The Adventures of Augie March

Saul Bellow

Abridged in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/2/22

About a Russian Jew, who is becoming American, or losing his heritage.

Jerimiah

5/8/22

Reading this now. It reads as a refugee crisis. Of course at the end the Jews themselves become
refugees, but there are refugees in Jerusalem a the start of the book. It is a subtext throughout, but in
chapter 35 Jerimiah has an outright conversation with a group of them. Some of the Jews fled to Egypt,
but they were destroyed? I don’t remember that bit from Kings or Chronicles. I have three comparisons
to make Kublah Kahn, Tulsi Gabbard and A Clockwork Orange. Kublah Kahn, because he said that no
matter what religion you are you must realize that God has favored him because he is the master of the
world. Tulsi Gabbard because that is who Jeremiah must have sounded like, outright rooting for the
other side. I think that A Clockwork Orange was just an impression of style, I think. A lot of places are
mentioned in this book. It might mean more to read through this if you had an intimate understanding
of Ancient Near Eastern geography.

Creative Destruction, Health, and Happiness

The Power of Creative Destruction

Phillippe Aghion

5/10/22

This has an idea that I have long thought, that advanced economies need a social safety net to
encourage innovation. If there is strong support for the unemployed then companies will be able to
innovate without needing to create employment. This was actually slightly alluded to in the wealth of
nations.

The General Epistle of Barnabas

5/10/22

A lot of Christian ideas seem to originate in these apocrypha. Some of it is also ideas that were in The
New Testament.

Death of a Salesman

Arthur Miller

5/11/22
There are some great monologues at the Requiem. They paid off the mortgage. They talk about how
it’s an accomplishment. Is it? It’s kind of like not dying (which he failed at). I think it’s meant to be
ambiguous weather paying off a mortgage is an accomplishment.

Robert Lowell

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/13/22

He talks about history and literature, which I find quite interesting and he makes it fun. He uses the N-
word. He’s not a racist, but it is still unnecessary. People probably won’t view the use of the N-word
today favorably.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/14/22

It starts out really strong. “’Dream’ makes a giddy sound, not strong

Like ‘rent,' ‘feeding a wife,' ‘satisfying a man.’” Then it gets a bit boring. I had heard of the poem “we
real cool” before.

The Quest for Black Claveringi

Patricia Highsmith

5/14/22

This was really fun. It didn’t make me have any deep thoughts, but I really enjoyed reading it. It’s about
a guy chasing a giant slug. His name is Clavering, he is trying to name it after himself.

Richard Wilbur

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/14/22

It’s one of those boring guys again. Just a bunch of words.

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Abridged in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/15/22

This is very easy to read but hard to focus on. There was a mistake in the abridgement. This is a
travelogue, and it takes only the beginning and the end. I read the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, and I
don’t remember the beginning and the end. I remember the bits in the middle where The Merry
Pranksters are moving around. Another not on the similarities between these two books, when I read
Neal Cassidy’s name, I thought, “isn’t that weird that this guy is also named Neal Cassidy.” I am
embarrassed at how long it took me to realize it was the same person.

Chapter 1

Slaughterhouse 5

Kurt Vonnegut

5/18/22

This is great. The first chapter gives a great taste of what the book will be like. I intend to read this book
very soon. It does something I like to do when I’m writing. He writes a normal detailed paragraph, but
then cuts it with a short pithy contradiction.

Grace Paley

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/18/22

She tells a story about her and her dad. There is generational conflict, but they like each other.

James Dickey

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/20/22

I have thought the last few authors were going to be boring, but they weren’t. But this one was. One of
the poems was about a woman falling out of an airplane. That could have been good, but it wasn’t.

Postmodern Manifestos

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/21/22

These were pretty boring. The postmodern poems are exciting while to postmodern Manifestos we’re
boring. The modern poems were boring while the modern Manifestos were exciting.

Denise Levertov

Collected in the Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/21/22

It uses a lot of religious imagery, but they don’t seem religious.

Going to Meet the Man

James Baldwin

5/22/22
This was hard to read. I had to stop a couple of times. It was starting to make me sick. Is this an
accurate way of the way racists think? I think, not. It does a very good job, but I don’t think it’s possible
to really get into the mind. One thing it does well, is it what they actually say about their reasons. What
someone says about why they hold their beliefs is always more important than what might make sense
to you. I don’t think that was well expressed, but that’s not so important, I really just want to express
my belief that you can’t really get into someone’s head.

