In preparation for moving onto graduate study and to put myself in a comfortable place concerning comprehensive exams ahead of time, I'm preparing a reading list for the next year. It'll be the first time ever in my entire life that I have not been in school, where I will theoretically have 16 out of the 24 hours that make up a day to myself, and I'm going to spend it reading philosophy goddamn it!

I'm actually very excited about this and plan, knowing full well it won't be what I hope, to do a readings journal of what I'm reading as well. Though journaling is always boring, it's been helpful in coursework to show where I don't understand the text and to help formulate my own thoughts concerning the text. I've also made the decision to stick to those philosophers with whom I have a vested interest in, meaning I won't delve that much into Descartes but hope to read all three critiques of Kant and a good portion of Spinoza.

I've some problems though, stumbling blocks really, mainly concerning what books I will ultimately choose to read, which to buy, and which to check out from the library (do I really need to own all the secondary literature?). The main problem I've come up against is the order to read it in. Though the most obvious way to read would be to start with the pre-Socratics and go forward, I've read enough Derrida and Deleuze to know that the most obvious ways are not always the most fruitful. Wouldn't such a reading mean I'm buying into a kind of historicism that I may not ultimately want to buy?

It says something about my own lack of creativity that I fail to think of any good, systematic alternative for moving through these books. Ultimately I'd like to find some way of doing these readings that supports my hope doing philosophy by engaging with other philosophers and not simply being a historian of the history of philosophy. However I decide to do these readings they will instruct me in the way I think, both in the structure I set up around my readings and by the possibilities I have excluded (should I include analytic philosophy at all?).

Of course, any suggestion for non-historicist ways of moving through the history of philosophy, er, the multitude of singular texts that form what we call Western philosophy are appreciated.