In 2016, I started a classics book club. We read a number of Greek and Roman works – Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Homer, Virgil, to name a few – and met every week to discuss.
We had so much fun that, five years later, we still meet on occasion to catch up, talk about life – and inevitably devolve into a discussion of some classic text or other.
I’m currently starting my second classics book club, and as I get this project off the ground, I want to document the process I’ve used to launch and run (soon to be two) vibrant and thriving classics discussion groups.
Before I share the how of starting a classics book club, though, a little background on my why.
Why Reading the Classics is Important (and a valuable use of your time)
I’ve been in love with the classics since I read Oedipus Rex at 15, and I’ve been a huge fan of St. John’s College since I was in high school. Before I decided not to go to college at all, I seriously considered attending their classics program.
I feel very strongly that reading as much of the western canon is a valuable use of one’s time. It’s been the underpinning of a classical education for centuries, and many of the works that have made it into the canon are pivotal underpinnings of our culture.
These works have been studied, referenced, summarized, re-referenced, and built upon for centuries.
More importantly, studying the classic works (and some of the intellectual giants of history) challenges and refines one’s own thinking. To grapple with the ideas of the greats is to expand one’s own intellectual capacity. And that is a very important thing.
I tackled the western canon officially for the first time in my senior year of high school, when I read as many of the great books as I could for my English class. I couldn’t touch even close to everything I wanted to, but I read a wide selection – Sophocles, Descartes, Herodotus, Cicero, Hume, Locke, etc., etc.
And as an adult, I’ve been heavily influenced by the philosophy of St. John’s College. Their core liberal arts curriculum consists of spending four years reading and discussing the western canon.
Their approach is twofold:
- why listen to someone pontificate about the most important ideas of western civilization when you can go directly to the original source?
- the best way to learn how to think is to read challenging works and discuss them rigorously in a group setting
This approach is one of the core underpinnings of how I’ve built my classics discussion groups.
How to Start a Classics Book Club
The most important component of a classics book club is the people. To have a solid discussion, you need to have people who are hungry to dive head-first into a conversation. I got lucky – I have a number of friends as interested in these topics as I am.
The ideal size of a discussion group, in my experience, is 4-8 people. Too many and the discussion gets diluted, and it’s easy for people to get lost being wallflowers. Too few and there aren’t enough perspectives to have a truly challenging dialogue.
Once you have people, set a scope. Are you trying to read as broad a selection as possible? Are you focusing on a specific era? (My first summer, we read strictly Greek and Roman works, and aimed for a sampling: a couple tragedies, a couple epics, a variety of philosophical works). You can set a reading list at the onset, or you can alternate between members getting to choose. (If the latter, having a defined scope is helpful to keep people loosely on track).
I typically default to meeting every other week, because people are busy with jobs and life. In an ideal world, I think more frequent meetings are preferable, but really what’s important is the length of the conversations themselves. 1.5 hours is the bare minimum to have a worthwhile discussion. 2+ is preferable.
The value of these discussions comes from a deep dive into the finer points of the work – and then, what follows from those points that people are excited to explore. Conversations can be prompted, but the real magic happens when you allow them to evolve. A general question can kick things off: “what point in the work did you find most interesting, and why?” and then delving into each person’s area of interest. More pointed questions can also be helpful, or setting as a general parameter an expectation that everyone show up with 1-2 questions they’d like to discuss. Once the conversation is open, prompts are rarely needed, but having prepared conversation points can help ensure you’re getting the most out of the conversation.