New Years Resolutions (I got home late today, and had to shovel, but I don't want to break my streak)

 This blog was (obviously) my New Year's Resolution for last year. Officially, I'm not "obligated" to keep it going daily, but it's hard to give it up now. This year, my goals are to get my Chess rating up (I said 1500, I should've said 1400!) and to get back into an exercise routine. I initially said stretch every day, but I found that stretching "hard" more than a day or two in a row is rough. I guess I should've figured it'd be the same as any other kind of exercise. Years ago, I was pretty good about doing some light warm ups and stretching each day, then going into something a little harder, so I'm trying to build a new routine based loosely around that.

I really like just going for a nice long walk, but it's been below freezing most evenings this week, and there's ice around. I could maybe deal with the temps (something something stoicism) but twisting my ankle while trying to go for a jog feels unproductive.

Maybe I'll find a way to stick with one post a day between here and my other blog (blogs? thinking about starting yet another). I'd like to do another reflection or two, but I think they'll be more in depth and take longer to write. We'll see.

SHARE YOUR RESOLUTIONS, LURKERS!

Some things never change.

 I'm not sure how many of these reflection posts I'm going to wind up doing. For tonight, I want to talk about something I found really reassuring T5FSOB: how many of the things people struggle with today were apparently still issues hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of years ago. On the one hand, I guess it's a little depressing that we're still grappling with so many issues, it's also comforting to see that the world is still spinning, and mostly better, even if we haven't entirely fixed them. We still grapple with how to govern like Hobbes and Machiavelli. We still have all manner of moral, emotional, and philosophical issue that Ben Franklin and Marcus Aurelius talked about. Locke wrote about using what we would call "gamification" over 300 years ago. 

I guess it's also kind of disappointing that we're still arguing about some stuff that was mostly "solved" hundred of years ago, but that's part of being free, I guess. People are welcome to be morons about stuff that their great great great grandparents could've read a book about (if they could read). But, overall, it's comforting to me. People make a big deal about how the times we live in are so horrible, stressful, etc. and how happy people used to be. It's nice to see that they worried about a lot of the same things (maybe today isn't so bad) and to learn from them to hopefully deal with those issues in our own lives. I think the example that most resonated with me was Cicero's.

9. Nor, again, do I now MISS THE BODILY STRENGTH OF A YOUNG MAN (for that was the second point as to the disadvantages of old age) any more than as a young man I missed the strength of a bull or an elephant. You should use what you have, and whatever you may chance to be doing, do it with all your might.

I don't necessarily worry about old age a ton (yet), but I like that when I do I can hopefully frame it like this. There were always things I couldn't do, and I tried not to get hung up on them before. Enjoy and do you best at what you an do, and you'll be happier and more successful than if you worry about what you can't. Really, that's good advice for life in general, not just aging.

Failing at time management, fifteen minutes at a time.

 I think one of the biggest things I learned from this project was how much time and energy reading, writing, etc. take, and how much I can afford to devote to it per day. (You'd think, after getting two English degrees, I'd have it figured out.) One post about ten or so pages of literature was fine. There were days that I had to rush/skim a little, but I could usually go back and reread by the end of the week. But as I started to add more and more stuff on it got to be too much. At the peak, my schedule looked something like this:

Monday: 15 Minute Classics, Weekly Reflection
Tuesday: 15 Minute Classics, guest post on my wife's blog
Wednesday: 15 Minute Classics, Casually Completing Classics
Thursday: 15 Minute Classics, crits/submission for writing workshop
Friday: 15 Minute Classics, Star Wars Classics
Saturday: 15 Minute Classics
Sunday: 15 Minute Classics, guest post.

That meant that Saturday was the only day I wasn't locked into two posts (or other writing responsibilities) on the schedule (and something extra often came up). More often than not, it meant I tried to cram a ton of fiction writing in on Saturdays (since I couldn't actually produce a reasonable amount for workshop just on Thursday) and wound up burnt out. Obviously, anyone reading saw what happened. Things dropped off little by little, until I was down to basically just the core 15 Minute Classics posts. I snuck in other stuff to try to make it up here and there, but by December I think I was close to 30 posts in the hole across all the series. I am proud that I never had to miss a day on the core series. I think keeping up a daily post on just about anything is a fair accomplishment, let alone having to also read 10 or 15 pages for it. I'm mostly caught up now (I'm about a dozen books behind on Star Wars Classics, but some of them will be grouped under a single post and  I don't know that I'm going to "make them up" or just start posting and leave a little backlog.) This year, I'm going to try to shoot for one post a day, more or less, across my various projects. I want to devote a lot more time to my fiction. I was kind of burnt out after my Masters, so it was good to take a break, but I'd like to work my way up to doing fiction roughly every other day, with the other stuff filling in the rest of the days. No firm schedule yet, I'm just taking some time to enjoy finishing out this project and I'll figure it out later this month.

