You can now view my list of 200 Great Authors in both table and image formats. I'll be reading the Great Books by each of these authors over the next 40 years (I'm in year 4 and the 40 years leaves plenty of room for rabbit trails) - books.booksoftitans.com/grea… And here is the full list here (year of author's death): 1 - Enheduana - 2250 BC 2 - The Epic of Gilgamesh - 2100 BC 3 - Writings from Ancient Egypt - 2000 BC 4 - Enuma Elish (Creation Epic) & Atrahasis (Flood Myth) - 1700 BC 5 - The Rig Veda - 1500 BC 6 - Homer - 700 BC 7 - Hesiod - 700 BC 8 - Sappho - 570 BC 9 - Aesop - 564 BC 10 - Lao Tzu - 531 BC 11 - Sun Tzu - 496 BC 12 - Confucius - 479 BC 13 - Aeschylus - 456 BC 14 - Herodotus - 425 BC 15 - Sophocles - 406 BC 16 - Euripides - 406 BC 17 - Thucydides - 400 BC 18 - Aristophanes - 386 BC 19 - Xenophon - 354 BC 20 - Plato - 348 BC 21 - Aristotle - 322 BC 22 - Chuang Tzu - 286 BC 23 - Epicurus - 270 BC 24 - Euclid - 270 BC 25 - Archimedes - 212 BC 26 - The Ramayana - 200 BC 27 - Terence - 159 BC 28 - Lucretius - 55 BC 29 - Cicero - 43 BC 30 - Virgil - 19 BC 31 - Ovid - 17 AD 32 - Livy - 17 AD 33 - Seneca - 65 AD 34 - The Bible - 100 AD 35 - Josephus - 100 AD 36 - Quintilian - 100 AD 37 - Tacitus - 117 AD 38 - Plutarch - 120 AD 39 - Epictetus - 135 AD 40 - Ptolemy - 168 AD 41 - Marcus Aurelius - 180 AD 42 - The Mishnah - 200 AD 43 - The Bhagavad-Gita (in the Mahabharata) - 200 AD 44 - St. Irenaeus of Lyons - 202 AD 45 - Clement of Alexandria - 215 AD 46 - Origen - 253 AD 47 - Plotinus - 270 AD 48 - Eusebius - 339 AD 49 - St. Athanasius of Alexandria - 373 AD 50 - St. Basil the Great - 379 AD 51 - St. Gregory of Nazianzus - 390 AD 52 - Gregory of Nyssa - 395 AD 53 - St. John Chrysostom - 407 AD 54 - St. Jerome - 420 AD 55 - St. Augustine - 430 AD 56 - The Talmud - 500 AD 57 - Boethius - 524 AD 58 - The Koran - 632 AD 59 - Beowulf - 1000 60 - Murasaki Shikibu - 1014 61 - Abolqasem Ferdowsi - 1020 62 - Sei Shōnagon - 1025 63 - The Song of Roland - 1100 64 - Saint Anselm of Canterbury - 1109 65 - Anna Komnene - 1153 66 - Hildegard of Bingen - 1179 67 - The Mabinogion - 1200 68 - The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden - 1200 69 - Moses Maimonides - 1204 70 - Magna Carta - 1215 71 - Saint Francis of Assisi - 1226 72 - The Saga of the Volsungs - 1270 73 - The Poetic Edda - 1270 74 - Rumi - 1273 75 - Thomas Aquinas - 1274 76 - Njal's Saga - 1280 77 - The Sundiata - 1300 78 - Dante Alighieri - 1321 79 - The Tale of the Heike - 1330 80 - Giovanni Boccaccio - 1375 81 - Geoffrey Chaucer - 1400 82 - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - 1400 83 - Julian of Norwich - 1416 84 - Margery Kempe - 1438 85 - The Arabian Nights - 1450 86 - Thomas à Kempis - 1471 87 - Niccolò Machiavelli - 1527 88 - Thomas More - 1535 89 - Desiderius Erasmus - 1536 90 - Nicolaus Copernicus - 1543 91 - Martin Luther - 1546 92 - The Book of Common Prayer - 1549 93 - François Rabelais - 1553 94 - John Calvin - 1564 95 - Teresa of Avila - 1582 96 - St. John of the Cross - 1591 97 - Michel de Montaigne - 1592 98 - Edmund Spenser - 1599 99 - The Story of Hong Gildong - 1612 100 - William