Sonny’s Blues

James Baldwin

5/22/22

A lot of writing at this time is about regular people going about their complex and unremarkable lives.
Black men’s lives can be just as complex and unremarkable as any one else’s.

The Life you Save May be Your Own

Flannery O’Conner

5/22/22

The interesting thing about this is that the man keeps doing what he assumes the woman ought to want
rather than what she says she wants.

Part 1

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

5/22/22

This book was written in a serialized format. I read that most serialized books had to rely on cliffhangers
to keep people interested, but Dostoevsky did not have to do that. His work is good enough that people
would itch to read just based on quality. But, Book 3 kinds of ends on one. Alyosha makes a decision on
whether or not to stay in the monastery, we know he is happy about his decision, but it doesn’t actually
say what the decision was. Maybe we are supposed to know as readers, but I don’t think it is too
obvious. The chapter “Elders” was really good. It is talking about whether justice should be religious or
secular. He makes good arguments on both sides, but it is clear which side Dostoevsky thinks is right.
Of course the major discussion throughout the book is the existence of God. “The Servants’ Quarters”
was also great. It is about the death of an infant. If you are not interested in wallowing in self-pity,
Dostoevsky is not for you.

Good Country People

Flannery O’Conner

5/23/22

This was a fun story about a couple out on a date. Then the guy turns mean (evil actually). It was a good
twist, but I didn’t like it. I was having fun with the couple on a date.
A Good Man is Hard to Find

Flannery O’Conner

5/25/22

This was the best depiction of southern people, but it was also the most boring story.

Financing Creative Destruction

The Power of Creative Destruction

Phillippe Aghion

5/26/22

This gets away from the core concepts a bit. It examines if investors should take an active role in the
research of a firm or if it should be left up to the managers.

A R Ammons

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/26/22

I kind of like poems that are done in pairs of lines, but this one does the thing where content does not
gel with form. The line breaks and sentence breaks have no correlation with one another. It is almost
like he wrote a short story, then just formatted it like a poem.

The Protoevangelium of James

5/26/22

This tells the story of Mary and the birth of Jesus. Except for the beginning and the end, it just
recapitulates what is in the gospels. The beginning tells a little about Mary’s birth. The end shows a
scene that a lot of people have heard of. Salome checks to see if Mary was indeed a virgin. What she
actually does is only alluded to, but it is quite clear. The man thing is that she checks after Mary gives
birth. She would no longer have the physical hallmarks of a virgin after pushing a baby through her birth
canal. Anyway, the very end goes into Harrods utter ruthlessness to find Jesus. People start to be
martyred right from the start to protect Jesus from Harod.

James Merrill

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/27/22

It’s just another one that is just a short story shaped like a poem.

Howl

Alan Ginsberg

5/30/22
This truly is a great poem. It has precisely as much repetition as a poem ought. It mentions Denver a
lot. It reminded me of the end of Wait Till Next Year, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I feel like she is a fan of
Ginsberg; I don’t know why. His reaction to Cezanne is great, “to recreate the syntax and measure of
poor human prose and stand before you speechless.”

Footnote to Howl

Alan Ginsberg

5/30/22

The definition of holy is “belonging to God.” I don’t think a lot of people know this, but I cannot
remember what I thought holy meant before I knew. Anyway, its not shocking when you think of it that
way.

A Supermarket in California

Alan Ginsberg

5/30/22

He examines his relationship with Walt Whitman? Whitman liked the world he lived in. I think he would
have loved the supermarket. He talks about the ferry which Whitman also wrote about.

Sunflower Sutra

Alan Ginsberg

5/30/22

The title was more intriguing than the poem itself.

To Aunt Rose

Alan Ginsberg

5/30/22

This was nice. He liked his aunt. She was a fierce fighter of fascism, but she was tinder with him.

Frank O’Hara

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

5/31/22

The only great one is A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island. It’s exactly what it says on the
tin. Nothing particularly sticks out, but it’s just a fun read.

Galway Kinnell

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/1/22
I realize that I use the term “exciting” a lot when talking about poetry. These poems were perfectly
adequate, but they were not exciting.

Adrienne Rich

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

John Ashbury

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/4/22

He just expressed his opinion on the modern world. Much as I wish to become a raconteur myself, I find
this annoying.