Where do I go from here? Is there anybody out there? (Next steps and begging for comments.)

 Short post tonight since I got home late. I'm in the closing stretch of this little project. I've got to do at least one more general recap post, but I think even if I really ramble I'll be done by the end of the week. I'm still holding onto the every day streak for as long as I can, but I think I'll probably let it go by the end of the month. When I had an explicit, daily challenge it made sense, but as I move onto longer pieces I think once or twice a week will be more suitable. I have spent some time thinking about what to read next, so here's a list in order from what I think is least to most likely:

1. More Harvard Classics- 15MAD is only a small portion (my napkin math puts it about 15%) of the total collection, and that's not even counting the later fiction supplement. However, they're not exactly easy to find/work with, the translations are dated, and I think I'd prefer to broaden my horizons a bit.

2. Dig into the "to read" list- I made a list of about 50 (I think there are some doubles) things to read over the course of this year. I'd definitely like to read them (or I wouldn't have made the list!) but I think I want a little more organization than "pick the next thing that looks interesting off the list."

(These two are almost guaranteed not to be the plan, but they're reasonable ideas to consider.)

3. An organized classics/liberal ed course- There's a bunch out there, but many are on some kind of actual schedule, and I'd have to find one that I liked, aligned with my schedule, etc. I think this is a better plan for some other time, unless a great one falls into my lap.

4. Do one of the Great Books courses- Gateway To The Great Books is probably the most direct competitor to 15MAD released, and is much more modern (original date 1963, updated edition 1990?). It'd be kind of cool to see how they compare. On the other hand, it feels like it'd basically be a repeat of this year in theme, if not in content.

5. Casually Comparing Classics- I had a lot of fun with The Odyssey series, and I have a couple Beowulf translations I'd like to read sitting on my night stand. It'd be fun (and comparatively short/easy) to chunk through a section or two of each a week and compare them.

6. 15 Minute Classics: The World Tour- I got a copy of one of the current (shorter fifth) editions of the Norton World Lit anthology for my birthday. T5FSOB (and The Great Books) are heavily western focused, and I think I'd like to expand my range a little. Maybe I'll decide I really like southern Asian mythology and want to dig in on that for six months or something. This feels manageable (I think it's actually slightly less pages than this year's challenge), I have the books physically (and I think digitally, although I'm having some issues with my code. If not, I can yar har the 4th edition if nothing else), and it seems most likely to increase the breadth of my reading, if not depth. But I'm not one hundred percent locked in yet...

I think I probably have a handful of regular readers on this blog. According to Blogger, I'm averaging a ~100 hits a day. I'm sure most of those are from bots (and I really doubt the blog is as popular in Singapore as the stats suggest), but I think that there's gotta be at least one or two of you actually reading most of these posts. So, I'm going to ask for two things. First, leave LITERALLY ANY COMMENT. Even if it's just one letter. I just want to know someone actually exists and is looking at these. Second, if you care, feel free to talk about which of the above options you like/dislike. I'm open to any one of the six, and if someone is really engaged with one it'll probably be more fun to do that one.

At the end of the day, this blog is mostly a journal for me to help me organize my thoughts about the readings. This isn't a Fanfic.net "no updates until I get enough comments!" hostage situation, I will keep tooling along for the foreseeable future regardless. But I would like it more if I knew someone was actually alive on the other end of the ethernet cable.

Final Reflections: Weekly Average

I started keeping a spreadsheet a month or so ago where I recorded my weekly average scores. I have most of the second half of the year done, so I went back today and started rereading the recap posts and adding them to the sheet. It was nice to refresh myself on some of the earlier readings, and to see how I reacted and how things changed. I saw my comments on the first Burns entry today (when I just thought of him as regular bad). I forgot that I didn't "officially" calibrate the scoring system until (I think) April. There's a lot of three and fours when I was just rating based on "overall" quality, vs specifically as "classics." I'll update this post tomorrow when I finish, but didn't want to break the streak. (I plan to go non-daily at some point, not quite yet.)

Final Average: 2.47

Worst Week: Week 33, 1.71

Best Weeks Week 3, 3.57 

I want to start by saying that it took me a couple weeks to settle into an actual scoring system (I officially documented it the last week of February into March, but I think I'd mostly figured it out a week or two earlier). Looking back, I don't think I would've knocked Week 3 down very much. The Nightingale already only got a 1, Ben Franklin usually rated high, Poetic Principal might've even snuck up to a 4 depending on my mood. It could've dropped a point on each of the other entries (all of which were also strong, and probably wouldn't) and still kept it's 3+ average. A few of the earlier weeks would've definitely dropped a bit, but I stand by Week 3.  Weeks 1 and 2 also scored at or above a 3, and were more likely to lose a point or two off their overall score. The only week to score a 3+ after the scoring guide was "officially" established was Week 22. I think this is getting carried by my Kit Marlowe fanboyishm, but it was nice to see one "later" week make the cut.

