Right after college, I began meeting weekly with my friend Stephen to discuss the books we were reading. I had just graduated with a degree in international business, but I had spent more time reading literature than coursework material. I read Crime & Punishment, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and others. And I read them for fun.

My friend Stephen has studied literature at the undergraduate, graduate, and PhD levels. I envied his course of study. I remember enthusiastically asking him what he thought about Moby Dick, absolutely certain he had read it with that level of formal education.

He sorrowfully answered that he had not read Moby Dick. I was shocked. He went on to explain that he had read all about Moby Dick, the background of the author, and the cultural context of the novel, but his program of study had not required the reading of the actual novel. He got so burned out that he quit his PhD program midstream. By the time we started meeting, he was on a quest to make up for his lack of education.

That was 20+ years ago, but I think about Stephen often. While there is merit in learning about how to approach a novel, how to learn about the author and context, that pales in comparison to reading the actual novel. I was reminded of Stephen when I saw this article last week in The Wall Street Journal.

I quipped on X that:

The article itself is rather short and lighthearted in tone. It starts with this:

Those who see the humanities, heavy coursework and value of a Harvard education as gravely imperiled can take heart in the phenomenon that is Humanities 10.

I certainly did not take heart with what followed. Pamela Paul, the author of the article, describes how Harvard now offers an “old school” course requiring students to read a book a week. This course had to be “dreamed up over dinner in 2008” by “renowned” Harvard professors as a way to “combat plummeting student interest in the humanities.” It’s one of the most damning commentaries on Harvard that I can imagine.

The university that produced the great Harvard Classics book series and Loeb Classical Library Greek and Latin texts had to be reminded that a canon of the Great Books exists where students can encounter the most exceptional minds of the past? Oops, I just used two words that are conspicuously absent from the course description: “Great Books” and “canon.”

Do you remember when you’d get into trouble as a child and your parent would say they weren’t angry, but that they were sad? Somehow, that would be infinitely worse. That’s my emotion when I read this article. It’s not anger, it’s a deep sadness. How does an elite university get to the point where “It’s a fever that even the professors are struggling to explain?” How does an entire university system educate my friend Stephen on the periphery of the novel but not actually read the novel itself, the very thing he sought to do through his field of study?

There is a deep hunger to read the greatest works written across the ages. First of all, I see it in myself. The key focus of this reading project is to read the books I really should have read in school.

Secondly, I see it in others. Just last night, I led my monthly in-person reading group covering Short Great Books. When I asked if the attendees wanted to continue into the new year, they all enthusiastically agreed. Nearly every member of the group was reading Jason and the Argonauts for the very first time for last evening’s discussion. One new member, the manager of a local Publix supermarket, said he was simply looking for a group where he could discuss great literature. None of his friends were reading books like this.

I see it when people come into Landmark Booksellers and plant themselves in front of The Great Wall, a collection of the greatest works ever written (containing a healthy collection of books published by Harvard University).

We want to be challenged by the best minds and the best books. For some reason, parts of the educational system, even the elite parts, seem to have forgotten this. In the meantime, the mantle is being carried by others. There’s a groundswell of interest, where individuals are finding other individuals to read and discuss literature. They are doing this in small groups around the world, through podcasts like Ascend, in online communities like The Catherine Project, and in college settings like St. John’s, Ralston College, and others.

It turns out that you don’t need a university education to approach the Great Books. It might help along the way, but it actually might harm, like it did Stephen. You can just start reading these works on your own or with others. These books were not written to confuse you.

While Harvard continues to be shocked and awed at the freshmen students lining up for this challenging course, pick up a Great Book from the canon and nourish your soul.

October 2026 Reading

Voltaire • Plato • Apollonius of Rhodes

I continued on the Plato Project during October and focused mainly on the Euthydemus & Meno dialogues. It was very good. I also read Candide by Voltaire and am in the midst of Jason and the Argonauts. Both of those books were for the Short Great Books reading group I lead at Landmark Booksellers.

November 2026 Reading Plan

One More Month of Plato

November is my final month of the year where I focus on The Great Books (I take winter break in December). I’ll be reading Plato’s Meno and then as many other dialogues as I can get through by the end of the month.