W S Merwin

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/4/22

He finally does what a lot of them have been dancing around. He just lists, does a survey, of the writers
who come before. He mentioned Sylvia Plath. I’m looking forward to reading her. She has been really
built up in my mind. At the end he does make the point that literature will go on after this poem.

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

James Wright

6/4/22

The idea that teens play football to make up for the dreams of their parents is trite now, but it was
probably fresh here.

To the Evening Star: Central Minnesota

James Wright

6/4/22

I knew he was a great African American poet, but I didn’t know he was a great Midwestern poet.

A Blessing

James Wright

6/4/22

Life can be hard, but life is good.

A Centenary Ode: Inscribed to Little Crow, Leader of the Sioux Rebellion in Minnesota

James Wright
6/4/22

I just realized James Wright is not Richard Wright. I thought it was odd that the bio did not mention
Black Boy and that he wrote so many poems I hadn’t heard of. Oh, well. Thinking I would enjoy these
made me enjoy them.

With the Shell of a Hermit Crab

James Wright

6/4/22

He has stopped talking about the Midwest and has begun with some naturalist poetry.

Philip Levine

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/4/22

I’ve written poems like this before, just a bunch of observations. The Simple Truth starts that way, then
contemplates the nature of existence.

Anne Sexton

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/4/22

She writes about suicide a lot, but the closer we get to suicide, the less she talks about it.

Precious Artifact

Philip K Dick

6/5/22

So, were they all robots? Was that what it was about? It’s hard when the “twist” happens so fast.

6/5/22

Power was really good. It is about Marie Curie and how her accomplishments are what killed her. How
all women are most vulnerable when they are most powerful.

Schrödinger’s Cat

Ursula K Le Guin

6/9/22

It has a couple of dogs discussing the idea of Schrödinger’s Cat. They keep getting distracted.

She Unnames Them

Ursula K Le Guin
6/9/22

A woman takes away the names of the animals, freeing them.

Gary Snyder

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/10/22

It’s written all confusingly. It ahs a bunch of random spaces. Am I supposed to read it up and down or
side to side? If you wrote one that was even more structured like in a grid and made sense side to side
and up to down, and you posted it on reddit, it would be good. But, this one is just annoying.

The Balloon

Donald Barthelme

6/11/22

Most of it is just about the places in New York. Then at the end the balloon is explicitly said to represent
sex. I didn’t get any of that until the book told me.

Recitatif

Toni Morrison

6/11/22

There is so much going on here. People are very protective of their kids. We can all get along, but once
you put someone’s kids in it, it gets real. People aren’t willing to hold to liberal ideals if it might hurt
their kids. That’s why these two girls have to fall on two sides of the political debate. But they still care
about each other and they still are messed up from their childhoods.

Morning Song

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

Her baby was just born and it’s already growing, nearly able to produce it’s own thoughts.

Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

The only thing life is good for is to please others. The only reason she has been resurrected is to please
others, her doctors, her audience. Her living skin is no different than the skin on a Nazi lampshade.

Rhyme has always been an auditory phenomenon. It’s a feeling you get when you hear something. This
is the first time I’ve ever got a visual sense of rhyme.

Ariel
Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

There is a collective notion of an archetype of a slow, deliberate, mournful horse ride. This is that.

Daddy

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

Tim Taylor’s dad died before he could rebel against him. So Tim idolized his dad his whole life. Sylvia is
mad at her dad for not living long enough for her to rebel against him.

Words

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

She paints a very vivid picture of a tree, with moss and vines on it and a puddle beneath it, but the poem
is called words!

Blackberrying

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

This one is not as good as the others. It has longer lines, I like the ones with shorter lines. I think it’s my
short attention span.

Purdah

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

“Lord of the mirrors!” and “Attendants of the lip!” alone would be two of the best poems I’ve ever read.
She also uses one of my favorite words, “concatenation.”

The Applicant

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22

There’s a lot of things I think she could be applying for, wife, job, death.

Child

Sylvia Plath

6/11/22
She is a little indulgent when talking about her children.

Separating

John Updike

6/11/22

Depressingly realistic, stories that are too realistic contain no insight.

Part II

The Brothers Karamazov

6/13/22

It has a pro-Christian and an anti-Christian part. The main point of the anti-Christian part is that good
religious men, tentpoles of society, are often evil. The pro-Christian points are that evil change and that
evil men can do good things and can effect people in a positive way.

