Hi. My name is Derek Peterssen. As the world didn't (darn it!) end on December 31, 2000 with the dawning of the next millenium, I found myself faced with a lot of free time. So I decided to read the Great Books.

I know that's inherently controversial. After all, what makes a book "great" (or "good", for that matter)? I went to college at the height of DWEM (dead, white, european, male) bashing. So I recognize that the concept of great books is exclusive and elitist. So be it. Because we live in a world without standards or common reference points, beyond pop culture. A hundred years ago, you could be reasonably certain that any educated reader would share the same base of knowledge, (the Bible, Homer, Plato ...) so your allusions, references and the like would be immediately and instantly understood.

Today, in a 500-channel universe, we're splintered. And while that may make each of us unique, I wondered whether it was cutting us off from some sort of shared cultural heritage. (Yes, by "shared cultural heritage", I mean Western culture. Sue me.) So I picked up a few books on the subject The Great Books, The Western Canon and The Golden Thread to be my guides and to suggest where to begin.

Some are books I've read before (often forced to at school, before I was wise enough to appreciate them) most are books I've read about, and feel I know ... though I haven't actually read them yet. And my goal is to read through an entirely arbitrary list in (roughly) chronological order over the course of this year. So when you read my reviews, you'll see the date when I read it, in addition to the review itself. One pleasant surprise in this project has been how cheap it is. You can pick up a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare for far less than the cost of the latest Tom Clancy novel. Most of my selections will be in the public domain, so if you're too cheap for a Penguin or a Wordsworth, you can always visit your local library or even download them. (Generally speaking, I'll always go for the Penguin versions ... their translations are first-rate, the introductions are always interesting, and the additional information manages to improve understanding of the text, without actually blocking it out.)