I also want to take a moment to restate the scoring system. (From here):

1/5: Should not have been included in T5FSOB in the first place. Poorly written, not particularly intellectually stimulating, historically unimportant.

2/5: Valid for inclusion in T5FSOB but not a good selection for the reading list. Might be a poorly chosen excerpt from a stronger piece, or an okay piece that has value but not in the top 20% or so that a piece (by napkin math) should be to get into the reading guide.

3/5: A passable choice for the reading guide. Well enough written, and at least somewhat historic or thought provoking. While not spectacular in and of itself, suitable as a starting point to discover other pieces or start thinking about a subject.

4/5: Actually good. A selection that works without needing other pieces to prop it up. Writing quality is decent, and it has some sort of critical/educational value.

5/5: The best of the best. Something that immediately prompts me to want to find more on the subject/author or otherwise changes my perspective on life.

I think I kind of undersold 4 here. "Actually good" starts around a 2 or 3 (a 2 could be a weak section from a strong piece, or a decent but not amazing piece on its own). Four is better than "good", but not a super-best-of-the-best-life-changer.

There were also a fair number of 0s (so bad it probably shouldn't have been written), mostly for Robert Burns. I hypothetically allowed 6s, but I don't think I featured any. I used it once or twice in Star Wars: Classics for something that hit the triple threat of being exceptional in all three categories of entertaining, thought provoking, and historic.

Working backwards, Week 33 narrowly edged out Week 32, and does a great job of highlighting the two things that can really drag a week down. They're only a point apart, so they could've easily flipped. The two most common things to drag a week down (especially later in the year as my patience waned) were:

1. Bad religious writings.

2. Bad (especially Burns) poetry.

I spent a lot of brain time waffling on how to account for "bad" religious writing in T5FSOB. Something Eliot highlights (and I appreciate) is that not everything in T5FSOB is supposed to just be "the best." It could be historically significant, even if completely wrong. And that means there is room for some amount of questionable Christian (or any other religion, but Christianity gets the lion's share) rambling. Christianity is still a major force in the West, especially the US, and still is today. I can disagree with a lot of Christian writers, but some of them are still well written or important for some reason. But the particular strain Eliot pulls from so heavily, "God is infinitely amazing, people are infinitely terrible, watch me pretzel logic to prove it!" was (as far as I can tell) never influential enough to deserve the amount of page space he devotes to it. How could it be? If you went to church every week and got called a peace of shit for an hour, and read stories about God torturing people for no reason, you wouldn't go back. At some point earlier in the year, I entertained the possibility that Eliot was doing some stealth anti-apologetics to try to make God/Christianity look as terrible as possible. While it appears he was more of a middle of the road (possibly even more Deistic) Christian, I don't think full on Atheism Commando is very likely. Besides, he does include a smattering of not complete garbage Christianity readings. 

Poetry was much more straight forward. If your poem is about how beautiful nature is, or how you're "in love" (creepily obsessed) with someone, you have to write a really amazing poem to score well. About a million people do it well every year, and when you're in the same collection as Shakespeare, you're probably not going to measure up. Bonus point loss if you sacrifice readability to cram in a weird slant rhyme scheme or something. I don't hate all poetry (Keats scored the first 5!), but it's real easy to do a bad job, and I think meh-bad poetry is more unpleasant than meh-bad fiction.

Week 33 had examples of both, and was punished accordingly.

So, how does that average of 2.47 shake out? Most simply, it'd be a week with four 2s and three 3s. It means that the vast majority of the selections in 15MAD were at least good enough to be included in a collection of the best/most important writings of history up until 1910ish. It means (by a slim margin) the average selection wasn't good enough that I'd have selected it in a "Top 366" list for such a collection. I suspect the 2s do slightly outnumber the 3s, though the numbers could be skewed by the 0/1 and 4/5(/6?). I think there were more low outliers than high outliers, so I suspect the 3:2 ratio is a bit better than it looks. If I did a similar challenge (I am eyeing some Gateway to The Great Books sets, and I got another potential project from my parents yesterday) I'd like to do the data in a more granular and organized way. Overall, the ratings aren't the point, but just a tool to foster more thought. I'll continue with more reaction and reflections next week. 

Reflections on Week 53 (Dec 30&31 THE END!)

         Link to the readings

Last one!

Quick review on this week's readings:

Dec 30 Two Years Before the Mast by Dana: 3/5 I would like to fake my way through a foreign country by knowing a related language.