My goal is to read the complete works of Plato, so I’ll need to keep that going in 2027 as I still have a ways to go. Here’s my current status:

• Read - Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus, Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rival Lovers, Theages, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Ion, Republic, Euthydemus, Meno

• Yet to Read - Protagoras, Gorgias, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Menexenus, Clitophon, Timaeus, Critias, Minos, Laws, Epinomis, Letters, Definitions, On Justice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Halcyon, Eryxias, Axiochus, Epigrams

Recently Acquired

October Book Purchases

I only had one book purchase during October and here it is:

• Timaeus and Critias - I really enjoy Robin Waterfield’s introductions and translations and wanted to be prepared for when I got to these dialogues.

Bookish Adventures

October was full of author events at Landmark Booksellers. The highlight was an event with Gary Sinise with Jack Carr as the moderator. The event was around Gary’s upcoming book Graceful Warrior, a book about his son who recently passed away from cancer. It was a somber but hopeful event. Gary’s work is so deeply meaningful and I share some of what I learned from him in this episode.

Here are some other photos from author events during October:

I set aside one post per month to highlight my reading life. Books of Titans is a reading project aimed at seeking the ancient paths by reading The Great Books by 200 Authors chronologically over the next 40 years. Thank you for following my journey.

Books come from books. That realization set me on a quest to read The Great Books. I’d been reading some really good books at a clip that was ambitious for me. I was attempting a book a week and did that or got really close between 2017 and 2022. Then, I started reading books that took one idea from another book and expanded upon it. I began to question why I was reading these secondary books and not the source books from which those ideas had first appeared.

It was also around this time in late 2022 that I kept encountering people talking about The Great Books through podcasts and social media. I had heard about this corpus during my life and had even been collecting many books considered to be the world’s best, but I had never dedicated my reading life to The Great Books.

I decided to shift my reading project towards The Great Books in the year of our Lord, 2023. I scoured book lists from websites, books, and professors. I began to see many of the same books included in most of those lists and started to create my own.

Most lists begin with the Greeks and with Homer. Some went back further to Mesopotamia and Egypt. I decided to do the latter and kicked off my list with The Epic of Gilgamesh. This work is over 4,000 years old. I didn’t know what to expect. Would the language, style, and ideas be so antiquated that it would make for difficult reading?

I was pleasantly surprised and immediately hooked. I started with the Stephen Mitchell version and then proceeded to two different translations, the gold standard by Andrew George, and a new one by Sophus Helle. I loved the essays in Helle’s translation and sought out more books about ancient Mesopotamia.

In April of 2023, Sophus Helle released another translation, this time of a work even older than Gilgamesh. It was poetry by a priestess named Enheduana. The subtitle of the book was “The complete poems of the world’s first author.”

Here I was, getting started with what I thought was our oldest surviving work, only to encounter something older. Something compiled 1,500 years before Homer and written by a woman. How many Great Books lists have you seen that start with Enheduana? We’re closer in time to the life of Jesus than Jesus was to Enheduana.

What an amazing time to be alive. Archaeology has provided us with ancient clay tablets containing Cuneiform writing, sitting in museums waiting to be read by scholars. We can read about the temples of Ur through the eyes of this priestess, the very land that Abram was called out of in the book of Genesis.

Right away, in my quest to read The Great Books, I was encountering new, old works. There was an immediate sense of adventure, of exploration, of excitement. That has not subsided. There are endless rabbit trails connected to the Great Books. At first, I thought I’d be able to read through my Great Books list in 10 years. I quickly realized it will take more like 40 years. I want to leave room to explore these rabbit trails. Here’s to 36 more years of adventure!

Here are the books mentioned in this episode:

Mythology by Edith Hamilton

This is the best starting point. Edith Hamilton collected tales from a variety of sources (Hesiod, Homer, Ovid, and others) to present the full stories of many of the gods you’ll come across in your reading. Edith also highlights both the Greek and Roman names of the gods. Here’s my podcast episode about this book:

Theogony by Hesiod

Hesiod was either a contemporary of Homer or was very close in the timeline. His book Theogonycovers the genealogy of the gods. This is very helpful in understanding which god gave birth to which god. This knowledge oftentimes provides insight into character qualities of the gods (for example, memory gave birth to the muses). Here’s my podcast episode about this book:

The Homeric Hymns

This is a collection of 33 hymns to the gods. These hymns contain a variety of stories about those gods. I found this to be a very entertaining way of learning about the Greek pantheon. Here’s my podcast episode about this book:

