot as of late.  I have had some issues go on in my personal life that caused a delay in updating.  I had also at the same time begun work on an alternate blog for my adventures in Self Education.  As I thought more and more about it I realized that I did not have the time to maintain 3 blogs: a personal one and an additional 2 related to books.  So Dear reader I have come to the decision that I am going to combine the self education blog and this blog together.

Ultimately I had planned to read The Girl In The Steel Corset  as my next book selection, but due to a recent...err restructuring of my bookshelves its currently been...for lack of better wording, misplaced.  This dear reader is an unfortunate habit of mine and could possibly explain why I own 2-3 copies of some books (the major reason for the book restructuring is so that I can used Hooked In Motions book cataloging app on my iPhone to keep track of those books that I do own.)

For now I intend to read The Epic of Gilgamesh  as it is the first book off the Lifetime Reading Plan.  I had also been reading Don Quixote, but that book has also been misplaced for the time being.  I will endeavor to finish the Epic by the end of this weekend or hopefully by the end of this week at least.  Drood, was a gift from my mother who came across it upon one of her trips to the used book store (we believe in recycling books, we give books to the used book store and pick up new ones along the way sometimes).  I've read the first few paged of Drood and will have to say that I am very interested.  Drood centers around Charles Dickens, who I will openly admit is one of my least favorite authors.  I personally have never cared for the writings we were forced to read in school and can only say the one I really enjoyed was A Tale of Two Cities.  

I've been very ...very lax in my reading, I used to read as much as possible and now it feels like I am hardly reading anymore.. I used to try and read as much as possible at work, but it's been so busy at work and I am unable to read as much as I would like. I am going to try and find ..  or at least work on putting more effort into giving myself adequate time to read and work on my self studies.

0001-The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had

So where will Bookgeekism begin this new journey at?  It begins with a book by Susan Wise Bauer.

• The Well-Educated Mind:  A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had.
• Susan Wise Bauer
• ISBN: 978-0393050943
• Released Date: 08-01-2003
• Published By: W.W. Norton & Company
• Pages 432

This text is actually comprised of 2 real parts.  The first part discusses the 4 basic parts of Bauer's technique for attaining the classical education.  The second part discusses the different genres of text she has choses, Fiction ( Literature), History, Autobiographies, Poetry and Verse.  Bauer makes interesting points and her steps are pretty basic really.  My only real issue with her approach is that she recommends for beginning that one only reads the books she recommends for 30 minutes a day, four days a week.  I did not agree as a reader this was a sufficient amount of time to delve into a book.  maybe if you are not a reader by nature and are more casual in your approach to reading that may be of more use to really help one focus on the text.  This is also more true if you have never really been exposed to critical analysis of books.   The only other fault I find with the  book, is Bauer synopsizes each of the text she recommends and gives away essential plot points.  It would be best if you only really look at the book title and author, and then which edition Bauer recommends.   She also tends to refer back to Mortimer Adler's text, How to Read a Book. ( Which I will admit I also now have sitting on my to be read pile. )  I did like this text a great deal and actually have passed it along to my mother to read and given a copy of the text to a friend to read.  I do highly recommend this book.

This book was a game changer for me in the sense that it really helped me realize that in the absence of completing college (for now)  I really needed to focus on classically educating myself so as to keep my mind acute and not let it fall into atrophy.  I (and my mother who I have also recruited in this path of self education --for she desires to better her understanding of literature)   have even begun reading the first text Bauer recommends under fiction which is Don Quixote, which I will admit has always been an intimidating book due to its sheer size, that I now find myself looking forward to reading.