The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else

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The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else

by Christopher R. Beha (Goodreads Author)

3.4 of 5 stars 3.40 · rating details · 210 ratings · 53 reviews

In The Whole Five Feet, Christopher Beha turns to the great books for answers after undergoing a series of personal and family crises and learning that his grandmother had used the Harvard Classics to educate herself during the Great Depression. Inspired by her example, Beha vows to read the entire Five-Foot Shelf, one volume a week, over the course of the next year. As he...more

Hardcover, 256 pages

Published May 6th 2009 by Grove Press

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Aug 27, 2009 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: classics readers

Recommended to Stephen by: New York Times

Shelves: my-non-fiction

The author asks on page four of the Introduction, "why had I wanted to read these books in this way," referring, of course, to Harvard Classics Five Foot Shelf. While Mr. Beha states a number of reasons for his decision, the most compelling one for me was there were already two complete sets of the books in his life.

Apparently the Introduction to the Five Foot Shelf of Books a volume at the end of the shelf, captivated the authors imagination through multiple readings over many years, until at l...more

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Nov 06, 2009 Everyman rated it 1 of 5 stars

On finding out how important the Harvard Classics Five Foot shelf of books had been to educate his grandmother during the Great Depression, the author decided to take a year to read the entire set through, at roughly one volume per week, and to write about his experience with these great books.

The result could have been a fascinating look at some of the most important works of Western thought. But the actual result is a self-indulgent mish-mash of superficial thoughts about his own life by a no...more On finding out how important the Harvard Classics Five Foot shelf of books had been to educate his grandmother during the Great Depression, the author decided to take a year to read the entire set through, at roughly one volume per week, and to write about his experience with these great books.

The result could have been a fascinating look at some of the most important works of Western thought. But the actual result is a self-indulgent mish-mash of superficial thoughts about his own life by a not very interesting person.

It would be generous to claim that half the content of the book has anything to do with the actual writing of the authors involved. It’s usually about himself – sort of like a book review on Moby Dick which uses the book as a basis for an essay about a dismal fishing trip one took with one’s uncle as a child where it rained all day and you caught nothing but a really bad cold.

“Reading” the books, for the author, is something different from what it is to most serous readers. He admits at times that his reading consisted of looking at every word on the page without any attempt at understanding or appreciation. When he falls behind in the summer on his book-a-month schedule, he rushes through six volumes in October, including two volumes of philosophy and theology by Machiavelli, More, Luther, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Sure, one can look at all the words in these books in less than a week. But what kind of “reading” is that?

And why was it necessary for a reading of a volume on scientific and medical papers to lead into a lengthy discursion on his visit to the Empire State Building to make a donation at a sperm bank? Sorry, Mr. Beha, but that’s just TMI.

What kind of reading is it to read three volumes of English poetry in two weeks? As he admits, he really wanted to take the time to read this poetry properly, but “as it was, I couldn’t take my time if I wanted to finish on schedule. So I pressed on, turning the pages like those of a novel or a biography, knowing all the while that poetry – especially the short lyric poetry that dominates the English tradition – isn’t meant to be read in this way.”

This admission is the self-condemnation of the whole project. The goal was simply to turn these thousands of pages over one by one during the course of one year. No matter that this is writing intended to be thought about, to be lingered over, to be understood. For Beha, it is simply pages to be turned.

It is the literary equivalent of a one week “if this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium” tour of fifteen countries of Europe. “Okay, folks,” says the guide as the bus pulls up to an imposing building, “this is the Louvre. We have a half-hour stop here.” The museum guide race-walks the group through several long corridors, pointing on the fly “that’s the Mona Lisa. If you glance through that door on your left, you can see our collection of Monet’s waterlily paintings. Over across the rotunda there you can see where our Egyptian antiquities are housed. Here’s the gift shop where you can spend the last fifteen minutes of your tour.” But at least when you get home, you can impress your friends by talking about “oh yes, we’ve seen Europe. Oh yes, the Louvre – magnificent, I especially loved the Mona Lisa, and Monet, and their wonderful Egyptian collections.”

If you have any curiosity about what is really in the Harvard Classics, the history of ideas they represent, their value to the human spirit, don’t waste time on The Whole Five Feet. You won’t get any of that. But if “doing” the Louvre or British Museum or MOMA in thirty minutes while listening to the babble of an immature, self-centered “guide” who has glanced at but never seen the art in question is your cup of tea, this book will be perfect for you. (less)

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May 23, 2009 Roger Shaw rated it 2 of 5 stars

After a promising start, every chapter of The Whole Five Feet starts to look the same, and that's when it becomes clear that what this book needs is more perspective.

Every chapter includes the highlights of each volume in the Harvard Classics, which mostly read like a student's notes from a Great Books class. Alongside these notes are some emotional stories from the author's life during the year this project took place, which are some of the more compelling portions of the book.

Occasionally, a...more

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Apr 14, 2009 Anne Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: friends

Recommended to Anne by: a book store employee

I thought this book was wonderful. Beha, in a chatty format, uses the great classics and ancient philosophers to help understand his own life. While some of the classics (mostly the Greeks) seem fresh and revelant, and others dry as dust, the book is never boring. I found tha parts wihch deal with Beha's own life most interesting, but I was surprised that I walked away wanting to read more of the classics myself. It is not necessary to have read any of the Harvard classics (or to have a Harvard...more

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Feb 02, 2009 Ron rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: cultural-studies, memoirs

I would've thought there weren't any useful variations left on the "I'm going to read a lot of great literature and tell you what it means to me" genre, but Beha managed to find one--committing himself to the 51-volume Harvard Classics library. The books continually fade into the background, however, as the year Beha dedicated to the project was quickly overwhelmed by personal tragedies ranging from a death in the family to a case of Lyme disease that went undiagnosed for a good long while.

I dun...more

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Oct 03, 2009 Robert marked it as to-read

Shelves: to-finish-later

I picked this up over lunch.. he co-selected stories with JCO in a collection I really liked muchly.. so far it's an interesting historical-ish read. Interrupted by the braying jackal laughter of the power broker crowd that wandered into my lunchtime reading area.. I wonder how Mr. Beha would have felt had I turned his book into a murder weapon.. it was a close call.

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Dec 27, 2012 William S. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I received this book as a gift from my mother knowing that I love reading fiction, and she knows that I have a few lists of "Best Books" that I try to read through. I have to say, it brought a smile to my face that she bought me something akin to the journey I wanted for myself. I didn't know what to expect. reading mainly fiction and not memoirs left me in the unknown. Seeing it was short and would give me a quick break between my other books I delved in.

I think his writing style isn't bad, bu...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Kristen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes I feel guilty about the hours I spend reading - opportunity-cost of other things I should be doing. So, I loved when this author posed the question, "why read?" After spending a year with the 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics, he poses that we don't read for knowledge (Socrates says that is futile) and we don't read for pleasure (not all is pleasurable), but we read so we can participate in the conversation of humanity. By reading, we become bigger and more complete than a unit of one...more Sometimes I feel guilty about the hours I spend reading - opportunity-cost of other things I should be doing. So, I loved when this author posed the question, "why read?" After spending a year with the 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics, he poses that we don't read for knowledge (Socrates says that is futile) and we don't read for pleasure (not all is pleasurable), but we read so we can participate in the conversation of humanity. By reading, we become bigger and more complete than a unit of one individual.

As the author faced cancer, the death of a beloved Aunt, another illness, and the birth of a nephew he was asking himself life's toughest questions. He realized that all the authors he was reading had struggled through the same questions about life. The author feels defeated by reality and referencing "Don Quixote" thinks, "What are we to do with a world that gives us basins, when we want to live in a world of enchanted helmets". Beha comments a lot about how the world is in pain...must we pay for our happiness with tears? He notes that the question of death can't be answered and perhaps wisdom is accepting that limit: mankind, however, always struggles to look beyond it (Dante's Inferno). He decides that if you know where to look perhaps there is some compensation for hardships, and some consolation for brevity of life. I found the most interesting part of the book to be when the author explores his loss of faith: He had read Emmerson concluding the "gigantic hand of the cosmos" must be true, and he had read Augustine's conclusion that there is a hidden order to the world that must be God. But, Beha found no consolation in faith even in his worst illness and therefore concluded that faith was not available to him, so the world must really be unordered or mane violently ordered. Beha's world view is that there is no order but the one we make (he notes literature that seems to document the re-ordering of society).

When I considered our worlds famous ancient authors as young men considering life's questions as Beha did, I felt more than ever that it is not a waste of time to participate in the conversations of humanity by reading...it's like being in a multi-century book club.

(less)

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Apr 16, 2010 Doreen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: specific-goals-tasks-time-constrain

The 5 feet of books refers to the list made by Charles Eliot, a former Harvard President. When stacked, the books measure about five feet tall. The list was compiled as a way for those who could not afford a college education to gain knowledge through the reading and studying of these 51 titles.
Beha vows to read through the Harvard Classics, as the list is called, in the span of one year. He makes this pledge on New Year's Eve. He is in his late 20's at the time and doesn't have a very clear cou...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Mme. Bookling ~ rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had never heard of Christopher Beha until recently on a "Fresh Air" interview about his newest book. It wasn't his most recent work that grabbed my attention, however. It was the review of his previous - this one. Of course it grabbed my attention because a guy spent a year of his live devoted to reading a collection of classics and then wrote a personal memoir about it. If nothing else, I was kicking myself for not doing the very.same.thing.