Greek Epic Fragments

Did you know that Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey are just two works out of eight total that compose the Trojan Epic Cycle? The six other works are lost to us, but many authors (Aeschylus, Pindar, Euripides, and Herodotus among others) referenced these epics, providing fragments we can access. Additionally, a writer named Proclus compiled plot summaries of each of the six lost works in his collection called Chrestomathy. This has left us with general outlines of what these six works contained, and they are presented in this Loeb Classical Library book. Some of the stories are the Judgement of Paris, the kidnapping of Helen, the Trojan Horse, and the death of Odysseus. Here’s my podcast episode about this book:

I meet with some guys a couple of times a month to hang out and talk about life. Last week, we discussed our different practices for journaling. One of the guys has journaled for most of his life. Another uses social media as his journaling medium. I tend to journal by hand about once a month. I used to journal much more frequently.

On the way home, I was thinking about my journaling practice and realized that I’ve shifted a lot of my journaling to books. I use physical books as my journals. I write in the front, in the margins, at the end of chapters, and in the back. On a second reading, I’ll use a different color pen so I know what stuck during each of the readings. When I flip through books on my shelves, I can see the questions I asked the author, the ideas I encountered for the first time, things that made me angry, and pages that have changed my life.

But it’s not just what I write in my books that turns them into journals. It’s also what I put into those books. I try to add keepsakes and bookmarks between the pages. I like the idea of being surprised by these things when my future self takes books off my shelf.

I wanted to share some of the things I place in books in the hope that you also pick up this peculiar habit of treating your books as journals:

Plane Tickets

I love adding plane and train tickets to my books that correspond to travel I took while reading the book. I can usually visualize reading that book on that particular trip.

Stuff Your Kids Make

My books are filled with bookmarks, notes, and stickers that my daughters have given me while reading the books. Those are an absolute delight to discover later on.

Notes from the Author

This particular book is my hinge book, the book my entire library hinges upon. I read it when I was 18 and emailed the author a few years later. I printed his reply and keep it in the back of the book. It also includes the email I wrote to him describing what the book had meant in my life.

Photos

Printed photos are rare these days. This is a photo of my grandparents that I keep in one of my Bibles. I know it’s there when I look at that Bible and I love opening it up and seeing them.

Inscriptions

If someone gifts you a book, have them write a note in the front. I cherish these inscriptions.

Concert Tickets

My books are littered with concert tickets. Sometimes they are relevant to the content of the book and other times they are concerts I attended while reading the book.

Stickers

I had a little fun with this one adding a Parental Advisory sticker to The Song of Solomon.

Writing in your Books

In the front cover of each book, I write where and when I purchased it and when I read it. A few years ago, I recorded a podcast episode with more details about my note taking practices in books:

One of my favorite things is to discover other people’s keepsakes in second-hand bookstores. It’s such a wonderful surprise when you open a book and a newspaper clipping, note, or bookmark pops out from decades ago. What do you add to your books that turn them into journals?

In this episode, I talk about the difference between sophia and philosophy (a love of sophia), means vs ends, and virtue bridging the knowledge and love gap.

I’ve just finished reading Euthydemus, my 23rd Plato dialogue. I started my Plato Project attempt to read the philosopher’s complete works in August of 2025. I have 12 dialogues remaining. It’s been a challenging but deeply interesting journey into philosophy.

In the Euthydemus dialogue, Plato pits two Sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, against Socrates to show different paths to wisdom and virtue. At a simplified, high level, Sophists seek victory, to win the argument whether it’s true or not, and the philosophers seek truth above all else. The two paths lead in very different directions.

The tagline for my reading project is “To Seek Truth in the World’s Great Books,” so this contrast between the Sophists and philosophers peaks my interest.

The Sophists show up often in Greek literature. Euripides, Aristophanes, and Plato mention them often. Their reputation is that of charging money to teach their students how to win an argument irrespective of truth. You can see how this would be an enviable skill in Athens in order to win political and legal arguments. If you wanted power, you would enroll in Sophism 101.

But it contrasted sharply with the pursuit of the philosopher. It’s one thing to have sophia, or wisdom. It’s another thing to love (philo-) that sophia. Virtue is tied to wisdom, so the philosopher is seeking truth over victory in an attempt to guide the soul towards the good and virtuous life.