Dec 31 "Inaugural Address at Edinburg University" by Carlyle: 1/5 Way to end the year on a downer

Average: 2 I did that math myself.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

Kind of a let down for the final week. Two Years Before the Mast, like some of the selections the week before, was fun to see one last time (even if the choice was odd). The Edinburg Address is a rambling disaster. Anything passable here could've "saved" the average, but this was a disaster.

Reflections On Week 52 (Dec 23-29)

        Link to the readings

It's slightly more than 52 weeks in a year.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Dec 22? (Oops, wrong week)  The Voyage of The Beagle by Darwin: 2/5 Not the best Darwin

Dec 24 Holinshed's Chronicle by Harrison: 1/5 This was a total bait and switch.

Dec 25 The Gospel of Luke: 3/5 An obvious, but appropriate, choice for Christmas.

Dec 26 King Lear by Shakespeare: 3/5 Lear is an underrated play.

Dec 27 The Voyage of The Beagle by Darwin: 3/5 The famous finches. 

Dec 28 "Drake's Great Armada" by Briggs: 2/5 The worst of the Drake excerpts for the year.

Dec 29 The Odyssey by Homer: 3/5 This project finally got me to stop adding an extra "e" to Odyssey. (I think I already said that.)

Average: 2.42 Saying goodbye to some favorites this week.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

It was kind of cool to see the final selections Eliot picked for the repeats. Circling King Lear back to just before the first reading. The Odyssey ending on its natural climax. Darwin getting his finches. It was like seeing an old friend grow up and realize their potential.

Reflections on Week 51 (Dec 16-22)

       Link to the readings

(Blogging) Area 51

Quick review on this week's readings:

Dec 16  On The Sublime and Beautiful by Burke: 2/5 I didn't care for this section, but the rest of the essay sound interesting..

Dec 17 The Confessions of St. Augustine: 1/5 Wasn't there a non-awful Christian tradition Eliot could've pulled readings from?

Dec 18 Some Thoughts Concerning Education by Locke: 2/5 How to learn Latin (which you don't need) without forgetting English (which you do).

Dec 19 Samson Agonistes by Milton: 1/5 God is extra terrible this week.

Dec 20 An Account of Egypt by Herodotus: 3/5 Child abuse and engineering. 

Dec 21 The Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan: 2/5 Literature's strangest wills.

Dec 22 "What is a Classic?" by Saint-Beuve: 3/5 A pretty good definition of a classic.

Average: 2 I don't think there's going to be any weeks above a two this whole year.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

I've read that sublimity (real word, didn't expect that) is often contrasted with religion, which makes it kind of interesting to see the Burke excerpt paired with St. Augustine, Milton, and Bunyan here this week. Religion says things are overwhelming, therefore there must be a god. Sublimity says things are overwhelming... wow! I don't know that that's accurate (having only read this chunk and I think one other excerpt), but that's the impression I've gotten. Interested in learning more, which is the point of this project.

Reflections on Week 50 (Dec 9-15)

      Link to the readings

Final month!

Quick review on this week's readings:

Dec 9  The Fugitive Slave Law: 3/5 Well that's shitty.

Dec 10 The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini: 2/5 He's a slightly less funny edgelord in this one.

Dec 11 Alcibiades by Plutarch: 3/5 Probably the strangest Lives excerpt of the year.

Dec 12 Poems by Browning: 1/5 So far past my bad poem quota for the year.

Dec 13 Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage... by Pretty: 3/5 It's where you bend your Ell! 

Dec 13 Poems by Plutarch: 1/5 Please stop.

Dec 14 The Odyssey by Homer: 3/5 Vampire Ghosts!

Average: 2.29 Ugh, poetry.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

If all the poetry hadn't bombed, I was thinking about rereading Cellini to see if I could justify moving it up to a three. But then there was more bad/generic poetry, so it didn't matter. I think if your poetry involves telling me something is beautiful you should just stop, since it's already been done a few million times poorly, and you're probably not going to do any better.

Reflections On Week 49 (Dec 2-Dec 8)

     Link to the readings

Hey, I'm only a month behind now!

Quick review on this week's readings:

Dec 2  Le Morte d'Arthur by Mallory: 3/5 Chivalric tongue lashings!

Dec 3 Buddhist Writings: 3/5 The way they pick the Buddha is questionable, but I learned things and practiced math.

Dec 4 The Aeneid by Virgil: 2/5 It's a lot easier to read the random excerpts of stories I've already read.

Dec 5 Poems by Rossetti: 3/5 She's like a better Emily Dickinson.

Dec 6 Essays by Addison: 0/5 It's like he had a philosophical dialogue with himself. 

