The Great Books...digital style

So, the composition class I've been teaching has spent the last week talking about the purpose of higher education. As part of that discussion, I introduced my students to the idea of the "Great Books" educational curriculum where the core of one's undergraduate education is reading through the Western canon. Needless to say, there are a lot of excellent critiques that can be leveled against the Great Books idea...it consists almost entirely of dead white men, it tends to privilege a very transcendent concept of "knowledge" that focuses entirely on external content at the risk of ignoring student's own experience-based knowledge, etc., etc. My students, needless to say, were not to hot on the idea (most of them aren't huge lit fans to begin with...)

However, it got me thinking: how difficult would it be to work through the great books on one's own? At one level, the "Great Books" list (technically, there are a number of them) is an autodidact's dream and it does promise the development of a sort of tcanonical knowledge all but unknown to modern academe. And can I really knock it until I try it?

So, I've decided to take on the challenge--but with a twist. I recently got an iPod touch, which runs a number of fine ebook readers. As the vast majority of the Great Books are in the public domain (though some of the non-English texts don't have public domain translations--or at least, don't have them available in ebook form) it appears that I could place the whole list on my iPod for close to nothing. The portability of the iPod ensures that whenever I have a bit of free time, I'll always have the reading material right there with me. For my experiment, I'll be using the Great Books list offered by Mortimer Adler in How to Read a Book

The dusty old books of a once hallowed canon meets the at-your-fingertips novelty of modern technology. What was once the most elite of educational practices awakens to a new populist affordability and accessibility.

Will I survive my digital romp through the great books? Will my eyes burn out from staring at the screen for too long? Will I ever be able to read without my beloved pencil? Stay tuned for answers to these questions and more...