Tag Archives: the Great Books

making states from scratch

I’m closing in on the end of the Laws of Plato—the current volume in my ongoing reading of the Great Books of the Western World. The Athenian Stranger has been holding forth to his two traveling companions, Cleinias and Megillus, … Continue reading

Posted in thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

forwarding address: Utopia

As I type these words it is 5:36 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time here in North Vancouver. I watch the characters appearing crisply on my new Samsung flat-screen monitor. Out my office window to the left the light from the cloudy … Continue reading

Posted in thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

circumnavigating a literary world

I have talked a bit about my project to read the Bible as though decoding the genome of Western Christendom (that is, Western civilization). I am treating the books of the Bible as “chromosomes” of the genome, with the individual … Continue reading

Posted in thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

mapping the Bible, gene by gene

In my last post I was talking about reading the Bible as though decoding a genome—the genome of Western Christendom (to use Arnold J. Toynbee’s label for our Western civilization). I am currently making my way through Chromosome 6 of … Continue reading

Posted in thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

when reading is not just reading

It’s 5:17 p.m., and I’m in the midst of my daily “reading” block. I put it in quotation marks because I also do things other than reading in the strict sense. My reading block is structured. The first part of … Continue reading

Posted in thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Aristotle, meet Paul. . . .

On Thursday, March 7, 2019, I reached a personal milestone: I finished reading the works of Aristotle. I read them mostly from the 2 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World that contain his works: volumes 8 … Continue reading

Posted in book reviews, thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

lovers die; long live love letters!

I’ve often read or heard other bloggers complain of not knowing what to post about: “What can I put in this week’s blog post?” Heck, I have said the same myself. But in reality I think my problem is the … Continue reading

Posted in thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

not only public libraries have stacks

Ever since late adolescence I have maintained a reading stack: a stack of books that are all more or less on the go at the same time. When I was in my early 20s, my two roommates, semifacetiously, made a … Continue reading

Posted in thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

the Iliad of Homer: first epic of the West

The Iliad by Homer My rating: 5 of 5 stars Western literature kicks off with the clash of civilizations. Crafting an epic of my own, I got the idea of exploring the great epics of Western literature in more detail. … Continue reading

Posted in book reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

how astrology works, part 3: don’t do your own thing

In my last post I said that it was my study of the art of storytelling that eventually brought me to an understanding of why astrology works. Science might be able to show that astrology works—this is what Carl Jung attempted in … Continue reading

Posted in astrology, thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment