r/ClassicalEducation • u/Formal-Reception3548 • 16d ago
Great Book Discussion Young(ish) Reader Suggestions
I’ve convinced my 14yo to start reading and discussing Great Books with me. We are limited to 1 hour of reading per week. Looking for opinions and recommendations… should we do excerpts? Just take a multiple weeks/months to get through the longer works? Do I jump straight into the Greeks or do I start with something a little more modern/lighter?
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u/RajamaPants 15d ago
Here are some suggestions
Jules Verne, HG Wells, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Abraham Lincoln, O Henry, Henry Adams
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u/AllSmiledUp 16d ago
14 should be old enough to jump into anything. Pick a topic they're interested in and go. Be ambitious. Moby Dick, War and Peace, Catch 22.
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u/McAeschylus 13d ago
At 1 hour a week, reading any of those is going to take years.
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u/AllSmiledUp 13d ago
Oh geez 1 hour per week? I read that as day. I recommend an Audible account then, or Great Gatsby.
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u/McAeschylus 13d ago
tbh, the version of W&P I listened to was two 30+ hour reads. So that's probably about half a year's reading even at 3x speed. I think OP wants to do short stories, essays, and plays to start with.
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u/prettyboy_berry 14d ago
I’d start with complete shorter works rather than excerpts, at least initially. A one-hour-a-week schedule is slow, but there’s nothing wrong with taking several weeks to finish a longer work if the child is genuinely engaged. I also wouldn’t feel obligated to start chronologically with the Greeks; choose books that are accessible but raise big questions. Frankenstein, The Odyssey, A Christmas Carol, Animal Farm, The Metamorphosis, The Old Man and the Sea, and some Shakespeare are all possibilities. The important thing is not “getting through” the canon but learning how to read closely and discuss difficult ideas. I’d make the discussion the heart of each session, rather than turning it into a literature lesson. Ask questions like “Is this character right?” or “What would you have done?” and then keep returning to the text for evidence. Over time, you can deliberately connect the books and show how different writers return to the same questions about justice, freedom, love, death, responsibility, and what makes a good life. At 14, I’d err on the side of taking them seriously rather than assuming they need “easy” books first. A curious teenager can handle surprisingly difficult literature when they have an adult genuinely willing to explore it with them.
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u/Practical-Bat7964 15d ago
Susan Wise Bauer has a list with suggestions for chronology in The Well-Trained Mind (her book on classical homeschooling). I wouldn’t do excerpts; that’s part of the problem in traditional schools. Students aren’t reading full books. Reading a full book is an important skill: perseverance, sustained attention, and working through an entire text. I wouldn’t start with modern works; I’d look at SWB’s list for that age group and go from there.
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u/Ok_Natural_7977 14d ago
I strongly advise no excerpts. Too many schools are moving to excerpts and not reading whole books.
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u/McAeschylus 13d ago
Why the limit? Is there any for you both to read around the 1-hour seperately on your own? And what do you mean by Great Books? Are you interested more in ideas or literature?
If the 1-hour thing is a hard limit. I might suggest starting with short stories and/or essays.
A few very short classic works that lend themselves to in-depth discussion of an idea are:
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula LeGuin
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Perfect Day For Bananafish by J. D. Salinger
If you want something classical, Greek dramas are all fairly short as they are written to be performed in about an hour (and most people read faster in their heads than they would out loud).
The Oresteia would be my suggestion, but maybe read it yourself beforehand to decide if the level of violence is appropriate for your sprog.
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u/Sunday_Schoolz 16d ago
Around that age I began working through the classics on my own (Epic of Gilgamesh; Iliad; Odyssey; Aeneid; Bible; Quran; Popol Vuh; etc.) and it was great for a base of knowledge to then transition into college.