I love that contrast between sophia and the love of that sophia. After college, I found myself in a bit of a mental crisis where I knew that I needed to test the ideas I had picked up during my life. This primarily dealt with issues of faith. I had the sophia, the knowledge in my head, but deep down I worried that if things got tough, that sophia would not suffice. I needed to actually love that wisdom.

It is a little odd to talk about love and wisdom together. Despite the word meaning exactly that, I often think of philosophy as a pursuit of ideas. It’s an intellectual endeavor, not an emotional or spiritual one. Yet Plato’s dialogues show that it’s not merely an intellectual endeavor but that it’s personal, in that it’s between people, not someone pursuing philosophy alone in a room. And it’s also deeper than just ideas. It’s a love of wisdom.

I understand that. My post-college crisis was an attempt to test ideas so that they could move from my head to my heart. I wanted to be the kind of man who didn’t just speak intellectually about ideas and faith, but one who would speak from love and experience. I didn’t just want to believe, but to believe in order to be transformed. I wanted to speak from the vantage point of transformation because it would be truth that I had experienced, not just believed at an intellectual level.

Perhaps experience is the connector between love and wisdom. If the goal of philosophy is virtue, then virtue is putting that wisdom into practice. It’s daily experiencing wisdom. When you speak of that wisdom, it’s not in a way to gain power or win an argument, but it’s from an experience of that wisdom that has led to a love of that wisdom. You truly become a philosopher.

Plato’s goal in Euthydemus is to teach virtue to a young man. He’s testing the Sophist and the philosopher to see who can do that best. What we see is that the tactics of the Sophists lead to confusion and ignorance. Those tactics certainly do not lead towards virtue but instead lead a person away from it. However, the tactics of the philosopher are meant to lead not just to wisdom, but a love of that wisdom through virtuous living. It’s the experiential factor leading to a love of wisdom.

In my recent article, I walked through the Path of Candide by Voltaire. This hilarious satire was written as a response to a particular idea about optimism put forward by Leibniz early in the 1700s. That idea met the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that shook Voltaire’s acceptance of the idea that this was the best of all possible worlds.

Voltaire’s response was to explore optimism through the use of satire. The result is a work considered to be one of the key texts of the enlightenment. In this episode, I consider the path to Candide, talk a bit about the story, and share the one thing that stuck out to me most about this short Great Book.

I just read Candide by Voltaire for my Short Great Books reading group. As I shared last week, Candide is “an absolutely lovely tale of ‘rape, pillage, murder, massacre, butchery, religious intolerance and abuse, torture, hanging, storm, shipwreck, earth-quake, disease, prostitution.’”

It’s a satire where despite these horrors, Voltaire keeps you cackling with delight. This satire was a response to philosophical ideas, worldviews, and an utterly devastating earthquake. Here’s the genesis of the story:

1710: Leibniz’s Optimism

The subtitle for Candide is “Optimism.” Voltaire was referring directly to the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who said this world created by God is the best of all possible worlds. The ramifications are that everything happens for a reason, that there is a certain inability to change what will happen, and that “all is well.” This is known as Leibniz’ optimism. (While reading, I found myself considering how often I respond to situations with “It’s all good.”)

1755: Lisbon Earthquake

On November 1, 1755, 40,000 to 60,000 people were killed by an earthquake that struck the Portuguese capitol of Lisbon. Though in Geneva at the time, Voltaire was deeply impacted by this catastrophe and began to question the idea that “all is well.” Can this be the best possible world if this level of devastation can occur?

1756: Voltaire’s Poem

Voltaire responded to this tragedy in 1756 with a poem entitled “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster” where he questioned Leibniz’s ideas:

Come, ye philosophers, who cry, “All’s well,”
And contemplate this ruin of a world.
Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,
This child and mother heaped in common wreck,
These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—
A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,
Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,
Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,
In racking torment end their stricken lives.
To those expiring murmurs of distress,
To that appalling spectacle of woe,
Will ye reply: “You do but illustrate
The iron laws that chain the will of God”?1

Voltaire's Poem

1756: Rousseau’s Letter

In August 1756, Jean-Jacques Rousseau responded to Voltaire’s poem with a letter in which he defended optimism and divine providence by stating that mankind was at fault. He said that people were not meant to live so closely together in packed cities but were instead meant to live in more rural, natural settings. Had the Portuguese been living that way, the death toll from the earthquake would not have been as high. Don’t blame God; blame people.