Defender of the Faith

Phillip Roth

6/14/22

Initially it seems like the jews deserve sympathy. Their problems, while minor compared to the
holocaust, are still important. Then the story degrades into one about cronyism. It has an instance of
dramatic irony that is the reverse of normal. Normally, the audience knows something bad is going to
happen when the characters don’t. In this case, we know that there is not going to be an invasion of
Japan, but the characters don’t. They’re sad.

How to Manage Globalization

The Power of Creative Destruction

Phillippe Aghion

6/14/22

This chapter was just bog-standard stuff. Globalism has downsides, but the good outweighs the bad.

Amiri Baraka

Collected in the Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/19/22

One wonders if these poems are about race or not. I feel like these can be interpreted either way. They
are often to do with the body, maybe that’s why they seem like they are about race.

On Lying

Saint Augustine
6/23/22

First off, jokes don’t count as lying. At the end he lists the sorts of lies in order of how sinful they are.
His conclusion is that there are no good lies, which is odd because he did say that jokes are okay. The
most interesting one is where he says it is not okay to lie in order to make someone feel good. This is
vanity, it Is not even okay to tell the truth if the goal is to make someone else fell good.

The Way to Rainy Mountain

N Scott Momaday

Abridged in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/24/22

It’s interesting subject matter, but it’s told in a weird way that makes it hard to follow.

Audre Lorde

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/26/22

He talks about being black, but in a very literal sense. He doesn’t talk about discrimination or anything,
just about having black skin.

Mary Oliver

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/27/22

Fun, but not interesting.

Lucille Clifton

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

6/30/22

This is wild. She’s a radical feminist and writes wild poems.

Airborne Toxic Event

White Noise

Don Delillo

7/5/22

There is a collage of conspiracy theories. Warhol, it feels like Warhol.

Dos

Bless Me, Ultima

Rudolfo Anaya

7/7/22

Sort of a Latin-American Proust. I had trouble focusing on this the way I struggled to focus on Proust.

Entropy

Thomas Pynchon

7/10/22

At first this felt more like Tom Wolfe, but then it clearly became Pynchon. It’s the Pynchon that likes
music and science, not the less savory aspects of Pynchon that I don’t care for.

Cathedral

Raymond Carver

7/10/22

The first half was a bit boring, but the end where they’re actually talking about the cathedral is better.

Mary Dalton’s Dream

The Last Days of Louisiana Red

Ishmael Reed

7/10/22

Very aggressive. I assume the whole book isn’t like this, they took chapter 26. They usually take an
earlier chapter. I think it makes more sense in context.

Neo-HooDoo Manifesto

Ishmael Reed

7/10/22

It’s not as aggressive, but it has the same general sentiment. Christianity is responsible for all the evil on
earth. His heart didn’t seem in this.

Charles Simic

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

7/10/22

These are all about different things, but they all feel the same. I don’t know how to describe how they
are similar.

Michael S Barber

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

7/10/22

The first poem is about Coltrane. His poems feel like Coltrane. Again, I can’t explain how.

True West

Sam Shepard

7/17/22

The old Hollywood is gone the same way the old west is gone. A man can’t make it on his own anymore

Louise Glück

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

7/25/22

My opinion on poetry is the same as my opinion on music. After the 60’s it’s crap until the 90’s. The last
line of the last poem was good. “my friend the moon rises:

She is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?”

Everyday Use

Alice Walker

7/28/22

This is one of those boring modern stories where nothing happens.

Part 3

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

7/30/22

The story of the murder itself was rather boring, but the interrogation was very thrilling. It seems very
close to the American legal system. Maybe because they were dealing with the nobility. Are the
Karamazovs nobility? They’re certainly close.

The Investor State and the Insurer State

The Power of Creative Destruction

Phillippe Aghion

8/1/22

The investor state is necessary to power creative destruction. That’s basically what the book has been
about so far. The Insurer State helps protect the people who might lose their jobs when new firms
innovate. I have always thought that. It frees firms from the moral obligation to employ people and
allows the amoral laws of finance to operate in the most effective way possible.
Fences

August Wilson

8/2/22

This is an amazing play. It has so many great lines and baseball. Troy can’t let the past go. There is
almost no subtext, but it is still incredibly deep. I like how the devil was a banker. He was described
with tropes of the devil, but he only actually did banker things. When he tells death, don’t come round
here till you’re ready for me, I almost cried.

