“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” — René Descartes
Michael and David aim to read William Manchester's Churchill series, Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Plutarch's Lives. Cal plans to revisit The Odyssey to prepare for the new movie, along with tackling War and Peace and Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.
“My ego was suspended somewhere in space, and I saw my body lying dead on the sofa.”
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Michael, David and Cal discuss their readings from 2024 and goals for 2025.
"If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I may seize the nearest stick and kill it. But if I found that snake in bed with my children that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes and put them there with them, I take it no man would say there was any question how I ought to decide."
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill.. You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? I’m the reason why… things are what they are.”
This year I decided to fill in a gaping gap in my liberal arts knowledge of antiquity by committing to sitting down and reading one of the most influential works in the Western cannon – Homer’s Iliad. The Iliad is a collection of books in the style of a poem; it contains 24 books arranged... Continue Reading →
Michael, Cal and David discuss the books read over 2023.
“The question without answering which one cannot live: Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”
Brains and Brawn 