What do you think of the "Great Books" movement?

The Great Books of the Western World came about as the result of a discussion among American academics and educators, starting in the 1920s and 1930s and begun by Prof. John Erskine of Columbia University,[8] about how to improve the higher education system by returning it to the western liberal arts tradition of broad cross-disciplinary learning. These academics and educators included Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, Stringfellow Barr, Scott Buchanan, Jacques Barzun, and Alexander Meiklejohn. The view among them was that the emphasis on narrow specialization in American colleges had harmed the quality of higher education by failing to expose students to the important products of Western civilization and thought.

They were at odds both with much of the existing educational establishment and with contemporary educational theory. Educational theorists like Sidney Hook[9] and John Dewey (see pragmatism) disagreed with the premise that there was crossover in education (e.g. that a study of philosophy, formal logic, or rhetoric could be of use in medicine or economics).[citation needed]

This list of great books started out as 100 essential primary source texts considered to constitute the Western canon. This list was always intended to be tentative, although some consider it presumptuous to nominate 100 great books to the exclusion of all others.

The Great Books Program is a curriculum that makes use of this list of texts. As much as possible, students rely on primary sources. The emphasis is on open discussion with limited guidance by a professor, facilitator, or tutor. Students are also expected to write papers.

That's great! I also want to read all of them at some point in my life. Problem is, I want the set, but I don't want to buy it while I'm still "nomadic", as it were.

Among my recent reads have been Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, Cicero's Friendship and Old Age, a few Tolstoy short atories, the first book of the Elements, and a lot more besides.
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Hey, I'm thinking of having a go at reading Dante's Inferno - which translation do you think is the closest to the original/easiest to read? thanks

Fantastic idea, will go over the heads of the masses and I won't pretend to find it an easy chore, impossible to enforce on a curriculum. One step ahead of the Western literary canon which is inherently xenophobic and exclusive

Why must the politics of diversity and equality break into a book list? Nothing wrong with paying homage to western literature.

The Canon contains masterpieces but by definition excludes others. It's great to have our cultural cake and eat it I say