Seeing

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Annie Dillard

8/6/22

Sometimes all I get out of reading is a couple interesting lines, like, “the sense impressions of one-celled
animals are not edited for the brain: ‘This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it
means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.’”

Lydia Davis

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/7/22

She does have a very interesting way of writing, even if the topics are dull. I had Beijing duck in Beijing
while I was teaching English. I think cremains is a fine word. It’s a lot of flash fiction; I might be good at
flash fiction.

De Monarchia

Dante

8/7/22

Italy should have a king and it should not be subservient to the pope. It should be moral, but should be
allowed to act independently. I agree that empire is beneficial for a society and that a series of city
states can’t accomplish much. But it can be run in a democratic way.

He references the bible a lot but he never really quotes it. The only quotes he gives are of things the
characters actually say. He knows the story, but he draws his own lessons from the story, not the
explicit lessons from the text of the Bible.

Weekend

Ann Beattie

8/11/22
This is a sort of episodic fiction. I kept getting distracted by the woman being named Lenore. I kept
thinking of Taken.

Glengarry Glen Ross

David Mamet

8/13/22

The Alec Baldwin scene isn’t in it. I think if I hadn’t already seen this, I wouldn’t be able to follow it.

Yousef Komunyakaa

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/13/22

It is a lot like rap music. It doesn’t have the same cadence, but it has a lot of the same topics.
Basketball, naked people, music itself.

Lullaby

Leslie Marmon Silko

8/13/22

I think I remember another half Indian woman from these anthologies. It felt very similar to this story.

Mouse Trap

Maus

Art Spiegelman

8/14/22

I wonder if this would be a good story if it was not uniquely illustrated. It was suspenseful, but stories
about hiding from the gestapo are always suspenseful. The best part of the whole comic (not the part
excerpted here) is the modern day bits where he is talking to his father.

Joy Hario

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

“Cultural awareness is thinking there is something that has only happened to you, but then learning that
it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky.”

-James Baldwin

The First Day

Edward P Jones

8/14/22
I remember when kids would come to school on the first day. I guess this is accurate.

Rita Dove

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/14/22

It was boring at first, but later she wrote shorter more staccato poems, which were very good.

Two Kinds

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan

8/14/22

I tried to read this book once with a Chinese friend of mine, sort of like a book club situation. In the first
session she said the title was wrong. These stories ore not joyful or lucky. This was the chapter where I
gave up and said this book is stupid, I don’t want to read it anymore. Rereading it (knowing where the
story was going) was much better. I’ve heard people say things like that about movies and tv shows.

Woman Hollering Creek

Sandra Cisneros

8/14/22

This is sort of a vindication of soap operas. Some people say they are unrealistic, maybe they are more
realistic than you’d like to admit. Some bits of life are boring, but many it’s are like soap operas.

Louise Erdrich

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/17/22

This was structured oddly. A bunch of Short poems and then a long short story. Anyway, boring.

Li-Young Lee

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/18/22

It is modern in some ways, but it feels like early 19th century poetry.

Havasu

Edward Abbey

8/19/22

This is why I like nature, it’s rough and difficult, but when it’s over, you love it.
The Raven

Barry Lopez

8/19/22

A few almost fantastical vignettes that illustrate what ravens are like.

Girl

Jamaica Kincaid

8/19/22

This is decent I guess, girly. The style of one long sentence, I don’t think, could be sustained much
longer than this.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S Thompson

Abridged in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/19/22

Is he trying to make a point, or is he trying to just shock people.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Joan Didion

Abridged in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/19/22

I have a lot of good things to say about 60’s counterculture, but it was not the unmitigated moral height
of American culture. It was written about critically at the time, by people where were there.

Consider the Lobster

David Foster Wallace

Abridged in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/19/22

Eating animals is morally wrong. What I like beat about this is that he published it and Gourmet
Magazine.

Brother, I’m Dying

Edwidge Danticat

Abridged in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/19/22
This is the last of the Creative Nonfiction section, and it’s fairly dull.

CivilWarLand in bad decline

George Saunders

8/20/22

CivilWarLand is a museum/theme park and it’s falling apart. Based on the title, I thought CivilWarLand
meant the south and how it was in decline. It could still be a metaphor for that.

Sherman Alexie

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/21/22

Once more I like the sorter ones better. Marilyn Monroe” is just one section of a longer poem and I
liked it. So, maybe it’s me, maybe I just don’t have the attention span for longer poems.

Natasha Trethewey

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/22/22

Read this and become interested in refugee camps.

