What are the 1000 good books?
The “thousand good books” are the classic stories, fairy tales, romances, and adventures of literature. They are key aspects to the formation of the imaginations, intellects, and morals of children and young people. We are a Catholic homeschooling family and a small business on a mission to make the 1000 good books affordably available in audio form to families by crowdsourcing the production of as many classic books as possible. Read more about our philosophy, our method, and our mission below.
We have a rotating selection of books available for free for a limited time on our free channel. Full access to our growing library of books is $5 a month. Skip a latte, and dive into the riches of classic literature!
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By subscribing, you help us make more and more books available. If you want to help in another way, by sponsoring a particular book, or if you are interested in being a reader, please subscribe and send us a message. Together, we can make something spectacular!
Our Philosophy
The “thousand good books” is a phrase coined by a University Professor named John Senior. He taught a Great Books program at the University of Kansas in the 1970’s. His focus was teaching what have been called the “100 Great Books” in the tradition of Matthew Arnold, John Erskine, Mortimer Adler, and others.
But, he remarked that in his opinion the great books movement had “fizzled” not because there was anything wrong with the great books, but because the students were not properly formed intellectually to engage with them. He believed that growing up steeped in the larger world of classic literature, which he called the thousand good books, was the necessary prelude to engaging with the great books.
Why Audio Books?
We love audio books. Many people nowadays are under the impression that audio books are a lesser way to encounter literature. While we certainly appreciate reading a well-loved and dog-eared copy of a book, the skill of visually “decoding” written language is far from the only valuable way to engage with a work of literature. Listening to stories is a deeply human tradition that predates the written word—and if you don’t believe us, ask Homer!
In fact, as kids develop, their language comprehension skills are usually ahead of their visual decoding skills, so they can listen and learn from a higher-level book than they can read on their own. For a wealth of information on this topic, we recommend one of our favorite educators and thinkers, Andrew Pudewa, who has a great talk here:
Reading aloud as a family is an integral part of our family life. While we would never view audio books as an adequate replacement of reading aloud to our children, there is only so much time in the day! As a supplement to reading aloud, audio books provide an opportunity for our children to engage with literature to a much greater extent than we could manage on our own.
One thing audio books sure can replace, though, is screen time! Having kids play with toys or draw while listening can be a great replacement for screen time.
For further information on the benefits of reading aloud with your family and ideas on how to implement it, we recommend checking out Sarah Makenzie’s website and her book, The Read Aloud Family. Also, check out the “Book Lists” tab above for ideas for books you can read aloud with your family!
What about the Music?
Our audio books have integrated music. Why?
Classic literature, especially from a century ago or more, is often more complex, has a higher level vocabulary, and a slower pace of story with more description and characterization. We think that makes it particularly valuable, but it can be a difficult transition for children accustomed to modern books or visual media.
Music can set a tone for a story, and lubricate the imagination, adding beauty and interest that can help children be engaged and persistent through the book. Additionally, it forms a strong memory-bond with the book. We have heard our kids humming Mozart and Bach as they think of the story they just listened to.
We also believe exposure to classical music (which forms the majority of our accompaniments) is an added benefit and enculturating force!
Our Journey
When our family began, we intended to follow Professor Senior’s recommendation and provide a childhood steeped in the 1000 good books to our children. But, finding the books—especially those which are no longer as well known (how many of us have read the Brownie books by Palmer Cox, or the bedtime stories of Thornton Burgess?)—was difficult and often prohibitively expensive. And so our quest began for a solution.
Our desire to give the 1000 good books to our children, and our infatuation with audio books led to our current project. We began creating audio books for our children, and giving them as presents on compact discs. One birthday, we gave a copy of Around the World in Eighty Days to our ten-year-old. That book, as is often the case with classic children’s literature, has quite complex syntax and vocabulary, and tells the story at a much more leisurely pace than is common with our modern, plot-driven children’s books. We suspected that she would struggle to understand it, or would get bored and abandon it. To our surprise, rather than getting bored or confused, she had finished it in only a few days, and proceeded to regale us with anecdotes and plot twists that had captured her imagination.
Success!
As we continued to work on creating audio books, we found that many of our friends were interested in the project, and had similar desires for their children. And so we decided to offer our work to a larger audience.
Our Mission
We have begun our collection inspired by a list of books that John Senior compiled. But we are also inspired by other book lists, and are adding to his to make as comprehensive a collection as we can.
Good quality recordings exist in the public domain for some of the books on our list, but not all. We are looking for people who believe in this mission to partner with us, by subscribing, and by providing any resources they can to help us fill out the catalogue, and make as many classics as possible available in high-quality and enjoyable audio book form. The more people who join us, the faster we can work our way through the catalogue and build a one-stop-shop for great audio books for the whole family.
How Membership Works
We plan to rotate through our books on our free channel, so that anyone can have access on a rolling basis to the books. Joining our membership program will give full access to the entire ever-growing catalogue of books.
Members can listen to the books in the Substack app, or in any preferred podcast app by linking the RSS feed (click HERE for guides on how to do that).
The books are organized into four age-based categories, and members can access any of the categories they wish.
No Ads, EVER
We function purely from subscriber and sponsor support. We do not, and will not ever interrupt books with advertisements. We object on a philosophical level to the advertisement-based internet model. Remember, if you are receiving something of value, you are paying for it—if not with money, then with your attention or your subconscious. We believe in giving people the freedom to subscribe if they believe our work is of value, but NOT in trying to steal people’s attention or facilitate their manipulation by advertisements.
If you want to delve more deeply into the relationship between our attention and our humanity, we highly recommend another of our favorite thinkers, Matthew Crawford, and especially his book, The World Beyond Your Head.
No AI
We feel strongly that creative human contributions are good for society. We want this to be a human community of learners. We are committed to all of the reading and music in our library coming solely from human talent. If you want to listen to Darth Vader reading Sense and Sensibility, there are (or will be) plenty of other places that can offer you that. Ultimately we want to be able to commission readers, composers, and musicians, thereby continuing the tradition of the arts, and celebrating human creativity!
In fact our logo of the child reading in the tree was created by Stephanie Cole at Wildwood Designs. Check out her work on her website: Wildwood Designs
Proper Ages
John Senior broke his list into four groups, based on general ages of child development: Nursery, school days, adolescence, and youth. Those divisions are based primarily on matching the content of the book to the proper concerns of the stage of development and social understandings of developing children.
This is discretionary. We purport to have no expertise in deciding what content is most appropriate for each age. Generally speaking, all of the books are written at a higher reading level than our society currently assigns to particular ages.
Also, there can be content in the books that are more appropriate for older children, or are at odds with modern sensibilities. People have very different opinions about such things, as they should.
We have given basic suggested minimum ages for books, based on John Senior’s progression, and approximating it as best we can for books that are not explicitly on his list.
But, we defer to the judgement of parents as to what their children will enjoy, and what is appropriate material for their consumption. Please substitute your own judgement in place of our suggestions.
Sign up, and get in touch!
We would be excited to hear any feedback you have, any suggestions, or any help you would like to give!
You can message us in substack, or email us at contact@1000goodbooks.org. We would love to hear any questions, suggestions, criticisms, or encouragements that you have.
