No.792: My Mother Academia Plans for Winter/Spring 2024

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I recently watched a Youtube video called “Pursuing the Intellectual Life Outside of Academia (as a mom)” from Autumn at The Commonplace and woo!  It spoke to me.  If you’ve been here for any length of time, you know that I have eclectic taste in books.  It was pretty difficult to whittle down my interests into four themes, but I persevered!  For my “Spring Semester,” I picked American history (continuing on from last year), Catholic studies, Latin, and Economics.

2024 could be a pivotal year in countless ways and I want to expand my knowledge to better understand current events.  The United States is a constitutional republic – why does that matter and do current events reflect that or deter away from it?  The Catholic Church is riddled with confusion and infighting – what do we believe and how has the Church dealt with similar issues in the past?  The US government is trillions of dollars in debt and inflation is a problem – what does that mean for our children in the future and what actions can we take today?  And Latin, the building block of so many words and the traditional language of my beloved Church – I want to learn it!

A couple details: my goal is to try to commit 30 minutes a day to this endeavor.  Hopefully, it will be in the early morning before my kids wake up, but I could also fit it in sometime after lunch.  My TBR is miles long, but I’m trying to prioritize books that I already own before buying new ones.  (That may explain the randomness of my booklist below.)  I even made a weekly reading schedule to keep me on task:

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My Weekly Reading Schedule
with a little religious reading each morning

SUN: off
MON: American history
TUES: Economics
WED: Latin
THUR: Catholic Studies
FRI: Misc. Non-fiction (memoirs, books that don’t fit, etc)
SAT: free choice

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So excited to see where this takes me in the new year.

MY MOTHER ACADEMIA SYLLABUS FOR 2024

1. American History
   1. Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Wilfred M. McClay
   2. The Federalist Papers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton & John Jay
   3. Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
   4. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
   5. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
   6. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
2. Catholic Studies
   1. Catechism of Saint Pius X (I’m already more than halfway through and just need to finish)
   2. Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith by Bishop Athanasius Schneider
   3. Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History by Rodney Stark
   4. Vatican II: The Essential Texts edited by Norman Tanner
   5. Bad Shepherds: The Dark Years in Which the Faithful Thrived While Bishops Did the Devil’s Work by Rod Bennett
   6. 1917: Red Banners, White Mantle by Warren H. Carroll
3. Latin Language
   1. Latin by the Natural Method, First Year by William G. Most, PhD
4. Economics
   1. A Capitalist Manifesto: Understanding The Market Economy And Defending Liberty by Gary Wolfram
   2. Gold: The Race for the World’s Most Seductive Metal by Matthew Hart