Sexy

Thumps Lahiri

It’s sort of about sex. It dances around it. I don’t know. It was very odd.

Drown

Junot Díaz

8/29/22

A story about two punk kids. We were all sort of punks when we were kids, doing things just because
we could. But we were still kids, we didn’t want to get in trouble.

Tracy K Smith

Collected in The Norton Anthology of American Literature

8/30/22

These were shorter poems, but I didn’t like them. I felt like it was that thing again where the line breaks
had no meaning.

The Foundational Epoch

The Norton Anthology of Islam

8/22

The Qur’an was good. A lot of interesting, if bland ideas. Especially in the later, sorter chapters. I
thought that The Life of Muhammad would be fun, but it was not. If one is going to read a biography
one should read the newest one, not the oldest one.

Part 4

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I like courtroom dramas, but only when there is a twist. Being Russian is enough of a twist. It is quite
clear that he did it in the earlier part. But the investigation and trial start to obfuscate things. If you
picked up the book and started reading at part 4 you might think he probably didn’t. The implication
seems to also be that the final argument you hear is the one you are convinced by. This seems to be the
case earlier with the grand Inquisitor and the Russian monk. But then, a final twist, the jury comes back
guilty just because they don’t like him. “our peasants have stood up for themselves.

And have done in our Mitenka!”

Creative Destruction and The Golden Triangle.

The Power of Creative Destruction

9/26/22

The rule of law is important. Governments must create stability for businesses to thrive.

Apology

Xenophon

9/26/22

This isn’t very different from Plato’s version. I don’t really know what else to say.

The Transportation of Surplus-Value into Profit, and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into Rate Profit

Volume 3

Das Kapital

Karl Marx

10/12/22

He starts to get more modern here. He talks about how longer work hours increase profit margins
because more stuff gets made, more wages have to be paid, but no more factories have to be built.
Increasing profit.

He talks about what happens when there is a decrease in supply. The price goes up, causing more
suppliers to enter the marketplace. Except he doesn’t leave it there. He enumerates the ways in which
more suppliers can enter the marketplace. What if there is another way that he hasn’t thought about?
This is what I think the problem with Marx is. He treats economy and society in general as though it is
done. He doesn’t leave any room for change and growth.

The Rediscovery of Trauma

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel Van Der Kolk

10/15/22

Two main threads emerge right away. The physical realities of flashbacks and other long term reactions
to trauma. And the neural mechanisms that deal with trauma and cause these effects. Neurotic
behavior can make life easier. The key to the entire book may have been the discovery that reliving
trauma shuts down the language area of the brain, cutting the intellect out and making it so that “the
body keeps the score.”

Polity of The Lacedaemonians

Xenophon

10/16/22

This is a bit different that what I was expecting. To be fair it is called “polity” of the Lacedaemonians not
“constitution” of the Lacedaemonians. The most interesting part is the part I wasn’t expecting, about
family structure. They expect women and children to be strong. “Clothes were things, he held, the
furnishings of which might well enough be left to female slaves. And, believing that the highest function
of a free woman was the bearing of children, in the first place he insisted on the training of the body as
incumbent no less on the female than the male.” Now, it is interesting that the same man is said to
have given the laws for how the government should work as well as how families should be structured.

The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit

Volume 3

Kapital

Karl Marx

10/26/2022

Profit is a constant. If anyone starts to make more money than the rest his capital starts to expand
slowly reducing the rate of profit. If times get tough, Profit does not go down, it gets taken down on the
workers.

This is your Brain on Trauma

The Body keeps the Score

Bessel Van Der Kolk

11/9/22
Expanding mostly on the theme that trauma is a bodily phenomenon. Why trauma victims shut the
brains down and how that affects their behavior. No mirror neuron activation to determine how other
people are feeling.

Book I

Memorabilia

Xenophon

11/13/2022

These are memories of Socrates. There are some dialogues interspersed. It is not one long dialogue like
Plato. They are not as well written as Plato, but they are more straightforward. For instance, there is bit
where Alcibiades is arguing with Pericles (Not all dialogues include Socrates) and Pericles says “I see you
are right Alcibiades. Now that you have won the argument could you explain your argument in full.”
(Not a direct quote, but I still put the quotation marks around it.)

Socrates was accused of impiety because he sought to understand the world without consulting the
gods. Socrates claims that true impiety is relying on the gods for things we can find out ourselves. He
only went to the gods for divine questions. “Anything which any one forces another to do without
persuasion, weather by enactment or not, is violence rather than law.”