Rousseau's Letter

1759: Publication of Candide

Voltaire’s response to the philosophy of Leibniz and Rousseau was to write Candide, a short work of satire. In Candide, we follow a protagonist aptly named Candide. The name itself conjures ideas of innocence and an openness to ideas. Candide is heavily influenced by the optimistic philosophy of Pangloss, who despite circumstances, continually reassures Candide that “All is Well.”

In the subsequent pages, we’re met with unspeakable atrocities and Pangloss’ continual view that “All is Well.” Through the countless horrific occurrences, we see Voltaire testing optimism against reality.

I found the medium that Voltaire chose, satire, to be a very interesting choice. He could have simply written a philosophical treatise in response to Leibniz and Rousseau, but it would not have had the impact of this memorable story. He also could have responded by letter to Rousseau, but he chose a style with ties to Cervantes and Aristophanes. Voltaire was likely working around speech restrictions in this choice, but it was smart move and he blanketed the major markets with copies before it could be properly censored (though that didn’t stop the Roman Catholic Church from adding it to its Index of Forbidden Books in 1762).

The conclusion of Candide was a pleasant surprise. Satire by definition is critical, yet that spirit departs in the final Qohelet-like admonishment to tend one’s garden. Biblical references abound throughout the story with close connections to the Garden of Eden, the expulsions from Eden, and the lost sheep.

Books come from books. That is a central observation from this reading project. That’s why I’m reading the Great Books in chronological order. I want to see how ideas have been stated, refuted, altered, and considered across time. In Candide, we see a microcosm of the great conversation with Voltaire grappling with ideas that came before him and experiences that left him shaken. The result is a work considered to be one of the key texts of the Enlightenment.

September 2026 Reading

Plato’s Republic

I spent the month of September reading Plato’s Republic. I started with the John M. Cooper Complete Works there on the left (translation by G.M.A. Grube with a revision by C.D.C. Reeve) and am currently working my way through Allan Bloom’s translation and essay on the right. My goal was to read it three times during September, but it’s a lot longer and harder than I anticipated.

I’m really glad that I read a number of Plato’s dialogues before reading The Republic. It gave me a good introduction before reading this much larger and more comprehensive dialogue. And in turn, it has helped me better understand his other dialogues that I have read. This is his greatest hits and I touches on a number of topics from his other dialogues but in a manner that is more concise and focused.

October 2026 Reading Plan

Plato • Voltaire • Lao Tzu

The next book for the Short Great Books Reading Group I lead is Voltaire’s Candide. I’ve never read it and don’t know what to expect, but I have a few days to read it before we meet on Monday.

After that, I’m back to Plato. I still need to read the interpretive essay in Allan Bloom’s Republic translation. I may then take a quick Plato break to read Lao Tzu, an author who lived nearly 200 years before Plato (and who I mistakenly skipped on my chronological read-through of the 200 authors on my Great Books list). I’ll mainly focus on Plato during October & November this year. In December, I’m going to be reading books about trees!

I may return to some other dialogues before beginning my 3rd reading of The Republic. Here are the dialogues I still have pending for Plato:

• Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Menexenus, Clitophon, Timaeus, Critias, Minos, Laws, Epinomis, Letters, Definitions, On Justice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Halcyon, Eryxias, Axiochus, Epigrams

Recently Acquired

September Book Purchases

My wife Stephanie (Check out her music here) and I travelled to Scotland during September and I visited some of my favorite bookstores. Here are the books I purchased for my library. Let me highlight a few of them:

Aeschylus Loeb II - I consider his Oresteia trilogy to be one of the most important works ever written. When I saw this edition at a pre-owned price, I jumped on it.

George MacDonald - A Short Life by Elizabeth Saintsbury - George MacDonald is my wife’s favorite author and we named one of our our daughters the same name as one of George’s daughters. There are some nice photos in that book.