Shakespeare - 1616 101 - Miguel de Cervantes - 1616 102 - Francis Bacon - 1626 103 - John Donne - 1631 104 - George Herbert - 1633 105 - Galileo Galilei - 1642 106 - Miyamoto Musashi - 1645 107 - René Descartes - 1650 108 - Blaise Pascal - 1662 109 - Molière - 1673 110 - John Milton - 1674 111 - Baruch Spinoza - 1677 112 - Thomas Hobbes - 1679 113 - John Bunyan - 1688 114 - Matsuo Bashō - 1694 115 - Jean Racine - 1699 116 - John Locke - 1704 117 - Isaac Newton - 1727 118 - Daniel Defoe - 1731 119 - Alexander Pope - 1744 120 - Jonathan Swift - 1745 121 - Charles-Louis Montesquieu - 1755 122 - David Hume - 1776 123 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 1778 124 - Voltaire - 1778 125 - Founding Fathers - 1787 126 - Adam Smith - 1790 127 - Edward Gibbon - 1794 128 - James Boswell - 1795 129 - Olaudah Equiano - 1797 130 - Immanuel Kant - 1804 131 - Jane Austen - 1817 132 - John Keats - 1821 133 - William Blake - 1827 134 - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - 1831 135 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1832 136 - Sir Walter Scott - 1832 137 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1834 138 - Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison - 1836 139 - Alexander Pushkin - 1837 140 - Emily Brontë - 1848 141 - Edgar Allan Poe - 1849 142 - William Wordsworth - 1850 143 - Mary Shelley - 1851 144 - Søren Kierkegaard - 1855 145 - Charlotte Brontë - 1855 146 - Alexis de Tocqueville - 1859 147 - Arthur Schopenhauer - 1860 148 - Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1864 149 - Alexandre Dumas - 1870 150 - Charles Dickens - 1870 151 - John Stuart Mill - 1873 152 - George Eliot - 1880 153 - Gustave Flaubert - 1880 154 - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 1881 155 - Charles Darwin - 1882 156 - Ralph Waldo Emerson - 1882 157 - Karl Marx - 1883 158 - Victor Hugo - 1885 159 - Emily Dickinson - 1886 160 - Herman Melville - 1891 161 - Walt Whitman - 1892 162 - Alfred Tennyson - 1892 163 - Frederick Douglass - 1895 164 - Harriet Beecher Stowe - 1896 165 - Friedrich Nietzsche - 1900 166 - Anton Chekhov - 1904 167 - George MacDonald - 1905 168 - Mark Twain - 1910 169 - Leo Tolstoy - 1910 170 - William James - 1910 171 - Henry James - 1916 172 - Marcel Proust - 1922 173 - Joseph Conrad - 1924 174 - Franz Kafka - 1924 175 - Thomas Hardy - 1928 176 - G.K. Chesterton - 1936 177 - Edith Wharton - 1937 178 - Sigmund Freud - 1939 179 - William Butler Yeats - 1939 180 - Mikhail Bulgakov - 1940 181 - James Joyce - 1941 182 - Virginia Woolf - 1941 183 - Dietrich Bonhoeffer - 1945 184 - Sigrid Undset - 1949 185 - George Orwell - 1950 186 - Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1951 187 - Albert Einstein - 1955 188 - Thomas Mann - 1955 189 - Dorothy Sayers - 1957 190 - Zora Neale Hurston - 1960 191 - Ernest Hemingway - 1961 192 - William Faulkner - 1962 193 - W.E.B. Du Bois - 1963 194 - C.S. Lewis - 1963 195 - Flannery O'Connor - 1964 196 - T.S. Eliot - 1965 197 - John Steinbeck - 1968 198 - J.R.R. Tolkien - 1973 199 - Daphne du Maurier - 1989 200 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 2008

