Dan Harrell, Annapolis tutor, will present his lecture "Being a Book" on Friday, February 23.

At St John's there are certain books we read, books we claim to be important to our endeavor; and we argue for this importance in terms of what makes the books great.  But what makes them books, I have come to think, is more central to our experience of reading them, discussing them, and learning from them.  And I wrote this lecture in the attempt to clarify this thought.  My hope—despite the St. John's frame I use here —is that the lecture will be of interest to any reader of books, even if it fails, by my lights, to make sense of a book.

This lecture is free and open to the public.