Literature
Trying to do a literature curriculum. Currently very much in the planning stage! Less curriculum and more general reading is my reading page. The list of books themselves is here.
Posts about this:
- Figuring out a literature curriculum 19th May 2025 Introductory brain dump
- Romanticism roundup 15th January 2026 Debriefing my Romantics reading list
Why, I ask myself
What is it I want from this?
- I just like books. I want to read as many good books as possible
- I like history. Books are history, and history is in books
- I want to better understand books by reading other books
- I want to better understand books as a thing. Is this literary criticism?
Also, books, as a project, is a lifelong thing. There's no limit to this.
Putting together a curriculum
Some starting resources: Great English Literature syllabus is useful because it's explicitly a self-directed curriculum and it's not just a list - it's the how and the why. The Great Books curriculum from St John's college is sort of the gold standard it seems? It's a lot. Also I'm very much incorporating A non-Western canon: What would a list of humanity's 100 greatest writers look like?. The Hardcore Literature youtube channel has a lot of 'how to read this book'. Some non-fiction and biography particularly: How I read by J Marriott.
The list of books got waaay too long to be on this page. I might break it up into smaller sections but for now it's here.
Notes and questions to myself
- Ancient Literature (aka Classics, but more)
- Literary criticism broadly and specific disciplines (Marxist/feminist/eco)
- Does linguistics and language fall under this?
- Should I use time periods or movements? Do the movements just fall under the time period?
- Do I want to focus on some works/authors particularly? Jane Austen, Brontës (cheating, have a headstart)
- Look into the formation of and history of genres?
- Where does stuff like ergodic literature or fictional biographies fit in?
- How to read
- Having Derrida flashbacks
- In chronological order, ignoring medium? (poetry etc)
- is this going to incorporate all the reading lists? They are mostly literature after all?
- how to incorporate my interest in scenes, a lot of which are literary, but also other mediums within the scene / movement / genre. When I've done smaller scale versions I've also listened to music and looked at art
Other resources
- Ex-Classics and Neglected Books
- Digital Dante
- edX Literature courses - they've got a course on the Tale of Genji
- Hardcore Literature youtube
- Luminarium
- Internet Classics Archive
- Imaginary Inpho is a Bear blogger following a 'classical education' reading list
- Intro to 20th century Modernist Literature
Last year I did Ancient Masterpieces of World Literature from HarvardX and there's also Masterpieces of World Literature and Modern Masterpieces of World Literature. Does the general 'masterpieces' just use bits from the ancient and the modern? Guess I'll find out.
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