Finished Dostoevsky’s White Nights on a foggy morning.

The portal to endless joys.

I’m continually amazed at how relevant the Greek Tragedies are to our modern conundrums.

Today’s bookstore visit: Topping and Company in Edinburgh. This was my first time here and it contained endless rooms of new books. It was magical.

Hi, my name is Erik, and I’m an Iliadoholic.

Ok, I asked you all for the best Plato versions/translations and this one came up over and over again, so I got it.

You need to read this book. It’s an important one. I knew the situation was bad. I didn’t realize it was this bad.

Spent an hour and a half this morning slowly re-reading Euthyphro by Plato, this time taking nearly 3 pages of notes. I started having trouble understanding the arguments mid-way through and I thought writing it out might help. It did, I still need to ponder it a bit more, but it was a lot of fun. Writing out the logic is almost like working out a math problem. I’m trying to battle my own brain freeze. When I come across something I don’t understand, my brain freezes. I don’t like that and am hoping the practice of slow reading with note taking fixes that. We’ll see.

Anyone else seek out the local bookstores when traveling? Here’s one of my favorites - Armchair Books in Edinburgh.

Book 41 for the year. The Intellectual Life by A.G. Sertillanges. The title may sound pretentious, but this book is full of practical advice and sound wisdom for cultivating the life of the mind. I’m 100 pages in and I’ve done a ton of underlining, ⭐️ ing, and notes in the back.

Geeked out a bit in the classics section at Blackwells.

If you are a fan of Homer, I highly recommend this work to fill in some of the gaps in the story the original audience would have known.

Spent 1 hour on 8 pages of Plato’s Parmenides this morning. It’s a difficult one.

I’m currently testing a hypothesis that my books mate at night and create more books. It’s the only logical explanation at this point.

Notes so far from The Intellectual Life.

My top 5 books for 2024: The Iliad Theo of Golden Philoctetes by Sophocles Medea by Euripides The Intellectual Life

There. Fixed it.

Did not know this existed. Homer. Lawrence of Arabia. Barry Moser. Wow.

Quite possibly the best bookstore day of my entire life. A wonderful sense of adventure, surprise, and delight.

I love the sense of discovery in reading. Just last week, I learned that there are 8 total works in the Trojan Epic Cycle. The most famous are the Iliad & Odyssey, but there were 6 others that are now lost to us. Although not written by Homer, they included stories before, in between, and after the Iliad and the Odyssey. This bright green book contains a set of references to these 6 lost works found in other existing works (Pindar, Euripides, Homer, amongst others) and provides an overview of the contents of each. The first work is called the Cypria and there is a reference to the “will of Zeus” found in the first paragraph of the Iliad that sheds a whole new light on the meaning of that term and the understanding of the Iliad. It blew my mind. I plan to cover this discovery in an upcoming podcast episode, but it was one of those things that make reading such a joy.

Saturday morning reading: continuing on with the complete works of Plato. I’m currently on page 209 of 1,745 and am reading my 6th dialogue, one titled Theaetetus concerning the nature of knowledge. I’m enjoying this so much. Maybe too much. 😉

Books I read in 2024. It was easily the most enjoyable reading year of my life. I read the Bible, the Iliad, all works by Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. I’m making my way through The Immortal Books by 200 authors and have set a goal of completing this in 15 years (by 2038). Each year, I spend 8 months on The Immortal Books, 2 months on the Bible, and 2 months of breaks where I read more recent books. My favorites were: The Iliad Theo of Golden Philoctetes by Sophocles Medea by Euripides The Intellectual Life I also found the Greek Epic Fragments to be fascinating. books.booksoftitans.com/2024…

While everyone else arranges their shelves by color, genre, or author, arrange yours chronologically. booksoftitans.com/p/the-case…

This is where I start each morning. Today, I finished the Iliad right there. It was my 3rd reading in 13 months, this time for a reading group I’m facilitating. I had never read it in my life prior to last year.

The ideal floor plan does not exis…

The reason we organize the Landmark Booksellers Great Wall shelf in chronological order is because books come from books. Ideas Homer proposes are picked up by the Greek Tragedy writers, then Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche… This allows you to visually trace this great conversation.

The light coming in on my wife’s George MacDonald collection this morning.

I bet if you avoided social media and news until the election and instead used that time to read, you could get through the entire Caro series about LBJ. It’d also be tremendously more beneficial than current politics. This is assuming you waste as much time on social media as I do.

Dear Santa... Look, they’re even your colors! 🎅

400 pages in and I’m finally to the point where I’m having a hard time putting it down. I still have 200+ pages to go (I’m going to read all of the appendices), which should take 10+ hours. I’ve been reading this one now for just a little under a month.

