Well, actually, the discussion part will begin Friday, January 15th, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and explain...
Hello! Welcome to the Great Books Forum*! Most likely you are here on purpose because I shared a link with you. If you are here by accident and have no idea what is going on, please check the About/FAQ page (the page name is a lie...there are no FAQ's. Sorry. But if you have any questions, please ask in the comments, and I will do my best to answer them.). All caught up? Let's talk about just what is happening on the 11th.
On Monday, January 4, we will start preparing to read our first book, the Iliad, by Homer. If you want to get a head start on getting the book, I will be reading the translation by Robert Fitzgerald (because that was my first translation, given to me by my little brother :) ). I also highly recommend the Robert Fagles translation**. However, there are several free translations online, if you don't want to purchase a copy (I recommend buying a hard copy, but then again, I'm a fan of writing marginalia- I once had a student offer to pay me to use my copy of the Iliad in class because of all the notes I had written in it. True Story.).
On the 4th, I will be posting an introduction to the Iliad. On the 11th, I will post an introduction to our first week's readings, which will be Book One. On Friday the 20th, I will post the initial discussion questions for the reading. Just a few questions to get people thinking. My hope is that other people will have questions of their own to contribute.
We will continue the schedule with reading one book of the Iliad each week (books are like chapters in older texts. Originally, they were how long each scroll in a set was. Don't worry. This is a very reasonable pace). There will be an introduction to the readings each Monday, and discussions will begin the following Friday. I do ask that you wait until Friday to begin discussions...that leaves people time to catch up over the weekend.
I hope you all are as excited about this as I am, and I look forward to seeing what we all can learn from one another!
*I originally named the blog Great Books Talks, but the URL looked like it said "Stalks" so I changed it.
**I have no affiliation with Amazon or any other book retailer. Just trying to help you out with finding books.