Seven Books from My Library

I’ve just started reading Jason and the Argonauts for the monthly Short Great Books reading group that I lead. It got me thinking about Greek Mythology and what the best way to immerse yourself in that world. I offer some thoughts, suggest some books, and give my opinion on where to start. 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:

Euthydemus is a fun early Socratic dialogue seeking to determine who can best teach virtue: the philosopher or the Sophist. Euthydemus and his brother Dionsydorus represent the Sophists. They claim to teach virtue better and faster than anyone else. Socrates, represents the philosopher, and attempts to distinguish his methods from those of the Sophists. Can the Sophist’s teach virtue through deceitful means or can that only come through seeking truth like the philosopher? 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.

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 set aside one post per month to highlight my reading life. This month I’m tying a podcast episode to my regular post. 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. 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:

A quick episode where I look at a question posed in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic - can those moving towards injustice accomplish their goal while being unjust to one another?