Thus beginneth. My plan at this point is to read the complete works of Plato. This book is Bible sized at 1,765 pages and contains 36 works by or possibly by Plato. I started the introduction this morning and based upon that reading speed, my reading app says I have a mere 95 hours to go to finish it. I know it will take longer than that providing ample time for slow reading, taking notes, and underlining. It will be an adventure for sure.

I’m currently reading through The Immortal Books by 200 authors, a project I estimate will take 15 years. But I keep getting sidetracked with a desire to deviate or add to my reading list. For example, I initially planned to just read a few plays by the Greek tragedy playwrights, but as I got going, I enjoyed them so much that I decided to read all of the plays (33 in total). I had initially planned to just read a few dialogues by Plato but shifted course to read his entire collected works. And now, as I’m reading Plato, I’m realizing that he’s responding to the philosophers who came before him and I don’t know anything about them. So I purchased these three books and come to the big question about the scope of this reading project. Do I stick closely to the list of 200 authors and a few works by each author or do I open myself up to these delightful diversions? It really comes down to a question of time. I think the first option would take 15 years and the second 40 years. So, 15 or 40 years. That’s what I’m considering at the moment and the choice is embodied in whether or not I pause Plato to read these three books. Having initiated The Immortal Books reading at 43 years of age, a 40 year reading project becomes a remainder of life reading project.

Started this bio of Plato this morning. In the intro, Waterfield says that we have the complete works of Plato and “not a single word that he published has been lost.” That’s incredible!

My planned 2025 reading list: books.booksoftitans.com/2025…

This right here was one of the most enjoyable periods of my reading life. I had planned on reading a few plays by each tragedian but threw that out the window and read them all except for one by Euripides. The thought of having read all of the surviving plays was unbearable.

I'm on a 15yr quest to read through 200 of The Great Books in chronological order. I've made a list, have checked it more than twice, and am currently in year 2 of the journey. I'll be sharing what I learn on my podcast. Subscribe here to follow along - booksoftitans.com/

The backup book closet is getting out of hand.

Checking social media before reading in the morning.

Most of my reading this year has been in the Greek tragedy plays. They’ve absolutely blown me away. They are so good. I’ve read each one twice and some up to four times. The ideas, themes, and stories are spellbinding. Just imagine seeing these performed live in Athens Greece 2000+ years ago. That must have been incredible.

I’ve finished reading through all of the Greek Tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (-1). It was some of the most enjoyable reading of my life. These plays are so rich and they reward multiple readings. I’ve written about them in my latest article.

Wait, doesn't everyone do this nerd-like behavior?

Normalize always having a book with you.

It gives me a surprising amount of joy to know that C.S. Lewis spent the final months of his life re-reading the Iliad in the original Greek.

I do plan to eventually read all of these different translations. I’m toying with the idea of reading the Iliad every other year. I’m currently reading the Fagles translation, my 3rd reading of the Iliad in the past 12 months. The reason I’ve purchased so many different versions is that I love seeing the nuances in translation and enjoy learning from the different introductions. Which one is your favorite?

Ordered another translation of Euthyphro, this one by High Tredennick and Harold Tarrant.

Sneak peek at my 2025 reading list. I’ll be sharing the full list and order this upcoming week. Each year, I start by reading straight through a different version of the Bible. This year, I’m using the enormous Barry Moser illustrated and designed King James Version. March through June will be focused on the final tragedies moving into the comedies. August through November will shift to Greek philosophy. I’m making my way through 200 of The Great Books in chronological order over an estimated span of 15 years. This will be year 3 of the project. Each July and December, I take a break and read books from my TBR pile.

Rule #1: Always carry a book.

Picked this up last night to fill in some gaps in my knowledge as I read Plato. He’s responding to a number of the ideas put forth by earlier philosophers, so I thought it might be helpful to read up on those ideas. Henceforth, thereto…

I enjoyed Sophocles so much that like a tremendously nerdy nerd, I’m now reading little tiny fragments of his 100 other plays that didn’t survive.

Here's my 2025 reading list. It will likely go through some iterations, but the main structure is a reading of the KJV Bible to kick off the year, moving on to the Greek Tragedies & Comedies, and then getting started with Greek Philosophy. books.booksoftitans.com/2025…

Finished reading the fragments of Euripides this morning, thus concluding my journey through the Greek Tragedies. It was an incredible experience. Now onto Aristophanes and the comedies!

