Addendum: In this video I said that I would watch one more film version of Antigone off of Youtube. But after checking that version out, I've decided I won't watch it at this time after all, because it's based off of Jean Anouilh's play, and not Sophocle's play.
I've been using Google Podcast to listen to my podcasts for the past several years now. It was easy to access from a web-browser, it worked great, and it didn't require me to sign in or create a special account or anything. (Don't even get me started on how cumbersome I found itunes.)
The good news is, I'm transitioning to Youtube Music, and it seems to be working pretty well. So it looks like I'll still be able to listening to my podcasts without any major interruption.
The bad news is, on this blog I've linked to Google Podcast links many times over the last few years, and those links are all dead now.
Link Rot is unfortunately a big problem in my archives. So many of the links I've used over the years are now dead. And now, we can add all the Google Podcast links to that list.
Addendum:
I may have spoken too soon. Now I'm having trouble getting my podcast to play on Youtube Music. Hopefully they get the bugs sorted out of it before too long.
Is the Christian Reformed Church in the process of splitting? That's certainly the impression I get from reading recent Facebook posts from my friends who are still in Grand Rapids. But I don't know, I'm out of the loop. (If anybody out there know what's really happening, feel free to let me know in the comments.)
In one sense, cantankerous protestant churches splitting over church doctrine is a classic "dog bites man" story.
But in another sense, this is kind of a big deal, isn't it? I mean, if a major split does occur, it would be the first time the CRC split in living memory. The last big split was all the way back in 1924.
I remember my 11th grade religion teacher taught us about that split. He used it as an example to illustrate how fiercely our great-grandfathers had argued over minor doctrinal points. The way he described it, the whole town of Grand Rapids was worked into a fervor over the issue. Passionate speeches were made on both sides. People were putting up signs in their yard denouncing rival theologians. Everyone was choosing a side.
After describing this ridiculous scene, my religion teacher lamented, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that we had lost that passion for debating theology.
I've never been entirely sure how much of the picture he painted was accurate. (He was one of those teachers who loved to tell a good story, and was sometimes prone to exaggeration.) But the split itself did indeed happen. You can read all about it on Wikipedia.
The issue that split the church at the time was the issue of Common Grace--something that it's very hard to imagine people getting worked up about nowadays, but, like my religion teacher said, our great-grandfathers took their theology a lot more seriously.
(Or...perhaps people just always need something to argue about. If there are no major theological disagreements to hash out, like woman in office or LGBTQ rights, then people will settle for getting worked up about common grace.)
[Common Grace, as my 11th grade religion teacher described it, is basically the idea that there are some aspects of God's grace which are available to all--Christians and non-Christians alike. So a non-Christian might not be saved, but they might still be inspired by God to do something good. Non-Christians may also be inspired by God to create great works of art.--See more info in the Wikipedia article on Common Grace]
The Wikipedia article alludes to three doctrinal points on common grace that caused the split, but doesn't actually say what they are. But that information can be found easily enough elsewhere on the Internet. See this article from the Protestant Reformed Website: The Three Points of Common Grace (CRC - 1924). I'll quote the main idea from each of the three points below:
1. Apart from the saving grace of God shown only to those that are elect unto eternal life, there is also a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general.
2. God by the general operations of His Spirit, without renewing the heart of man, restrains the unimpeded breaking out of sin, by which human life in society remains possible
3. The unregenerate, though incapable of doing any saving good, can do civil good.
...and that's what caused the 1924 split. Crazy, huh?
This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:
I suppose the primary purpose behind this list is just my love of making lists. I like going back through and looking at what I've written on this blog, and finding new ways to organize it. It's easy and brainless work, but it also makes me feel like I'm being productive. (It takes me a couple cups of coffee in the morning before I'm fully awake and productive, so creating lists like this is the prefect thing to do when I'm still waking up and want to feel like I'm being semi-productive).
But aside from that, the impetus for this list comes from Steve Donoghue's Youtube series The Western Canon Starter Kit. Steve Donoghue makes the point that if you are going to make a project of reading the classics, then you should do it systematically and linearly. Start with the earliest classics, and work your way forward from there.
Up until now, I've been trying to read the classics in a haphazard way. Grab Dostoevsky one month, try Don Quixotethe next, etc. But now, influenced by Steve, I want to try to do this project systematically. Start at the beginning, and work my way forward.
To that end, I want to create an index that organizes the classics chronologically, so I can see where the gaps in my reading are.
