Reading

After several years' labor collecting and cross-referencing my own version of "the books a well-read person should encounter before they die" I finally completed not only the master list, but a clustering effort to bring them into a coherent program. The program begins in January 2027 for me.

(Thanks to my friend Emma I might release the list in printed form — protecting the 10-year aspect but also not tying it to an anchor year, so that others could use it, too. And I'm happy to send you the full list, which presently resides in a multi-tabbed spreadsheet.)

The list is deeply informed by the Western Canon but includes a lot of books from non-Western traditions and books that have been published as recently as the 2020s that feel significant in the present moment. Also, it includes books specific to Catholic thought that would otherwise fall outside a classics program, but which I intend explore for my own spiritual enrichment.

The books are divided across nine years of primary reading, with a 10th year of re-reading in light of "big questions" and how those books answer those questions at different periods of time.

Each year is marked by a theme:

Each month within a year contains a cluster of related books that touch on the annual theme. For example, for 2027:

And individual books filter into each cluster, as for the first six months of 2027:

Of the books in the list, I've already read maybe 10 percent of them. And I'll continue to read other books, like with the bookstore's book club as well as with my spiritual reading through this year's engagement with the Catechism and the Office of Readings.

Nonfiction Survey

In addition to reading the canonical texts, in parallel I'm working through a 24-month survey of the "best" one-volume introductions to various disciplines within the arts, sciences, and humanities.

That list looks like this: