If you want to join the Great Reads Group, please send us an email

“Great Books” are classics; that is, they have been identified by serious readers over the decades and centuries as the best repositories of wonder, wisdom, and insight expressed in language that humans have produced. Our Great Books reading group will meet on a regular basis – either weekly or bi-weekly – to engage in what the Great Books Foundation calls “shared inquiry,” a method of guided discussion designed to get participants to develop their own insights and understanding of a book through mutual sharing and critical thinking. The initial meeting of the group will be devoted to outlining and demonstrating the discussion method, surveying the interests of the participants, and then deciding on a book to read for future sessions.

DISCUSSION LEADER John R. Holt is a retired professor and former Chair of the English and Foreign Languages Dept. at Centenary University in Hackettstown. His doctorate is from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where he studied literature, philosophy, and intellectual history. He believes that the present time is generally one of confusion and uncertainty, and that non-academic group study of the Great Books can help us to clarify and perhaps ameliorate our experience of “the human condition.”