the great books site (Jeff Baldwin) - need help understanding 2 things

[Hoggirl]

I ordered some items from this site, and I am confused about the reading assignment for the Edith Hamilton mythology book. The website says to read chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13-14, and part 7. I ordered both their guide and the mythology book from them, but the TOC in the mythology book isn't set up with chapter numbers. There are "part" numbers, but not chapter numbers. Frustrating! Can anyone tell me what we are supposed to read?

 

Also, his weekly assignments are set up as two per week. Some books cover more than one week. Do you use the discussion guides as you are reading through the work(s) or only when the book has been finished? If you use them while you are reading how do you tell where/when to stop within the guide.

 

Thanks for any help!! I'm struggling to get it. And, I am bugged by the mythology assignment since I can't figure it out. HELP!

[Lori D.]

Not familiar with the Mythology one, so, sadly I can't help there. Can you post that as a question on the website, or via the "contact us" option on the website?

 

 

 

Do you use the discussion guides as you are reading through the work(s) or only when the book has been finished? If you use them while you are reading how do you tell where/when to stop within the guide.

 

 

We've done 4 or 5 of The Great Books guides, and done them as you suggest here. For the single works that were an obvious story (e.g. Beowulf, Billy Budd) it was pretty obvious whether to ask the question or not, as it was either about something that just happened in the section we just read, or it hadn't happened yet, so we saved the question for the next time.

 

The guides for Emerson and for Thoreau were more like your Mythology one. Plus, we were only reading excerpts of essays, not the entire essays as recommended, so we just used what questions we could -- whatever seemed understandable or prompted discussion -- and left the others.

 

 

Hopefully someone who has used the Mythology guide can give you more specific help! Warmest regards, Lori D.

[Miss Marple]

I don't have the guide, but I do have the Edith Hamilton book. My book TOC has Parts 1 - 7 and each part has subparts (I guess one could call them chapters). So chapter 1 an 3 are in Part 1, chapter 5 and 7 are in Part 2, chapter 11 is in Part 3, chapter 13, 14 are in Part 4, and Part 7 has chapter 22 and 23 (Norse mythology). I would assume he wants you to read all of Part 7 - both chapters. My book an older edition illustrated by Steele Savage. Is this the same one? ISBN: 0451628039.

 

I have used a lot of his guides in my literature class. Because we only met once a week, we were able to go through some of the guide after the work was read (usually work in which we read selections rather than the complete work). For those that had several weeks worth of reading, I would only go over those sections that were relevant to the week's readings. However I usually spent some time at the beginning of each work going over the "The Big Picture" as well as intro to the work (the page/s in grey). Then at the end we would again look at The Big Picture and discuss its relevance to the work as well as to our lives today.

 

His guides are very good, IMO, but I did add in some SparkNote type of analysis to round out the study. Baldwin's guides come from a definite Biblical worldview perspective and sometimes leaves out the other aspects of literature study.