Dec 7 Cicero by Plutarch: 2/5 Stop giving me an excerpt of a half of a pair with no context, Eliot.

Dec 8 "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow" by Quincey: 3/5 Just inventing new triple goddesses for fun.

Average: 2.57 Addison ruins it for everyone. 

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

We're getting recent enough that I actually remember some of the readings reasonably well! This week didn't really stand out. The Lives are usually kinda meh, but I blame the formatting. I think the one that stood out to me the most was the Buddhist writings, since I had to sit down and do math while I read it. A literal interaction in your literature can be fun.

Reflections on Week 48 (Nov 25-Dec 1)

    Link to the readings

Hopefully I can avoid any of the dramatics from the last two days tonight.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Nov 25  The Shoemaker's Holiday by Dekker: 2/5 I wasn't thrilled with this one, but I think part of that was the production.

Nov 26 "On The Tragedies of Shakespeare" by Lamb: 1/5 Lamb is entitled to his opinions, and I am entitled to think this is one of the dumbest things I read all year.

Nov 27 Utopia by More: 2/5 If the thing you're satirizing isn't real, is it really satire?

Nov 28 Poems by Blake: 2/5 Slant rhymes rhymes with band rinds.

Nov 29 Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by Hume: 3/5 I think some of the other philosophers have had similar points in 15MAD, but still relevant. 

Nov 30 “Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation” by Swift: 4/5 All good advice, and interestingly written.

Dec 1 Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous by Hume: 1/5 Heat isn't real.

Average: 2.14 I'm developing a physical aversion to philosophical dialogues. 

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

I Swift's "Conversation" for I think the third time, and it's great every time. I look forward to rereading some of my other favorites (and finishing the ones that're in excerpts) later this year.

Reflections on Week 47 (Nov 18-24)

   Link to the readings

OK, back on track now.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Nov 4  Wilhelm Tel by Von Schiller: 3/5 Cool to read an actual version of this. I was vaguely aware of the story, but just from 30 second parodies and stuff.

Nov 5 "Morte D'Arthur" by Tennison: 3/5 Decent enough version of the grail story.

Nov 6 "The Valiant Little Tailor" by The Brother's Grimm: 3/5 Light and silly.

Nov 7 "On Inoculation" by Voltaire: 3/5 The historical basis of Twi'leks?

Nov 8 Aeneid by Virgil: 2/5 Probably better in a different translation.

Nov 9 Thoughts by Pascal: 1/5 Pascal's villain rant about failing math. 

Nov 10 The Origin of Species by Darwin: 3/5 Lamarckian Darwin!

Average: 2.57 Had a real streak going early on. 

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

The dichotomy here is interesting. We start the week with classic legends, folk tales, etc. Wilhelm Tell, Grimm, King Arthur. Then (except for Virgil) it's all non-fiction in the back half. I don't think there's been any other weeks split like that.

Reflections On Week 45? (4-10)

  Link to the readings

I definitely wrote this yesterday, and I have no idea what happened to it. I'm guessing I thought I was using it as a template and overwrote it instead.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Nov 4  Polyeucte by Constable: 3/5 Weird translation, but seems like an interesting play.

Nov 5 The Life of Sir Thomas More by Roper: 1/5 Dude really liked his FiL.

Nov 6 "The Force of Gravitation" by Faraday: 3/5 Cool science.

Nov 7 "The First of the Three Ladies from Baghdad": 3/5 Sick bars, and I learned what a hafiz is.

Nov 8 "Paradise Regained" by Milton: 1/5 Who asked for the Bible as a questionable poem?

Nov 9 Plasms: 2/5 A couple of these are half decent.

Nov 10 The Deserted Village by Goldsmith: 3/5 I even reread this whole thing! (It was decent.)

Average: 2.29 This week got one more point on the rerate.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

I think a one point difference on a scale of 0-35 is pretty decent (less then a 3% spread). I don't really remember what I put here yesterday. I think something about being glad to reread Goldsmith.

Reflections on Week 46 (Nov 11-17)

 Link to the readings

I'm making breakfast for dinner to celebrate my wife's thesis after this.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Nov 11 Poems by Whitman: 3/5 Unconventional subjects, pretty good poems.

Nov 12 Paradise Lost by Milton: 3/5 An actual good(ish) Paradise Lost section!

Nov 13 The Confessions of Saint Augustine: 2/5 I waffled on scoring this one a lot. Strong front half, iffy back half.

Nov 14 "Uniformity of Change" by Lyell: 1/5 Not very interesting, and hard to comprehend.

Nov 15 I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Allessandro Manzoni : 2/5 Random section way after the rest of the book.

Nov 16 Two Years Before the Mast by Dana: 3/5 California Girls are have but little virtue doesn't have the same ring to it. 