Sunday morning reading: I finished Plato’s Parmenides this morning. It’s quite possibly the most difficult text I’ve ever read. I’m now moving on to a paper called Plato’s Theory of Knowledge that was suggested by a a few people on X. I’m hoping it helps in my preparation for this Friday’s podcast episode about Plato’s Sophist.

My kind of pub. The Queens Arms / Edinburgh

I need some Platonic assistance. He's my next author on the Immortal Books list. I'm going to try to read as many of his works as possible in chronological order. Here are the only books I have so far. What versions/translations do you recommend? Any other ancillary books I should consider? Please give me your best Plato reading advice.

Books on tap for November. I’m continuing on in my Plato Project in my attempt to read the complete works of Plato as part of my Immortal Books reading list. Plato is author 18 of 200 from that list. I’m also leading a reading group covering White Nights by Dostoevsky. I’ve never read it before. DM me to join the online discussion Nov 12th.

I finished The Frogs by Aristophanes last night and really enjoyed it. It’s an ancient rap battle between Aeschylus and Euripides. This morning, I started reading Xenophon’s Anabasis. I’m still in the introduction. This one is going to be fun.

A solid set of shelves here at Landmark Booksellers. These two kick off our Great Wall, showcasing the best books of all time in chronological order.

This is the Great Wall of Franklin, located at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, TN. We've taken The Great Books from across the store and have arranged them chronologically to show how ideas have spread through time. Come and see it when you're in town.

Finished book 6 of 8 in The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides this morning. That was my favorite book so far and it centers around the Athenian attack of Sicily. The most interesting about this book is how the battles of the Peloponnesian War have so far been mostly fought outside the Peloponnese. It’s been a series of proxy wars and peripheral battles.

Didn't know Longfellow had translated The Divine Comedy until seeing this set yesterday.

We’re adding green and red Loeb Classical Library books to The Great Wall at Landmark Booksellers at an alarming rate. Come by and see them.

Truth

All right, let’s solve this thing once and for all. Who’s your favorite child?

Quite extraordinary to be discussing Frankl’s masterpiece and one of my favorite books of all time at tonight’s reading group.

If five years ago you had told me I’d be interested in learning about mere fragments of lost works by Greek Tragedy playwrights, I would have laughed in a manner worthy of a Greek Comedy. This Loeb is next up on my list.

The current chaos on the side table.

I finished Plato’s Theaetetus this morning about knowledge. Here are my notes. Next step, compile these notes into a podcast episode for this coming Friday. Next up, Plato’s Sophist. Also, ☕️.

Morning reading: Sophist by Plato. I’m having so much trouble following this dialogue. My mind wanders and I lose track of the argument. I’m on my second reading and am just as lost as the first reading. Any suggestions for understanding what’s happening here?

NYC book haul. I’ve been preparing for my 2025 reading list and was missing many of the Aristophanes comedies. I think I have them covered now 😂. I know it’s overkill, but I like reading the different introductions and reading some of the plays twice in different translations. I purchased these books at the Strand, Argosy, and Mercer Street Books.

The Cratylus dialogue by Plato has quickly become my favorite. It’s about the Correctness of Names, and so an interlocutor named Hermogenes goes back and forth with Socrates about the origin of words like Zeus, justice, and courage. It’s utterly fascinating. I’m loving it!

“It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.” - Socrates to the jury of men of Athens after they condemn him to death in Ari’s Apology

Just completed Spring Semester of my Great Books project. Here’s what I read in order from bottom to top. Tomorrow, I’ll start a month of Summer Break where I’ll read through books from my TBR pile. I’ll jump back into the Great Books on July 17. The Iliad is now my favorite book and Sophocles absolutely blew me away.

A gorgeous 1853 edition of the Iliad that we have at Landmark Booksellers. Alexander Pope translation.

At this time last year, I didn’t know how to properly pronounce this author’s name. Now, I’ve read his major works four times, am leading a reading group on his tragedy play Agamemnon tonight, am unhealthily interested in little tiny fragments of his lost works, and consider his Oresteia to be one of the best things I’ve ever read. My how things can change in a mere year.

We moved Wendell Berry next to the Inklings at Landmark Booksellers. Seems fitting.

Reminder that this is an incredible look at perhaps the greatest American to have ever lived.

