The nutters who put on the Lake Pepin 3-Speed tour like to talk about what it is to be a “Gentleman Cyclist©.” They have a sort of decalogue (a tredecalogue, actually) of such a cyclist’s attributes. One of these aphorisms in particular caught my attention.
A Gentleman Cyclist© is well reasoned, well read, and well intentioned.
There are three parts to this rule, but for now, let’s just to focus on the part about being “well read.” The Google Machine tells me that to be “well read” is to be “well informed or deeply versed through reading.”
So, if I’m going to be a Gentleman Cyclist©, I’m going to have to read some books. Which books should I read, then? I can’t very well just walk into a book shop and grab the first vampire romance novel that strikes my fancy, now can I?

Not the sort of book I’m looking for
As it turns out, there was an academical person –The President of Harvard, no less!– who designed just the sort of list I’m looking for. Dr. Elliot drew up this list in 1909, so there is a World War or two between him and the post-modern chicanery I’m trying to avoid.
The collection is called the Harvard Classics, and I found a complete set on ebay for a bargain. (The entire set is also available to download for free.)
I’m slowly working my way through the entire 25,000 pages of it. I made myself a nice spreadsheet to track my progress, but I should have a blog-widget type apparatus working shortly.
At the end of this project, I think I’ll be able to consider myself well-read. I am probably not very well-mannered, and I am certainly not well-intentioned. These are virtues I can cultivate at a later date. For now, I have books to read.
©”Gentleman Cyclist” is copyright 2005 by Jon Sharratt
I’ve had a hard-on for the Great Books of the Western World since high school. Mebbe it’s time I finally buy a set.
I read Mortimer Adler’s _How to Read a Book_, where he talks about the GBWW a lot. There is a lot of overlap between the two series.
That’s not surprising. “The project got its start at the University of Chicago. University president Robert Hutchins collaborated with Mortimer Adler to develop a course, generally aimed at businessmen, for the purpose of filling in gaps in education, to make one more well-rounded and familiar with the “Great Books” and ideas of the past three millennia.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World#History
So I downloaded all of the Harvard Classics epub files, intending to put them on my Nook. This line is in content.opf:
The Harvard Classics eboxed Set
In every single one of them. I’m manually changing them to:
The Harvard Classics Volume 14, etc.