Nov 17 Sir Walter Scott by Carylye: 0/5 What even is this?

Average: 2 This was a really hard to rate week.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

Sure, my wife is getting a doctorate, but did she do fifteen minutes a day of a pseudo liberal studies degree? No. (She did a lot more work, but I didn't have to put up with her cohort and professors.)

Reflections on Week 44 (Oct 28-Nov 3)

Link to the readings

Snow day tomorrow! We haven't had one of those in like half a decade.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Oct 28: "Some Thoughts on Education" by Locke: 3/5 Kids learn best via Boggle gambling.

Oct 29: Poems by Keats: 2/5 Nightingales, man.

Oct 30: "Science of Geology" by Lyell: 1/5 Not wrong, just not well written.

Oct 31: BUUUURNNNNSSSSS: 0/5 IT'S OVER!

Nov 1: The Tempest by Shakespeare: 2/5 I kinda want to go all the way down to one for this one, since there are more deserving Shakespeares.

Nov 2: The Divine Comedy by Dante: 3/5 Artistic censorship. 

Nov 3: Pliny's Letters: 3/5 Just a little torture to be safe!

Average: 2 The end of the "Burns Curve"

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

I cannot express how happy I will be to never have to read Burns again. I'm proud that I actually read (admittedly, kinda skimmed sometimes) every Burns day. I think that's the biggest challenge of this whole project. He's just so terrible. And barely even in English.

Reflections On Week 43 (Oct 21-27)

      Link to the readings

Now listening to: Dawn of Victory

Quick review on this week's readings:

Oct 21: "On Old Age" by Cicero: 4/5 It's not all bad getting old.

Oct 22: "Jonathon Swift" by Thackeray: 3/5 All I ever think of when I read Thackeray is Colonel Makepeace from SG-1.

Oct 23: "Caesar" by Plutarch: 2/5 Back to Plutarch being meh.

Oct 24: "Oresteia" by Aeschylus: 2/5 I think I saw a version of this and liked it, but didn't love reading this selection.

Oct 25: "Machiavelli" by Macauley: 3/5 I don't have anything to say about this one. Interesting enough, but not mind blowing.

Oct 26 Ben Franklin's Autobiography: 3/5 Fun, and vaguely meta. 

Oct 27: Buddhist Writings by Warren: 3/5 Karma's a bitch!

Average: 2.86 One point away from "passing."

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

This was kind of a low key "good" week. I think this is the kind of thing I mostly expected to read. Thought provoking, not the most entertaining, some stuff I recognized and some more obscure. On the whole, I think the project has been more "fun" than I thought.

Reflections On Week 42 (Oct 14-20)

     Link to the readings

Are these still technically weekly reflections since they're on a week of readings? Or no, since they're not happening weekly by any stretch of the imagination?

Quick review on this week's readings:

Oct 14 The Wealth of Nations by Smith: 3/5 "It's called consolidation; strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time." (But in reverse.)

Oct 15 Amerigo Vespucci's Account: 3/5 So much discovering America lately.

Oct 16 Hippocrates' Oath and Law: 3/5 First, misattribute historical quotes.

Oct 17 Religio Medici by Browne: 0/5 "You're not making philosophy better! You're just making Christianity worse!"

Oct 18 Poems by Shelly: 2/5 Zzzzzzzzz.

Oct 19 "On the Realities of Imagination" by Hunt: 4/5 This is the kind of practical, rational philosophy I wish more low level courses focused on. 

Oct 20 The Odyssey by Homer: 3/5 Doing this challenge got me to finally swapping the first y for an e in Odyssey.

Average: 2.57 It's all Browne's fault.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

This week is as good a place as any to talk about something that I find odd about a lot of the 15MAD readings on Christianity (and, I guess, Christian apologetics in general). I was fairly religious as a kid, and something that a bunch of pastors, priests, Sunday school teachers, etc. all said to me was that you can't prove Christianity. It's inherently unprovable at best, illogical at worst. And that was the point. If you didn't need faith to believe, it wouldn't be a big deal. I think that's a reasonable enough point of view (if you're going to accept things like rib-women, believing in an omnipresent, unknowable being is pretty easy). But a lot of these authors are dead set on convincing you that, of course, Christianity makes perfect sense. I don't know if I just went to very liberal churches growing up or what.

Reflections On Week 41 (Oct 7-13)

    Link to the readings

Blog, then bath, then band.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Oct 7 The Journal of John Woolman: 3/5 There is no ethical consumption under slavery.

Oct 8 Joseph Andrews by John Fielding: 1/5 Genre=Law

Oct 9 Latin Hymns: 2/5 This is one of the ones that exists at the weird intersection of "fair to include in T5FSOB" and also "Possibly the world would be a better place if most of them didn't exist."

