Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.

A new year and a new misadventure! Well, at least it feels like a new year. Our third marriage anniversary is coming up and I am finally under the same roof as my husband. Also after fifteen years of (more or less) continuous education they tell me I've graduated and can now go on to the real world. No more exams, no more assignments, no more studying.

But what fun is that?

Finding myself a housewife with enough time on my hands to pick up any number of "lady of leisure" hobbies but not enough resources to pursue anything really interesting in the way of formal coursework, I came upon Susan Wise Bauer's The Well Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had.


Her book on homeschooling The Well Trained Mind (first her mother's work, then a shared project and now an edition that is entirely her own) is what led me to her, and liking both the content and structure of the course I figured I would like this as well. In retrospect I would have just waited for the library to get me a copy. $30 is pretty steep for a book that is, in essence, a well organized reading list, but the tips found therein are helpful and what's done is done so here we are.

Basically this blog is a bit of a journal. Not the smarmy, "Look into your mind's eye and write what inspires you!" journal but more along the original definition of the word as explained in Bauer's work, where you record your observations and reactions to the more interesting bits of the world around you which, in our case, will focus on literature. I plan to follow her reading lists as closely as possible, here and there adding in a few titles of my own (hopefully my readers ((assuming anyone out there is interested enough to read what promises to be a rather boring undertaking for the bystander)) like Austen because we will be reading quite a bit from her when her turn comes). I'll mostly follow her technique of journaling while reading through three times which is a bit of a throwback to TWTM's trivium and can be simplified into a progression of the questions what, how, and why.

On the first reading you answer the question "what". This is just the "facts" of the book without any intrusion on the part of the reader. Record quotations from the text that strike you as you go along with characters and places that appear. For more complex works you can construct a bare bones outline of the work to help keep it straight but keep this as simple as possible if you do. These posts are really more for myself than for your entertainment, and as it is a free country the blog will operate whether I'm the only reader or no so there we are.

Upon the second run through you go more in depth into the text. Perhaps "how" isn't the most exact descriptive for this stage but barring a single word cropping up in the English language that better represents what it is I'm getting at it'll have to do. While still focused mostly on what the book has to say without much commentary self will intrude, and in drafting the summaries and descriptive titles for each chapter bits and pieces of enlightenment bound up in the type will begin to emerge. We've now read the book once and will have a better understanding of what the author was poking around at so the summary will focus not so much on what is happening but how events are moving us through the story.

The last and perhaps most ambitious attempt (dear reader, I cannot faithfully promise to read every. single. book. three times through, though I will do my best) should produce just about the most understanding you'll be able to get from the book until you've gathered a bit more life experience to hand. Now we just sit back and pay attention to what we think of the story. How does it move us, can we sympathize, does this remind us of anything in our life, is it believable ... We all took eighth grade lit so I think you can follow where I'm going. I enjoy re-reading stories, but usually I wait a bit between goes. I'll probably save this step for after I've put the book down for several months so I can come at it with fresh perspective.

A note on editions of books- whenever possible read a work in its original form, no abridgments, no editing to dumb it down for the masses. If you simply cannot understand a book don't turn to a simplified copy for help. Just put it down and pick up another. If you like you can always return to it later when you've had more practice. As for translations TWEM has several suggestions for ones she prefers; you could also do a search in a literary journal for versions that are clear and still good stories despite being translated. If you plan on doing the whole three reading bit the third go round would be when I personally would try another addition.

Well then, I've told you the what and the how, but haven't said much on the part of why save that I have a bit of free time and boredom. My answer is...

Why not?

Cliche, but I like it. As for how I plan to get through so many readings of so many great, hulking works, I believe the King from Alice and Wonderland said it best.