2016

A.  The Loose Canon (1/50th of the total list commits me to 6 books this year).

1. The Book of Isaiah (ca. 8th - 2nd centuries B.C.E.). The fieriest of the Hebrew prophets zaps the rich, the greedy, and the unjust as well as the ungodly, and calls eloquently for an end to war.   This one I intend to tackle in Hebrew.  Slowly.  Very slowly.  My Hebrew is not that good.
2. The Zohar (ca. 1275) The most beloved and influential of all kabbalistic books, finding magical, mystical meaning at the heart of the Torah.  I honestly have no intention of reading the whole of this huge rambling text this year.  I have at least bought a copy of "The Essential Zohar."  We'll see if I am drawn further into the topic.
3. Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (3rd century B.C.E.). A political treatise as much as a spiritual text, but readers in China and the West have long been fascinated by its enigmatic doctrine of wise compliance with nature's way.   Years back I did an intensive study of the text and wrote my own paraphrase.  I will likely do more sampling than reading.  Using my son (who is learning Mandarin) I'll use this year as an opportunity to play at learning some Chinese characters from this text.
4. Chuang Tzu: Chuang Tzu (3rd century B.C.E.) The other classic of Taoism is full of delightful stories that illustrate the vast mystery of the world.
5. Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 B.C.E.). The story of antiquity's Vietnam: a punishing conflict between Athens and Sparta that ripped the Greek world apart.
6. Hesiod: Works and Days (ca. 700 B.C.E.). While his contemporary, Homer, sang of battles and wanderings, Hesiod stayed home and penned hymns to the seasons and the right way to live on the land.  This one I'd like to tackle in Greek.  It's not that long a poem, and the Perseus website will augment my very rudimentary Greek.  Maybe (just maybe) I can finish it by the end of the year.

• Isaiah 1-39, Joseph Blenkinsopp, New York: Anchor Bible, 2000
• http://www.biblewebapp.com/reader/
• The Way of Life, Lao Tzu, tr. R.B. Blakney, New York, Mentor Books, 1955
• Te-Tao Ching, Lao-Tzu, tr. Robert G. Herricks, New York, Ballantine Books, 1989
• Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition, Lao Tzu, tr. Jonathan Star, New York, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001
• Works and Days, Hesiod  http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0131

B. A Lifetime's Reading (Ward's 10 selections for "Year 1")

1. Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)  Complete Works  I am not that much of a Carroll fan.  I don't know how much I'll read.  I seriously doubt anywhere NEAR the "Complete Works"
2. Plato (c. 429-347 BC)  Apology, Crito, Phaedo
3. The Old Testament  I will put this one off until the year our Gospel Doctrine class next covers the text.
4. Vaclav Havel (b. 1936)  The Garden Party, The Memorandum  I've read both plays, both delightful, but I intend to focus more on Havel's political thought. 
5. The Epic of Gilgamesh
6. Tacitus (c. 55-c. 120 AD)  Annals, Histories  I will put this one off until next year.  I have my reasons.
7. Ondra Lysohorsky (b. 1905)  Selected Poems
8. Ernst Hans Gombrich (b. 1909)  The Story of Art  Read it and loved it.  Will replace it with my own personal study of art in the year 1800.
9. Poem Into Poem: World Poetry in Modern Verse Translation
10. Pierre Abélard (1079-1143) and Héloïse (1101-1164)  Letters, Historia Calamitatum

• Great Dialogues of Plato, tr. W.H.D. Rouse, New York, Mentor Books, 1956
• Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader, Ed. Peter Kussi, Highland Park, NJ: Catbird Books, 1990
• The Garden Party and Other Plays, Vaclav Havel, New York: Grove Press, 1993
• Vaclav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts, John Keane, New York: Basic Books, 2000
• Open Letters: Selected Writings 1965-1990, Vaclav Havel, Ed. Paul Wilson, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991
• Poor Murderer, Pavel Kohout, New York: Viking Books, 1977
• The Different Drum: Community and Peace, M. Scott Peck, New York: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1987

III. Other Reading

• On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, Alexandra Horowitz
• Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century, David Aikman
• Macbeth, William Shakespeare
• Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, Brian Greene, New York, London, W. W. Norton, 2003
• The Happiness Equation, Neil Pasricha, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2016
• The Top 500 Poems, William Harmon, ed., New York, Columbia University Press, 1992