For example, looking at this list now, I can see the first thing I probably need to work on is Akkadian literature (The Enuma Elis, and The Code of Hammurabi). Then, after that, it's onto the Greek World. I've already got Homer finished, but I've not done Homer's contemporary, Hesiod.
Then onto the dramatists. Aeschylus would be the first dramatist. I've read a couple-of his plays, but I need to finish off the rest of plays before moving on to make a project of Sophocles.
Et cetera. Having a list like this makes it very easy for me to see the gaps, and then try and fill them up. [Note: That is to say, these are the gaps in my reading at the time of first posting this, June 24, 2024. But I'm going to keep updating this list as I read, so if you are looking at this post at a future date, hopefully at least some of the above gaps have now been filled.]
And, perhaps I flatter myself here but, once this list fills out a bit, I'm hoping it might be useful to other readers. Other people will be able to see the list and perhaps use it to help them organize their own reading syllabus.
Steve Donoghue (in one of his many videos) says that you can easily read all the surviving works of the ancient world in a year or two. But that's Steve Donoghue. At my pace, I'm going to be stuck in the ancient world for quite some time. Perhaps I'll never finish the ancient world. But that's okay. Any project of self-education is as much about the journey as it is the end goal. I may not learn everything, but I'll learn some things, and I'll be enriched by what I do learn.
Because I anticipate being stuck in the ancient world for quite some time, I originally thought I'd just create a list just for the ancient world, and leave out anything after the fall of the Roman Empire. But then I thought I might as well just put it all in while I'm here. (See again my love of making lists.)
Other Notes:
* I've taken the name "Blogging the Canon" from this blog here. I've been a fan of that blogger for many years--ever since I discovered him in 2010--so I thought I'd take the name as a tribute to him. He seems to have largely abandoned the project, so I will take up the mantle.
(That blogger was also middle-aged when he started the project. Perhaps there's something about becoming middle-aged and wanting to make a project of reading through the classics. When you're younger, you always assume that you'll get around to all those classics someday. Once you hit middle-age, you realize that time is rapidly running out. It's now or never.)
The modern period, then, is anything from 1919 and after.
The closer we get to the present day, the more difficult it is to decide what is a true classic. Personally I have a hard time regarding anything published after I was born as a "classic", but there seems to be universal consensus that Beloved (1989) is a classic. (It's on the school curriculum and everything. Blogging the Canon also included it.) So I can't very well leave Beloved off the list. And The Handmaid's Tale (1985) is also universally regarded as a classic nowadays.
So where to draw the line? It seems a little silly to include The Flashman Books as classics, but Everyman's Library seems to think they are--they include Flashman in their Everyman Classic line of books. (I've seen these "classic" Flashman editions on the shelves in bookstores in Australia.) And, I guess to a certain extent it's fair enough. After all, the original Flashman was published all the way back in 1969. How many books from 1969 are still in print nowadays? It's a classic of sorts, right?
Harry Potter also seems a bit silly to include, and yet, Steve Donoghue, in one of his many videos, makes the point that of all the YA literature currently in print, Harry Potter is the only one that's certain to survive into the next century. So it's also a modern classic, of sorts.
Actually, when you consider that the vast majority of books published go out of print after one year, anything from the 20th Century that is still being printed and talked about has already kind of passed the test of time. Granted, a lot of these books won't be remembered in another 200 years. But then I'm not living 200 years in the future, I'm living now and talking about what the culture is now.
So, for the purposes of this list, I'm going to be generous about the definition of 20th Century classics.
Anything published after the year 2000, however, is out. 2000 is the cut-off.
...with one exception. If I'm listing works by an individual author, and that author has published books both before 2000 and after, and I've reviewed at least one of those books from before 2000 on this blog, then I'll also include the other books from after 2000 under that author's name.
* I've listed the author's in order of the year born, just because that was the easiest and simplest way to do it. With author's whose work spans two periods (like H.G. Wells), I've included them in the period in which they started writing.
* Lest anyone think I'm under-read, I should say that this list is only the classics I've read since I started my book review project in 2006. It's not all the classics I've read in my entire life. If I were to include the classic books I read in high school and college, I'd be able to add a few more books to this list. But my rule is that if I haven't reviewed it on this blog, it doesn't count. However, now that I've started my rereading project, I'm hoping to go back and reread a lot of those books from my younger days, and then I will add them to this list.