Malcolm by George MacDonald - There is an incredible inscription in this copy of Malcolm that I purchased in Aberdeen. Check it out:

Bookish Adventures

When I hit the ground in Edinburgh, I make my way around my bookshop loop. Here’s a note I wrote about that beloved loop:

Here are some other bookshop and book-related photos from September:

I have reason to believe that the Babylon Bee may have been tracking my early childhood delinquent reading habits. In an article last week titled “Sinful, Rebellious Homeschooler Stays Up Past 9:30 To Read ‘Chronicles Of Narnia’,” they nearly perfectly captured my earliest reading memories. As a child, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d turn on my fish tank light, grab a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the exact copy in the photo above), and clandestinely read the first book of the Narnia series. I wasn’t homeschooled, but everything else in this article is spot on.

Those were magical days that instilled a deep love of reading into my life. That love was snuffed out during middle school and high school when reading became a chore. I recaptured that magic in college. I’m pretty sure that part of my desire for reading now is simply an attempt to recapture that early joy of reading under a fish tank light.

I’m so thankful my parents bought the Narniad (The Chronicles of Narnia) for me and placed it in my bedroom. If you have kids, place books where they play and sleep. And maybe even leave some lights where they can explore those books on the nights they can’t sleep. It just might be the spark to lifelong reading.

I’ve come up with a super easy litmus test to determine if what you’re visiting is a legit bookstore. Do they have books in piles on the floor?

If so, go in. If not, beware.

You’ve been to the perfectly curated bookstore. Clean shelves, nothing out of place, sterile, joyless, soul-killing. You won’t find a treasure there. You’ll find books the owner thinks you ought to read based upon their viewpoint, favorite genre, or author type. These bookstores do not have books in piles on the floor.

When you enter a bookstore with books in piles on the floor, the bookseller will likely be so engaged in the book they are reading that they’ll probably forget to welcome you in. Their point of sale system will date from the early 1800s and the smell will be that of rich mahogany and old books. There will be books in unreachable places with no ladder in sight.

The average customer will not pick through those books in piles on the floor. This greatly increases your chances of finding a hidden treasure. The bookseller places more value on cramming as many books in the store as possible than offering walkable paths through the aisles. This is the utmost level of respect the owner can show to you the book lover.

The only trouble with bookstores that have books in piles on the floor is that visiting them leads to a house filled with books in piles on the floor.

In this episode, I pull 7 books from my shelves and talk about what they meant to me, how I got them, and what I found inside (I use fun items for bookmarks). It’s a representative sample from my larger library.

I lead a monthly reading group at Landmark Booksellers called Short Great Books. For September, we discussed My Ántonia by Willa Cather. It’s a story set in the plains of Nebraska and it’s a nostalgic look at life in 1880s through the lives of immigrant families from Bohemia, Norway, Austria, and Russia. We get to know their fears, hopes, and struggles.

The story is presented as an account by Jim Burden, an orphan sent to live with his grandparents who live in Nebraska. Upon arrival, he meets Ántonia, a newcomer from Bohemia, and a few years his senior. Jim is writing his account later in life, so he’s looking back at his memories of his time in Nebraska in of his vivacious friend Ántonia.

Ántonia embraces her new life and the challenges that come with it. Her father doesn’t fare as well. He was well-respected in his Bohemian hometown and he finds the Nebraska farming life unnatural and difficult. He takes his own life with a gun on a cold bed.

Later in the novel, Ántonia lays down on a bed and takes a different path. “There, without calling to anybody, without a groan, she lay down on the bed and bore her child.” A bed of suicide for her father becomes a bed of life for Ántonia. She goes on to bear 10 more children.

I wonder if part of Jim’s account is an exploration of why he didn’t pursue Ántonia romantically. He’s in an unhappy marriage when we meet him as an adult. As a youth, he struggles to know what he wants. Ántonia is the opposite. She has a strong sense of self. Deep down, she knows what she likes and doesn’t like. Later in life, Jim says of her “Antonia had not lost the fire of life.”

I really like this novel. I first read it after Christmas in December 2001 and for a second time in preparation for this latest reading group. It’s one of those books that stirs up memories and nostalgia. I found myself getting lost in my own memories. The book reminded me of Theo of Golden, yet I can’t quite put my finger on the reason why.

I also thought a lot about the experience of my forebears, Norwegians and Germans who settled in Wisconsin in the 1800s. I wondered if their experiences matched those in this book. I tried to imagine the heartbreak of leaving a homeland, the struggle to start from scratch, and the experiences forging a new path.

