What do I mean by "The Great Books"?

I actually mean a list composed by two old white English professors and published in 1999

The most common question I get when telling people I’m writing about the Great Books is “What do you mean by ‘The Great Books'?”

It’s a question I initially found confusing and perplexing. I’m like, “you know, Aristotle and Plato and Shakespeare and Milton and all the super-classics that you hear about but never read. “