Though it reads largely like a book report, I unders...more

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Oct 13, 2009 Danielle rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is another book in the seemingly ever increasing genre of I did some ridiculous thing in a year's time and now I'm going to write a book about it (see recent entries by A.J. Jacobs on living by Biblical laws and reading the Encyclopedia Britannica and Julie Powell's book Julie and Julia). In this particular version Beha spends the year reading the Harvard Classics, a selection of books compiled into large volumes by a past Harvard president. The amount of shelf space needed to house the boo...more

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Nov 04, 2011 ~Geektastic~ rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-about-books, memoir-biography, library, non-fiction, reviewed, 2011

The Harvard Classics, or "The Five Foot Shelf," is a series of books originally compiled in the early part of the 20th century with the express intent of bringing culture to the masses. While this sort of "charitable" educational project can be seen as elitist, I like to think that in this case it was not. By the early 1900's, the Classical education of yore was going out of style, but quite a few people were loathe to see it go. So, the president of Harvard and a few others compiled an immense...more The Harvard Classics, or "The Five Foot Shelf," is a series of books originally compiled in the early part of the 20th century with the express intent of bringing culture to the masses. While this sort of "charitable" educational project can be seen as elitist, I like to think that in this case it was not. By the early 1900's, the Classical education of yore was going out of style, but quite a few people were loathe to see it go. So, the president of Harvard and a few others compiled an immense 22,000 pages of "classics" to help average people educate themselves in their free time. There are no novels in this collection, as at the time they were considered extremely accessible and popular.

Christopher Beha was in his early 20's, living with his parents and just entering his 5th year of remission from cancer when he decided to tackle a task he had kept in the back of his mind for some time: read through the entire Five Foot Shelf in one year and write a book about it. His initial intention was something lighthearted and a bit on the fluffy side, but a confluence of real life events pushed him in another direction. The onset of Lyme disease and a death in the family created a more somber, reflective tone for his book than he originally intended (I'm not postulating, he says so in the book!). This tone works, for the most part, because while it tackles sadness and worry, it doesn't allow those things to bog down the actual journey through the books. Is it occasionally a bit too philosophical and serendipitous? Sure, but that's generally how memoirs focusing on reading work; everyone whose written one always seems to find the right book at just the right time.

I wouldn't call this book a favorite, but I enjoyed it. Christopher Beha has a comfortable, easy way of telling a story and keeping sadness from becoming maudlin or sentimental. The overviews of the books were interesting, though by no means comprehensive; really, it's not the books that are the point, but how the books affected Beha for the year he devoted to them. And he did manage to read the whole series in a year, which is impressive.(less)

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Mar 21, 2010 Melody rated it 2 of 5 stars

Beha struck me as a memoirist who missed opportunity after opportunity in this memoir. He alluded to several interesting periods of his life, but he chose instead to share the random, the odd and the banal. For instance, I would have enjoyed much more on how the books he was reading resonated with his loss of faith (and the suffering said loss has obviously caused him) rather than the recounting of his trip to the sperm bank with his mom. I came away discontent, cranky, and only a little more kn...more

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Nov 25, 2009 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was a little confusing to me in the beginning, as I wasn't quite sure that he was really telling us what he was learning as he read the Harvard Classics. However, once I got in the mode of knowing how to read his book, I got it and really enjoyed it. This young man has been through a great deal in his life already, which most likely taught him much on its own, but he added in reading the Harvard Classics during a difficult period in his life and seemed to learn even more. I loved his i...more

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May 03, 2011 Chris Schaeffer rated it 3 of 5 stars

A young man takes a year out of his career to read all of the Harvard classics, and writes about it, which is a project I'm of course pretty sympathetic to. I often like these kinds of things, these diaries of a systematic aesthetic labor (see the great blog, The Criterion Contraption) but after awhile Beha's tone got a bit sentimental and his subject matter began to veer away from the classics and towards his own particulars in a way that felt like it dampened the intellectual energy of the boo...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Lynda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-and-reading

I liked this book a great deal. Beha combines his reading with the events of his life during the year he was reading the great books. He looks at the way what he is reading effects his life and vice versa.