The office at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, TN.

I’ve started stocking The Great Wall at Landmark Booksellers with Loeb Classical Library editions. The first batch focuses on the Greeks - Homer, the tragedians, and some epic fragments. What else should I add?

If you haven’t read this book, remedy that immediately. I started reading Man’s Search for Meaning this morning. It’s a second reading in preparation for a reading group I’m leading next week. I first read it as my final book for my 2017 reading list (first year of this reading project). It’s in my top 5 books of all time and is so powerful. If you’d like to discuss this book online next Wednesday, DM me for details.

Not sure why there are two copies of some of them, but my daughter completely disregarded the erroneous numbers on these spines and placed them in the correct reading order. I’m a proud father.

Great new, guys. At my current reading speed, I only have 169 hours+ remaining to finish the complete works of Plato.

Stunning

I have reached levels of nerd I never dreamed possible. I bought a book by Dio Chrysostom just so I could read two discourses on Philoctetes. Like for fun.

I finished my 375th book for this reading project last night. My goal is not to read a certain number of books but rather to seek truth & beauty in the world's Great Books. I mention the number because without this reading project, I would have read a mere fraction of that number since 2017. books.booksoftitans.com/

Finally finished Thucydides. It took more than a month and it was grueling. I did not enjoy this as much as Herodotus, but did end up learning a lot about the Peloponnesian War.

Oops, just bought more books. 📚

2024 was the year I read Greek Tragedies for the first time. It took me a while to get into them (I had to read The Oresteia 4 times) but once I started, I couldn't get enough of them. My original plan was to read 2 plays by each of the 3 Greek Tragedians but I became so enamored that I read all surviving plays by Aeschylus & Sophocles and am half-way through Euripides. I'll finish Euripides in 2025, but I plan to leave one of his plays unread because I can't bear the thought of having read all of the Greek Tragedies. 😂🎭

It’s been a fun reading year so far. Here are the Great Books I’ve read, some of them 2 or more times. The shift from Greek epic poetry to the tragedy writers has been fantastic.

Trying my hand at another translation of Euthyphro by Plato. The first translation has the word as piety and this one as holiness, so even that difference has been helpful in considering the arguments between Socrates and Euthyphro. Socrates is attempting to get Euthyphro to provide an all-inclusive definition of what is holy and what is not. Euthyphro is unable to do so.

2023 was the best reading year of my life. I read the Bible, Herodotus, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod. I learned about the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and Scythians. I read Gilgamesh, Enheduana, and Sappho. It was epic. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…

I’m at the Tennessee Book Fair in Franklin, TN this weekend and here’s a signed Caro set for $2500.

Still battling my way through Plato’s Sophist for a third time, taking extensive notes and imbibing voluminous cups of ☕️.

I started The Great Book+ in March. It’s a reading plan of 200 of the greatest books & authors of all time and am reading them from oldest to newest. I will pair most books with a guidebook (hence the + sign). It will take 10+ yrs. So far, so good. booksoftitans.com/great-book…

I get the following question all the time - how do you find time to read? Everyone is reading. Daily. Constantly in some cases. It's just that most of the reading occurs within social media platforms. It comes down to a choice of what one spends their time reading.

Here’s what’s coming up in November. I’m planning to finish Thucydides (over halfway through) and then start on Xenophon. What’s on your November list?

Tolkien on Lewis:

Here’s an example of where I’m getting stuck in Plato’s Sophist. Can someone explain this to me like I’m 5 years old: “Then isn’t it clearly the case that Motion in its very being is not-being—and also being, since it partakes of Being?”

I’m the business manager at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, TN and in the last month we’ve removed a large couch to make room for 4 new shelves now holding the greatest books ever written. It’s a work in progress, but we’re calling it The Great Wall of Franklin. Come see it.

Monday morning reading: finished a second reading of Plato’s Apology and then read Xenophon’s Apology. Both works are about the trial of Socrates where he is accused of corrupting the youth, disregarding the old gods, and introducing new gods. The Xenophon account is just 7 pages. I wanted to see if there were any interesting additions not contained in Plato’s account. I’ll cover both of these in Friday’s podcast episode.

Morning reading chair vibes. Coffee, music, book stack, my daughter’s stuffed animal, Muji pens with backups in case the ink runs out, and a blanket.