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The Whole Five Feet: What The Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, And Pretty Much Everything Else (2009)

by Christopher R. Beha(Favorite Author)

3.42 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0802118844 (ISBN13: 9780802118844)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Grove Press

review 1: I had a difficult time rating this one. The idea of reading through the Harvard list was one that appealed to me as a reader. However, it took me a while to warm to the author. For the first half of the book, he presented himself as an isolated, self-absorbed human being. His relationship with family was encouraging but it seemed he was reading to become separate from the world. He did manage to win me over in the latter half as he wrote more about the impact of his year of reading. I am thinking about reading more from his fiction list in the coming year.
review 2: Hmm. The more I read of memoirs, the more room for wandering and self-indulgence is revealed. (Just wait until I write mine!) I read this book after reading Beha's more recent novel "Whatever Happen... moreed to Sophie Wilder", so it was interesting to consider his spiritual wrestling and subsequent leanings in light of that. The title of this book refers to the five foot shelf length of the set of Harvard Classics, a set of books collected in 1909. "Eliot had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. (Originally he had said a three-foot shelf.) The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity and challenged Eliot to make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works, and the Harvard Classics was the result." In a low spot, Beha decides to read through the set in a year of his life, after spending his life looking at the set in relatives' homes. The story of his reading weaves together events from his daily life, mostly health crises, with his reflections on the collection. I loved how he said he felt like he was part of a great conversation that most of the rest of the world was left out of. He also said that we have lost our ability to express ourselves, something I would definitely agree with. And I delighted in seeing the mention of various things I've read with Dempsey as part of her education in recent years: Plutarch, Shakespeare, Bacon, Manzoni, Milton, Donne, and more. Thank you, Ambleside Online! less

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