I had already read most of the works included in the great books, and have always felt that I am not well educated despite my degree and years of reading. I have always been drawn to the classics and read several in the original Latin during my 3 years of Latin in school. Yet, when I compared...more

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Sep 03, 2011 Steven Mclain rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Begun as such things often are--as a New Years resolution--Beha undertakes the somewhat daunting task of reading all 22,000 pages of the Harvard Classics in a single year. Beha first assigns the undertaking the same weight as going to the gym more often, giving up smoking or being nicer to one's children. But as the months progress (a volume every week) we discovers the central meaning of the Harvard Classics, something its founder and editor thought would lead to a cultivated life. Indeed, the...more

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Jun 29, 2009 Marie rated it 5 of 5 stars

"“In much wisdom is much grief,” counsels the book of Ecclesiastes, and in Christopher R. Beha’s tender intellectual memoir, we find plenty of both. By the time he set out to read all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics — known as the Five-Foot Shelf — Beha had already survived blood cancer and seen his identical twin brother nearly die after a car accident. And in a year that would take Beha from ancient Greece to the 20th century, illness and death returned once more, reminding him that no amou...more

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Jul 10, 2010 Duong rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book as I was glued to the first few pages in the bookstore. The idea behind this book is fascinating and I'm still compelled to read all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics. I had the strong yearning to pull for the author as he seems to be a genuine person who has suffered a tumultuous life. Given his struggles, I found myself craving for deeper reflections and more poignant moments than the very few sprinkled throughout the much repetitive book. I finished the book...more

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Oct 17, 2009 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mind-bending, nonfiction

I was unexpectedly engrossed in this memoir (which at first glance seemed as gimicky as Julie and Julia) about a young man who decides to read his grandmother's "whole five feet" of 1909 Harvard Classics. The author deftly entwined insights from the 51 volumes with events in his own life. I highly recommend this for anyone who ever who has ever considered self education in the classics.

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Aug 23, 2012 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure what I expected this book to be. I think I wanted more about the books, but I also appreciate that Beha was internalizing the reading, framing it with the life he was leading at that time. This is, after all, what books are supposed to do, yes--they help us understand what is going on around us, even if the subject of the book is completely foreign to our lives.

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Apr 02, 2010 Robin rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was an interesting read. The premise that one would read the Harvard Classics in a year (kind of reminds mt of Julie/Julia) intrigued me. I dip into some of those classics occasionally, but I liked reading his take on them as he read while coping with major personal life issues. It really didn't inspire me to read the whole five feet, but it did give me a new look at myself and the world.

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Sep 22, 2009 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I liked his voice but the book was a little drab. It seemed to go over the same thing endlessly. Still, it's a great idea for a one year project and I'm glad he did it and I'm also glad the book didn't turn out all funny and "oh boy what a lot of knowledge" like he planned but more serious. Of course all that business about books sending you out to the world was great and he actually made me want to read some of the volumes.

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Aug 28, 2012 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a confirmed bibliophile with a liberal arts education, I was completely on board with the romantic notion of reading the Harvard Classics from start to finish. I appreciated Beha's commentary and his careful weaving of his life revelations throughout the tale of the pursuit of his goal. I only wish I had the time (& energy) to devote to the same.

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Mar 04, 2012 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was okay. Some parts of the book were interesting, other parts were boring. Often I felt like the writer would make an insightful remark or reflection and then he would just stop and move on, I think he could have expanded on some of his reading and life experiences. I enjoyed the excerpts from the volumes he was reading and overall I'd say I'm happy that I read this book.

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Feb 26, 2011 Relyn rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: more scholarly readers than I

Recommended to Relyn by: I love books about books.

Shelves: just-couldn-t-finish-it

I love the behind this book, too. The guy decided to read the entire five foot shelf of the Harvard Classics. The idea behind this series was that "careful and persistent study" of these books, chosen by Harvard's then-President, Charles Elliot, could educate a person as well as a course of study at a university. The author had looked at these red leather books on his parents shelves for years before he made a commitment to read them himself. Sounds like a great idea, hunh? A personal memoir wra...more

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Jul 04, 2009 Tracy rated it 1 of 5 stars

Jeff likes this book, although he finds it spotty, but I just did not enjoy it. I like the IDEA of the book, but not the result. I would've liked to see less self-conscious, labored writing and better congruence between the reading and the life events Beha attempts, clumsily, to integrate into his discussion of the five-foot shelf.

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Feb 10, 2010 Shawna rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I purchased this book in Santa Cruz while on vacation. The Whole Five Feet is a reference to the classics published in the early 20th century in a set for the "common people." Beha reads through the five feet which his grandmother had owned. Interesting but not great.

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Jan 14, 2013 Celeste rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like Mr. Beha. He's honest, smart, straightforward, sincere. He converses with the reader like a friend. And he makes 5 to 6 powerful, succinct syntheses about what he has read that make the book worth reading. And that's about it.

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Dec 09, 2012 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book does not review the classics that Beha read, but shows how reading the classics changed his life, both as he was reading them and as his life has continued after the project of reading through the Harvard Classics. An easy and thought-provoking read. Recommended.

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“... all knowledge in the world is small recompense for the things we can't possibly know. There seem to be two contradictory facts about human nature. The first is that there is a sharp limit to what we can understand. Everytime we expand the store of the known, this expansion serves to make it obvious just how much - everything, really - lies beyond that limit. The second fact about human nature is that we want more than anything else to see beyond that limit.” — 2 people liked it

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