Why Books Matter
There are books that have shaped the way the Western world thinks — books that educated people have been reading for centuries, that show up in the conversations, arguments, and assumptions of virtually every serious writer, thinker, and leader who came after them. The Odyssey. Augustine’s Confessions. Dante’s Divine Comedy. Hamlet. Paradise Lost. Pride and Prejudice. These works are not on a list because they are old. They are on a list because they are extraordinary — and because reading them changes how you see everything else.
I went through and chose, as much as possible, my favorite books from across the whole sweep of Western literature — works I love and believe every educated person should encounter before he or she leaves school. Most students never will, at least not in any serious way. That’s a real loss, and this class exists to fix it.
My goal is not just to get you through the material. It’s to help you genuinely understand it — to read these works as the living, breathing, carefully constructed things they are, and to come away from each one with something you didn’t have before.
What You Will Learn
Reading great literature is one skill. Understanding it — knowing how to analyze it, engage with it, and write about it seriously — is another. My goal is to develop both skills in you.
How to analyze and interpret literature. I’ll teach you to read actively, asking what an author is doing and why. Structure, character, imagery, theme — these are not just vocabulary words. They are tools for understanding what a work is actually doing and how it does it.
How to use criticism. Scholars have been writing about these books for centuries. I’ll show you how to find what they say, how to evaluate it, and how to bring it into your own argument — not as a crutch, but as a conversation partner. Using criticism well is one of the marks of a serious reader. I provide a variety of critical resources that come with the class; others are part of the books you’ll be purchasing.
How to write a literary paper. You will write six papers over the course of the year, one for each major work. Each is two pages — short enough to require real discipline, long enough to make a genuine argument. I’ll teach you how to choose a topic, build a case, support it with evidence from the text, and write prose that is clear and direct.
How to revise. Writing is rewriting. You’ll work through The Elements of Style by Strunk and White alongside the papers, and a writing instruction series I’ve built into the course walks you through specific skills as you need them — argument, paragraph structure, research, revision. My goal is not one good paper. It is steady, real improvement from Paper 1 to Paper 6. Writing is really about exploration and learning.
The Unusual Origin of the Class
I originally recorded this course in 2020-21. (It was during the COVID lockdown, so we rented an empty office to provide classes to homeschool students.) As a result, it’s a live series of lectures with a small classroom of students. What you’ll see in the videos is not a polished presentation to a camera — it’s a real class, with real discussion, real questions, and real students working through hard material together.
One of the most useful things in this course, perhaps, is watching other students engage with the books — hearing what questions they ask, what arguments they find, what confuses them, and how the discussion develops. I’ve also included the student paper presentations, so you can see exactly how the feedback process works.
Reading Your Papers Aloud
In my original class, students read their papers aloud to their classmates and then fielded questions. That experience — hearing your own words spoken in a room and then defending your argument — is one of the most effective writing development tools I know of.
For students taking this as a self-paced course, you will have a few options to re-create this environment. You will need to read your papers aloud to a parent or sibling who can ask questions and provide honest feedback. They don’t have to be literarily minded; a good essay can be followed by anyone.
Next, if you’d like your papers formally graded, you can sign up for personalized grading. If you follow my writing instructions, however, you’ll find that you become your own best editor and critic. Again, don’t worry about grades: the goal is for you to learn to love literature.
The Student Community
When you enroll, you’ll have access to the Literature group on My Compass Classroom. I’m in there, and I answer questions directly — about the reading, the papers, or anything else that comes up. Students have used the group to ask about paper assignments, dig into a book further, and compare notes with others working through the same material. Please take advantage of the Group.
I’ve also stocked the group’s Documents library with additional critical essays for each major work — pieces by writers like C.S. Lewis, A.C. Bradley, Caroline Spurgeon, and Dorothy Sayers that go deeper into the books we’re reading. These are the same kinds of essays serious students of literature read, and they’re there for anyone who wants to go further. (They are also included at various steps in the class, as well as a zipped download.)
For several of the books I also post film and movie recommendations — versions worth watching after you’ve read the book, to see how the story translates to screen. My favorites include the 1948 Laurence Olivier Hamlet and the 1995 Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, which is by far the most faithful adaptation of the novel.
What to Expect
This is a challenging class. The reading is substantial, some of the books are genuinely difficult, and the writing asks more of you than filling in a worksheet. Students who work through it — who do the reading, write the papers, and engage seriously with the material — come out the other side genuinely transformed.
I am genuinely excited to be able to introduce you to some of my favorite friends. I hope they’ll become your friends for life, too.
Next step: Book List