There are a few fantastic lines in this book:

“I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, this is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

The older I get, the more I relate to this line about specific people in my past:

“…some of the figures of my old life seemed to be waiting for me in the new.”

“Aint it wonderful, Jim, how much people can mean to each other?”

Ántonia loved life, people, and even trees (this is what she said about trees):

“I love them as if they were people”

Willa Cather is on my Great Authors list and so I will be reading her again in the future. I look forward to reading My Ántonia for a third time and reading Cather’s other works. It’s a special thing for a novel to open up your own past as you get lost in its story.

If you live in Franklin, join us for the final three reading group meetings for the year. Or, feel free to read along on your own if you’d like some book suggestions. Here’s what’s on tap for the rest of 2026:

• Candide - Voltaire

• Jason and the Argonauts - Apollonius

• The Nutcracker and the Mouse King - E.T.A. Hoffmann

For instance, I keep seeing references to the definition of self-control, something the Charmides dialogue focuses on. Courage is also referenced quite a bit, something the Laches dialogue covers. These references in The Republic have been helpful in answering some of the questions I still had after reading those other dialogues.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about a few of the connections between Plato’s Republic and Ion dialogues. In Ion, Plato has Socrates question a rhapsode named Ion about his expertise in performing the poetry of Homer. The Republic (written 5 years after Ion) helps answer some questions I had after reading Ion.

This is episode 300 of the podcast, and I can’t think of a more perfect topic to mark the milestone. One of my main goals with this reading project is to make connections across the books that I read, and here, I get to connect different dialogues by Plato and share how they inform one another.

If you’re interested in learning more about Ion, here’s a wonderful discussion I took part in with the brilliant minds over at Ascend - The Great Books Podcast:

I love listening to music while I read. I’ve always done so, but recently, I’ve begun paring specific music with specific Great Books. The practice gets me in the right headspace for reading and also helps me to recall the books later on. I select an album or artist and listen to that exclusively while reading a particular book.

I’m currently reading Plato’s Republic and have settled on The Dave Brubeck Quartet as my musical accompaniment. I’m spending the entire month of September in The Republic, so my plan is to listen to as much of the Brubeck catalog as possible while reading.

Why Dave? I had a friend in high school who drove a Nissan Maxima with a 6-speaker Bose stereo system. At that time, Bose bestowed a CD of tracks to show off the system. One of the songs on that CD was Take Five by The Dave Brubeck Quartet. It sounded so good on that stereo.

In 2019, I took 52 weeks and listened to a different jazz artist each one of those weeks. One artist on that list was Brubeck. I instantly recalled Take Five and enjoyed listening to his other pieces.

For me, jazz reminds me of a period of deep intellectual curiosity in my life. During college at The University of Georgia, I spent countless evenings studying at the Jittery Joe’s coffee shop in Athens, GA. They always had jazz playing on the speakers. When I think of pursuing the intellectual life, I think of those evenings drinking coffee, reading, and listening to jazz.

Plato is hard for me. I’ve decided to read his complete works and I’m near the midpoint, but it usually takes me reading a particular dialogue three times before I begin to understand it. Prior to The Republic, I’ve been listening to Apple playlists called Relax, Focus, or Calm. I like them, but I wanted something different for The Republic.

Each morning, I wake up about an hour before my family, brew an absurd amount of coffee, turn on music on an old Bose Wave radio (that Maxima encounter at play), prepare my 0.38mm Muji pen, and open my book. As Dave Brubeck plays and the aroma of coffee invites me in, I’m taken back to the joy of reading and learning. The atmosphere tells my brain to get ready. It’s about to get exciting.

And it has been exciting. Despite the difficulty, I really enjoy Plato. The ah-ha moments more than make up for the frustration of not understanding during initial encounters. The more dialogues I read, the more I’m able to connect Plato’s ideas across his works and see how some dialogues actually answer his other dialogues.

My hope is that each time I hear Brubeck in the car, in a store, or in a coffee shop, I’ll think of The Republic and what I learned from Plato.

In this episode, a provide a quick introduction to the dialogue, walk through the main ideas, and close with Socrates’ conclusion.