Oct 10 Don Quixote by Cervantes: 2/5 Digression!

Oct 11 The Aeneid by Virgil: 3/5 Still waiting on USS Babadook.

Oct 12 A Letter of Columbus: 3/5 The flag thing still amuses me.

Oct 13 Meditations by Aurelius: 3/5 I appreciate MA recognizing everyone who helped him along the way.

Average: 2.42 There were a lot of somewhat awkwardly amusing things in here this week.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

Definitely a big week for things that weren't necessarily great, but worth reading. The hymns are mostly bad, but historically significant. The Meditations excerpt wasn't as interesting as some of the others, but it's cool to see this historical powerhouse being so humble.

Reflections On Week 40 (Sep 30-Oct 6)

    Link to the readings

I had a double shot of scotch between the last entry and this one.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Sep 30 “Manners" by Emerson: 2/5 I like Emerson better as an essayist than as a poet.

Oct 1 The Prince by Machiavelli: 3/5 Still good examples.

Oct 2 The Voyage of the Beagle by Darwin: 3/5 At least it's an honest genocide.

Oct 3 Canterbury Tales by Chaucer: 3/5 You just gotta read it out loud.

Oct 4 Demosthenes by Plutarch: 3/5 Ode to a Grecian Burn.

Oct 5 "University Life at Athens" by Newman: 1/5 Nostalgia for times you weren't even alive for is so weird.

Oct 6 Reflections on The Revolution in France by Burke: 1/5 Burke still wants to deepthroat the boot.

Average: 2.29 That double whammy of missing the non-existent better days really tanked the week.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

It was nice to read Canterbury Tales again. I remember being really overwhelmed by it in high school, but it wasn't too hard. I sometimes worry about being a "peaked in high school" kid, so it's good to see that I'm at least better at reading now if nothing else.

Reflections On Week 39 (Sep 23-29)

   Link to the readings

Happy birthday to JRR Tolkien

Quick review on this week's readings:

Sep 23 “That To Philosophise Is To Learne How To Die” by Montaigne: 3/5 I worked with a John Florio. He did not write awkward translations.

Sep 24 Don Quixote by Cervantes: 3/5 Literature's greatest fanboy.

Sep 25 Themistocles by Plutarch: 2/5 This one felt more disjointed than a lot of the lives.

Sep 26 John Stuart Mills' Autobiography: 3/5 Dude really loved his wife.

Sep 27 "Thoughts" by Pascal: 0/5 Pascal makes Christianity look even worse than usual.

Sep 28 "Germ Theory..." by Pasteur: 3/5 Learning about germs and debate!

Sep 22 "The Sayings of Confucius": 3/5 Good as a companion to Meditations, etc. It's worth looking at similar texts from different cultures.

Average: 2.43 Great job, Pascal.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

Pascal's take on Christianity is exhaustingly bad. I think that I'm overall a theistic-leaning agnostic, but nothing wants me want to be an atheist more than reading once every two weeks or so about how terrible humanity is and how we should all just give up and hope God will take mercy on us since we'll always be awful failures.

Reflections On Week 38 (Sep 16-22)

  Link to the readings

It's good to start the new year by reflecting on the last one.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Sep 16 Holinshed's Chronicles: 3/5 You can execute people, or you can torture them. Don't do both at once. 

Sep 17 Poems by Whittier: 3/5 Surprisingly good poems!

Sep 18 Two Years Before the Mast by Dana: 3/5 I really wish Elliot had flopped these last two Dana selections This would've been more fulfilling at the end of the year.

Sep 19 Don Quixote by Cervantes: 3/5 It's like Fahrenheit 451, but 348 year sooner..

Sep 20 The Quran : 2/5 I feel like I learned nothing about Islam across the chunks that were selected this year.

Sep 21 The Aeneid by Virgil: 3/5 The most fanfic part of this fanfic.

Sep 22 Froissart's Chronicles: 1/5 This veered into the name-list style too much.

Average: 2.57 A strikingly average week.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

Apparently, Tuesdays are the days for good poetry and I hate all Chronicles.

Reflections On Week 37 (Sep 9-15)

 Link to the readings

It's good to start the new year by reflecting on the last one.

Quick review on this week's readings:

Sep 9 "Nature" by Emerson: 1/5 Nature good, transcendentalist hipsters bad. 

Sep 10 Poems by Holmes: 3/5 More fightin' ship poems, please!

Sep 11 Wealth of Nations by Smith: 4/5 WoN is still good, and Adam Smith would still get called a socialist on Newsmax if they knew how to read him.

Sep 12 Poems by Browning: 1/5 These are flirting with a zero. No more psycho love poems, please.

