m_w

Hi friends, I am mw. I am a middle aged man, I spend most of my time in Birmingham in the UK.

I am a lot of things, but I am also not a lot of things which might be important here; I am not an expert, I am not an writer, I am not a pedant. Anything I write here is my impression of the thing I am describing, it is not the last word.

My purpose here is to encourage engagement with literature, in particular “hard” literature. This is not to imply that there is no value in other kinds of literature - for example literature that amuses or gives comfort - but I am really talking about the hard stuff which makes you think. Books that we can wrestle with and see different ways to understand and that we can have a conversation about. In Mortimer Adler’s words, these are the Great Books which stimulate the Great Conversation.

I understand the “Great Books” in this context to be books that are published before 2000 and that we can see with hindsight have something important to say to us in our time. Once again, that is not to say other books are worthless just that I want to think about the ideas in the books in this collection.

I include books which are considered classics in other languages. I do not speak or read other languages and acknowledge that my understanding of these works would be many times better if I could. I sometimes read translations into English which are published after 2000.

Finally I do not discuss Charles Dickens. This an entirely Dickens Free Zone.