This book changed my life (mostly because it introduced me to Flannery O'Connor). If you feel you missed out on a comprehensive classical literary education and need a place to start, this is the book for you. If only all students could be taught from it! Too bad today's PC professors are ignoring the classics!
Chapters include "must-not-miss" reading lists for each time period being discussed, beginning with Old English, which I am working my way through with great joy and satisfaction. (Yes, I've recently pigged out on tons of Shakespeare, Bunyan, and Milton.) But the very first thing I did after finishing this book was take the high-speed "Mini-Course in American Literature" on page 169 and enjoyed every minute. This is it:
Four tiny poems:
"The Soul Selects Her Own Society," Emily Dickinson
"A Noiseless Patient Spider," Walt Whitman
"Nothing Gold Can Stay," Robert Frost
"In a Station of the Metro," Ezra Pound
Stories:
"The Cask of Amontillado," Poe
"Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne
"Barn Burning," Faulkner
"Everything That Rises Must Converge," Flannery O'Connor
Novels:
Huckleberry Finn
The Great Gatsby
Enjoy this feast, great-book-lovers! I think I'll be a pig and have seconds!
*There are several books on a variety of topics in the P.I.G. series, all written by different authors. Of those I've read, I've liked all but the one on American History.