Sep 13 Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan: 1/5 PP has the most inconsistent score range in T5FSOB.

Sep 14 The Divine Comedy by Dante: 2/5 I look forward to reading this not chunked.

Sep 15 George Washington's Farewell Address: 3/5 George Washington was (basically) a Federalist.

Average: 2.14 I'm going to start plugging these into a spreadsheet.

Overall Thoughts on The Project:

This far into the year, it's interesting to see the distinction between pieces that are good, and pieces that are good when semi-randomly chunked. I enjoy The Divine Comedy, but I'm really tired of reading ten pages of Paradiso then twelve of Inferno then a different bit of Paradiso and then shuffling to Purgatorio, because why not? 

Casually Completing Classics 16: The Odyssey Reflection

 Happy New Year!

I'll be spending the next week or two doing some housekeeping here on the blog. Finishing up CCC is first, I need to catch up on Star Wars Classics (I've still been reading, just not blogging), the rest of the (belated) weekly reflections, and then a couple overall reflection posts. I have a half dozen ideas for this year's reading kicking around, so I'll use the time to get the books I need and make some decisions.

But tonight I want to take a couple minutes to wrap up The Odyssey. I'm glad I reread it for several reasons. I think the last (and only) time I read it cover to cover before was probably high school. I read The Iliad one summer, liked it, and decided to follow it with The Odyssey. I think I had Fagles translations of both. I liked The Iliad a lot better, though I don't really remember why all these years later. I read excerpts in undergrad, and I teach a chunk or two most years in my own English classes. My stepdaughter is really into Epic: The Musical and I asked her if she wanted to read the book. She did, so we went to Barnes & Noble. She liked the idea of having a woman's translation, so she got Wilson. They only had one copy, so I decided to grab Fitzgerald as the sort of "standard." I haven't sat down and read the whole Wilson, but it seems pretty good. I definitely like them both more than I liked Fagles, but I might have enjoyed it more today (I will not be Casually Comparing Classics with The Odyssey anytime soon.) It was fun to look at passages and compare them, talk about how the musical was similar/different, etc. And then I used a VPN to get the last release two hours early so my wife wouldn't have to stay up until midnight, which she was very grateful for.

Mini-review, I guess: It's a fun story. It has it's weird bits and it's slow bits, but Homer's poetry (through Fitzgerald) is usually pretty zippy, and all the crazy stories are still interesting. I was genuinely excited every time I sat down to read it.

Besides the familial angle (which is very appropriate to the story) it was nice to sit down and read a whole classic cover to cover. It's been quite a while since I did that (the excerpts from 15MAD have been taking up most of my "serious" reading for the last year), and it's a good little mental muscle flex.

It was also good to actually (re)learn the story. I think most people with more than a passing interest in mythology, literature, etc. can give you some kind of summary of The Odyssey, but it's probably wrong. I think the cliché version is, "It's about a guy who tries to get home and fights monsters and goes on adventures along the way." And then I read the story and realizes that Odysseus doesn't even show up for the first quarter or so of the book, and actually makes it home around the half way point. So yeah, there's some decent adventuring and monstering in there, but it's really a small part of the book (and a lot of the stories only take up a page or two) and Odysseus spends a lot of chronological time (and page time) either captured or not actively trying to get home.

So what is it about? History's greatest idiot-genius/jerk protagonist? (Kidding, I've ranted about that enough already.) I'd say number one is how people and families move on after someone dies. Telemachus becoming a man to fill in for the (not) dead Odysseus. Penelope sorting through her grief and handling the suitors. On a more thematic level, it's about hospitality. Giving it, accepting it, abusing it. Xenia is a big deal, and it's really what drives the whole story. Odysseus would never have made it home without the hospitality of some of the people he met along the way, and he's delayed primarily by "corrupt" versions of hospitality (bewitching and hostage-holding). Telemachus is only able to find out about his father due to the hospitality from Odysseus's old comrades. The suitors abuse Penelope's hospitality (and get slaughtered for it.) The most famous story in the whole book is probably the Polyphemus encounter, where the cyclops is very bad at hospitality. Odysseus and co. being bad guests on Helios's island a bit later is also a pivotal moment. 

From a historical perspective (besides all the mythology goodies) it's also cool to see the story that arguably lays down the template for the adventure/romance story. World travels, monsters and gods, reunited lovers! There were stories and epics before The Odyssey, but they're either disjointed (or incomplete) or less complex.

I guess the last thing I learned from this (and unfortunately am stuck with for the blog in general for a bit) is that I shouldn't try to write these entries too long after having read the book. I plowed through most of it months ago, but I obviously didn't keep up on the entries. Even with rereading, the last few aren't nearly as good without the story fresh in my mind and fully contextualized. I'll do better next time.