Translations Mentioned:

• Plato Meno and Other Dialogues / Robin Waterfield / Oxford World’s Classics

• Plato Complete Works / Rosamond Kent Sprague / Hackett

August 2026 Reading

Plato • Melville • Cather

I continue to work my way through the complete dialogues of Plato. I spent this past month focused on the following dialogues:

• Charmides (on self-control)

• Laches (on courage)

• Lysis (on friendship)

• Alcibiades

• Hipparchus

• Rival Lovers

• Theages

I covered Charmides in my most recent podcast episode and embarrassingly referred to the dialogue as Charmenides (with an extra “en” in the middle) the entire time. I tried to re-record the episode and just couldn’t get it how I wanted it, so I added a mea culpa at the start and asked listeners to think Charmedies when I said Charmendies. Doh!

For Charmides, I read it first in the John M. Cooper edited Complete Works and then read it a few more times in that top book there in a Robin Waterfield translation.

I also read Billy Budd by Herman Melville and My Ántonía by Willa Cather for the Short Great Books reading group I lead at the start of each month. It was my first reading of Billy Budd and my second of My Ántonía. I really like My Ántonía.

Special Podcast Episode

Plato’s Ion • Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

I’ve been a listener of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast over the past few years. They’ve helped guide me through Homer and some of the Greek Tragedies. It was therefore quite an honor to join them for a discussion on Plato’s Ion dialogue about art, inspiration, and philosophy. You can read their Substack here - - and watch the episode above. If you prefer to listen, here’s a link to the episode.

September 2026 Reading Plan

Plato’s Republic

I’ve decided to focus the entire month of September on Plato’s Republic. My plan is to read it three times. I’ll start with the John M. Cooper edited Complete Works, move to Bloom’s translation and introduction, and then finish with the Robin Waterfield translation in that Oxford World’s Classics version. I’ve also heard that one should read Against Eratosthenes in Lysias before reading The Republic, hence the green Loeb on the top.

In October and November, I’m going to try to make it through as many of the remaining dialogues as I can. Here’s my current status:

• Read - Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus, Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rival Lovers, Theages, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Ion

• September - Republic

• Yet to Read - Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Menexenus, Clitophon, Timaeus, Critias, Minos, Laws, Epinomis, Letters, Definitions, On Justice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Halcyon, Eryxias, Axiochus, Epigrams

Recently Acquired

August Book Purchases

Here are the books I added to my library during August:

• Lysias - I purchased this in order to read Against Eratosthenes before reading The Republic

• Orphic Collection - This is the latest work in the Loeb Classical Library and someone mentioned that Plato references this quite a bit, so I thought it’d be good to have in the library.

• The Republic - Robin Waterfield translation - I’ve really come to like Robin Waterfield and wanted his translation for September’s focus on Plato’s Republic.

Bookish Adventures

I had a fun book meetup with three other guys pushing the reading envelope around the world. We met up in Franklin, TN and visited The Great Wall at Landmark Booksellers.

I have a new podcasting station setup in the corner of my office. This gives me a nice spot away from my working desk dedicated to the podcast. This also allows me to record video podcasts. I’ve noticed shift in user behavior around podcast consumption. Audio listens are down and video views are up. It was time to make the switch after 9 years!

I set aside one post per month to highlight my reading life. Books of Titans is a reading project aimed at seeking the ancient paths by reading The Great Books by 200 Authors chronologically over the next 40 years. Thank you for following my journey.

Charmides* is a dialogue of search and the search is for a definition of the Greek word sophrosyne. It’s a word that encompasses the spirit behind the famous sayings at Delphi of “Know Yourself” and “Nothing in Excess.” Translators have rendered it self-control, moderation, prudence, temperance, and discretion.

In this episode, I walk through the attempts by Socrates, Charmides, and Critias to define sophrosyne. It’s a fascinating journey that may not leave us with an exact definition, but that does get us thinking about knowledge and action.

*Quick, embarrassing note: I mistakenly refer to Charmides as Charmenides throughout the podcast episode. I didn’t realize the error until I had finished recording. Mea culpa. I got Parmenides and Charmides mixed up. Any time I say Charmenides, just think Charmides in your head.

Translations Mentioned:

• Plato Meno and Other Dialogues / Robin Waterfield / Oxford World’s Classics

• Plato Complete Works / Rosamond Kent Sprague / Hackett

• Plato Collected Dialogues / Benjamin Jowett / Princeton University Press