I'm reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species - among the most influential books in history - and a thought occured to me.
It's interesting we, students at some point, were rarely - if ever - asked to read landmark books. Novels remained a part of the curriculum (Shakespeare, Twain, Poe etc.) but not master works by, say, Aristotle, Bacon, Dante, Weber, Descartes and a host of other great political, philosophical and historical works. Most of our knowledge of reputed works of the written thought comes in contact by way of second-hand information or secondary (and sometimes tertiary) sources.
Even in university I was never asked to read masterpieces of any sort. What I learned was explained in a text book explained by a scholar. In other words, I wasn't reading it for myself to form a true, independent opinion.
One by one, I've decided, to read books that I feel I should read as a pretend-pseudo-amateur historian.
Meh.
It's a tad tedious reading through such books anyway. Is there a movie condensing all the great books in two hours?
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