The Well Educated Mind

By: Susan Wise Bauer

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 19 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's Summary

An engaging, accessible guide to educating yourself in the classical tradition.

Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven't because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise. In her previous book, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children, and that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In this new book, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading.

The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of five literary genres - fiction, autobiography, history, drama, and poetry - accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter - ranging from Cervantes to A. S. Byatt, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich - preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing.

The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there's no reason you can't read and enjoy Shakespeare's Sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the "Great Books" without a guide and a plan. Susan Wise Bauer will show you how to allocate time to your reading on a regular basis; how to master a difficult argument; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre - what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary? - and also between genres. Followed carefully, the advice in The Well-Educated Mind will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.

©2003 Susan Wise Bauer (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

It is a homework-book

It is about how you read a book, and how to take notes or speed read or improve your understanding when reading the "great books". Not ideal for passive listening, as when commuting.

I had hoped for a bit more insights on and from the great books, rather than a how-to book.

Excellent summary of classical works!

I can't wait to dig into many of the suggested texts! I also enjoyed the notetaking suggestions and guided questions.

Well Done Americanized Literature Overview

Excellent advice on getting a broad review of literature for Americans from an academic point of view. Helped me gain more perspectives in writing and analysis, especially novels and history. I recommend for readers and writers to help analyze literature at multiple levels. Got flashbacks from my high school and college literature classes on a number of great works. Filled in a lot of gaps in my understanding of American and British literature.