Reading is far from dead. More people than ever are reading—on Kindles, iPads, and phones, in paperbacks and hardcover. The choice of what to read is endless: new online content appears every morning, and many of us have that ever-growing pile of “books I might read someday.” Some of the books in that pile might be so-called “classics,” “great books” that have been read for hundreds—even thousands—of years. But who picks up a copy of Homer’s Iliad from the bookstore table, or downloads a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy? These books aren’t always easy to begin, and the fact that you might have studied them in college or high school just makes them seem more like work and not play. It’s not always clear how to get into these books: Can you skip parts? Can you start at the end? Why isn’t this more like a novel?

At The Spouter-Inn, we want to invite you into a series of conversations about books—how they’re shaped, what kind of world they come out of, and how they speak to us right now. Whether you’ve done the reading or are just curious, come join Suzanne (a literature professor) and Chris (a PhD dropout) as talk about these books and what it means to read them today.