Reading the Great Books

The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me about Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else by Christopher R. Beha

Chris Beha sets himself the task of reading straight through the 50 plus volume set of the Harvard Classics, compiled and originally published in 1909 by Charles Eliot, a long serving president of Harvard College. Beha first became acquainted with the set, referred to as the Five-Foot Shelf or the Shelf, as a child when he saw it on his grandmother's shelf. He gives the reader a chapter each month, discussing his reading, his feelings about what he's reading, what's going on with him and with his family at his parent's home in Manhattan and elsewhere. Beha discusses what makes something a classic, how such works do and don't reflect their times, and what he finds in these works. (Sometimes beauty, sometimes wisdom, sometimes utter boredom.)The book is well written, thoughtful and thought-provoking, the work of an obvious booklover. See what comprises the Harvard Classics set at Bartleby.com