The socratic dialogue is interesting but at a certain point it isn't really a dialogue, it just devolves to:

"Socrates: 3 paragraphs on the proper education for the guardian class

Glaucon: But why

Socrates: 6 page explanation

Glaucon: Cool I agree"

https://web.archive.org/web/20231213094556/https://existentialcomics.com/blog

This whole piece is extremely useful for guiding one's philosophical reading, but I think the most immediately applicable part are:

(if you want to go straight to reading primary sources)

Works which require little to no context:

[…]

The Socratic Dialogs, Plato.
Difficulty level: easy

Most of Plato’s Socratic dialogs can be read by themselves. The Death of Socrates [Phaedo?], and Gorgias are probably as good of a place to start as any.

(if you want to take the advice to start with secondary sources)

General philosophy resources:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

My number one resource when I'm trying to better understand something I'm reading, or get an overview of something I'm unfamiliar with. It is written by professional philosophers, and the quality and depth far outshines Wikipedia.

[…]

Philosophy Bro

Philosophy Bro summarizes philosophers using humorous, bro-style language. Despite how stupid that sounds, he is surprisingly informative and funny. If you want a quick overview of a philosopher that you are unfamiliar with, and reading the Stanford Encyclopedia is too dry and long for you, this might be a great place to look. Every week, he also answers various philosophy questions from readers.

[…]

YouTube in general.

YouTube might have the most philosophical content of any single platform in the history of the world.

My process often starts with YouTube, then SEP, then podcasts, then reading primary material

Links to the Plato pages for the first two resources:

• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/

• https://www.philosophybro.com/archive/tag/Plato

@TheAllMemeingEye I'm an idiot, I thought The Socratic Dialogues was like a small group of narrative short stories and that The Republic was a separate longform purely rhetoric based book, and that therefore it was preferable to read the former first, but it turns out The Republic is actually one of them, so I reverse my vote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_dialogue#:~:text=Republic