Charles Van Doren's 10 Years Reading Plan

Table of Content

• Table of Content
• Introduction
• Reading by year
  • YEAR ONE
  • YEAR TWO
  • YEAR THREE
  • YEAR FOUR
  • YEAR FIVE
  • YEAR SIX
  • YEAR SEVEN
  • YEAR EIGHT
  • YEAR NINE
  • YEAR TEN
• Footnotes

Introduction

• This list use mostly the same rules that I used in The Great Books 10 Years Reading Plan. For books that were already chosen in GBWW reading list I will provide reference link to the entry
• The second edition of the set does ommit some works, which you can check out in the Greaterbooks website entry for this set
• I think that this list is more suitable for those who prefer chronological order (but with some newer works sprinkled in), and are more focused on literature. To quote Van Doren thoughts on his list:

  • The following reading plan is more than merely suggestive, although it is not carved in stone, either. It emphasizes classical works over recent ones, mainly because the former are less likely to be familiar, but many recent books are also on this list. There could be other books on it, replacing the ones I have chosen. But stick to my list for a while, at least, and see it if works for you.
  • For each year I have recommended that you read ten books, but sometimes I have felt that really long works should count for more than one. This means that the number of different titles is less than one hundred. The books can be read in any order desired, although for each year they are listed in chronological order, so that might be the best way to read them. For each year, the recommended books are both instructive and entertaining, according to my lights. Some years may be harder than others, but nobody is watching you. Read as much as you can and don’t spoil your pleasure by struggling to “keep up.” There is plenty of time, even if you have to spend twenty years reading these hundred books, instead of ten.

Reading by year

YEAR ONE

1. Homer, The Iliad
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 1
2. Homer, The Odyssey
   • Check GBWW, Sixth Year, 2
3. Aeschylus, The Oresteia (counts for 2)
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 2
4. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (counts for 3)
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 3
5. Shakespeare, Hamlet
   • Check GBWW, First Year, 12
6. Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
   • Critical Edition - William Davies King
7. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
   • Kindle edition

YEAR TWO

1. Euripides, Alcestis, Hippolytus, Medea, Iphigenia among the Taurian (counts for 4)
   • Check GBWW, Fourth Year, 1
2. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, Clouds, Birds (counts for 3)
   • Check GBWW, First Year, 2
3. Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale (counts for 3)
   • Much Ado about Nothing: Standard Ebooks
   • As You Like It: Check GBWW, Sixth Year, 10
   • The Winter’s Tale: Standard Ebooks

YEAR THREE

1. Herodotus, The History (selections—read as much as you can or want to)
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 4
2. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (selections)
   • Check GBWW, Third Year, 3
3. Tacitus, The Annals, The Histories (selections—read only the juicy parts)
   • The Annals: Check GBWW, Third Year, 8
   • The Histories: Check GBWW, Sixth Year, 5
4. Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates, The Symposium, The Republic (counts for 2)
   • The Trial and Death of Socrates: Check GBWW, First Year, 1
   • The Symposium: Check GBWW, Seventh Year, 2
   • The Republic: Check GBWW, First Year, 3
5. Aristotle, Poetics, Nicomachean Ethics (counts for 2)
   • Poetics: Check GBWW, Second Year, 6
   • Nicomachean Ethics: Check GBWW, First Year, 4
6. Euclid, The Elements (at least Book I)
   • Check GBWW, Third Year, 7
7. Joseph Heller, Catch 22
   • Kindle edition
8. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
   • Kindle edition

YEAR FOUR

1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 9
2. Virgil, The Aeneid (counts for 2)
   • Check GBWW, Fifth Year, 6
3. Ovid, Metamorphoses ¹
   • Metamorphoses - Stephanie McCarter
4. Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (selections)
   • Check GBWW, First Year, 6
5. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 10
6. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra (counts for 2)
   • The Merchant of Venice: Standard Ebooks
   • Othello: Check GBWW, Eighth Year, 7
   • Antony and Cleopatra: Check GBWW, Seventh Year, 11
7. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (counts for 2)
   • Standard Ebooks

YEAR FIVE

1. Augustine, Confessions
   • Check GBWW, First Year, 8
2. Aquinas, Summa Theologica (selections—counts for 2)
   • Check GBWW, Third Year, 9
3. Dante, Divine Comedy (counts for 3)
   • Check GBWW, Fifth Year, 10
4. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Cryseide (counts for 2)
   • Canterbury Tales: Check GBWW, Tenth Year, 8
   • Troilus and Cryseide: Check GBWW, Third Year, 10
5. Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
   • Check GBWW, Seventh Year, 10
6. Machiavelli, The Prince
   • Check GBWW, First year, 9

YEAR SIX

1. Bacon, Essays
   • Gutenberg
2. Molière, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself ²
   • The Misanthrope: Check GBWW, Ninth Year, 11, or you can get the edition below since it has both translations
   • The Doctor in Spite of Himself: The Misanthrope and Other Plays - Donald M. Frame
3. Blaise Pascal, Pensées
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 13
4. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 14
5. John Locke, Second Treatise, On Toleration
   • Check GBWW, First Year, 13
6. Thomas Jefferson et al., Abraham Lincoln, American State Papers (counts for 2)
7. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, On Representative Government
   • On Liberty: Check GBWW, Second Year, 19
   • On Representative Government: Check GBWW, Third Year, 15
8. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
   • Check GBWW, First Year, 19
9. J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
   • Kindle Edition

YEAR SEVEN

1. Cervantes, Don Quixote (counts for 2)
   • Check GBWW, Fifth Year, 12
2. William Congreve, The Way of the World
   • Standard Ebooks
3. Voltaire, Candide
   • Check GBWW, Second Year, 16
4. Goethe, Faust (counts for 2—maybe only selections of Part Two)
   • Part One: Check GBWW, Eighth Year, 16
   • Part Two: Check GBWW, Tenth Year, 14
5. Byron and Keats, selected poems
6. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion
   • Pride and Prejudice: Standard Ebooks
   • Persuasion: Standard Ebooks
7. Stendhal, The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma (counts for 2) ³
   • The Red and the Black: Raymond n. MacKenzie
   • The Charterhouse of Parma: John Sturrock

YEAR EIGHT

1. Claude Bernard, Introduction to Experimental Medicine
2. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
   • Check GBWW, Fifth Year, 16
3. Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers, Our Mutual Friend (counts for 2)
4. Walt Whitman, “Out of the cradle …” , “When lilacs last …”, other selected poems
5. Emily Dickinson, selected poems
6. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (skip first chapter)
7. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
   • Check GBWW, Fourth Year, 17
8. George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1984
   • Animal Farm: Check GBWW, Fifth Year, 21
9. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

YEAR NINE

1. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (counts for 2)
   • Check GBWW, Fifth Year, 17
2. Henry James, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl (counts for 2)
3. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
4. Robert Frost, selected poems
5. W.B. Yeats, selected poems
6. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, Mario and the Magician
7. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners
   • Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Check GBWW, Ninth Year, 20
8. Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

YEAR TEN

1. Sigmund Freud, Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Civilization and Its Discontents
   • Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Check GBWW, Tenth Year, 18
   • Civilization and Its Discontents: Check GBWW, Ninth Year, 17
2. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
3. Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Saint Joan
   • Check GBWW, Sixth Year, 21
4. Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
5. C.G. Darwin, The Next Million Years
6. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charlie
7. Albert Camus, The Stranger, The Plague
8. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
9. Saramago, Blindness, The Cave
10. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Footnotes