Are these Socrates’s views or Xenophon’s? They may or may not have originated with Socrates, but
wherever they came from, they are Xenophon’s now.

The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit

Volume 3

Kapital

Karl Marx

11/30/22

So in the last part he talked about how profit is a constant. In this part he talks about how competition
causes profit to be reduced. I sort of know where he is going with this. My understanding is that this
keeps profit and the power of the capitalist getting out of control. I think the key is how long these two
processes take. A free market libertarian would say they are instantaneous, Marx says these take quite
a while (long enough for capital to be concentrated into one person). In the middle the truth lay.

The Art of War

Sun Tzu

12/11/22

Don’t try to change people or convince them to do things your way. Change the situation so that people
want to (or have no option other than to) do things your way.
The commander must be in complete command even having authority to ignore the commands of the
sovereign. However, it seems that spies should be separated from the army and that the sovereign
should manage them himself without any intermediary.

The Minds of Children

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel Van Der Kolk

12/12/22

When kids undergo trauma it can cause intense psychological issues as an adult. While this is a big Duh,
she thinks that adolescent trauma should be classified as its own disorder. This goes along with what
she said earlier that neuroticism can be a rational reaction to trauma. One example is obesity. She
thinks that obesity occurs in abused women who are dealing with sexual assault. If they are obese no
one will want to rape them (although she never says that sentence explicitly, she strongly implies it).
There was a very disturbing drawing by a woman who seemed to not be aware that she was abused as a
child. The picture shows that she obviously was.

Part II

Memorabilia

Xenophon

12/21/2022

This is a bunch of short dialogues. It has been a while since I read Plato, I can’t match up the chapters
with Plato’s dialogue. There is a bit on economics, if you squint you can see its relevance today, but no,
not really.

The Classical Synthesis

The Norton Anthology of Islam

12/28/2022

The first bit is very boring. It is a series of laws and regulations based on the Quran and the life of
Muhammad. I think I might be a little tired of reading these anthologies (one more section). The best
parts are the ones I have already heard of, Ibn Battuta, Arabian Nights and Rumi. Rumi is great. “His
‘Be!’ solves each impossibility.”

The Imprint of Trauma

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel Van Der Kolk

12/28/22

This goes back to how very physical memory is when it relates to trauma. In one instance she asks if
other memories elicit this physical reaction, the answer is no. The sample used was only those who had
PTSD. I wonder if some people without PTSD could have these reactions to more positive memories.
Also, I do have a criticism in that there is such a thing as false memory. I’m not saying that trauma isn’t
real, but it is possible that some memories are false and were induced by therapy. Some, very
important…some.

Book III

Memorabilia

Xenophon

1/9/23

Temples should be placed far away not somewhere that people actually go, but someplace they can see.
I should probably read one chapter at a time, not one book at a time.

Genesis

1/25/23

The first eleven chapters are the stories everyone knows. The Cain and Abel story is underrated. “sin is
crouching at the door. It’s desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it…Cain…killed…Abel…The
voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” After the tower of Babel in chapter 11
we get the story of four generations from Abraham to Jacob’s sons. The story of Abraham is very well
known and rightly so. One story I vividly remember from reading this as a kid is the bit where Abraham
bargains with God to try and spare Sodom and Gomorrah. That dialogue has been with me since I first
read it 20 years ago. Isaac’s story is not well known and rightly so. Jacob has three main stories. His
deception to receive Esau’s blessing. A mediocre story relative to everything else in Genesis. The other
is his service and escape from Laban, which is a confusing story. The final one is where he wrestles with
God at the river which is a really fun story. The final generation is Jacob’s sons. The focus is on Joseph.
In the middle of focusing on Joseph in Egypt a story about Judah and Tamar is inserted. This used to
baffle me. I also wondered why Joseph is the focus of the story if Judah later becomes the lead tribe of
Israel. Then I figured it all out. The story is not about Joseph, even though the focus is on him. It is
about Judah. Judah is the one who changes throughout this story. He is the one that goes from a man
that sells his brother into slavery into the one who offers to enter slavery himself rather than let his
brother be enslaved. This is how Judah became the leader of all Israel.

Paths to Recovery

The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel Van der Kolk

1/30/22

Each chapter goes into detail about treatments for Trauma. The rapid eye movement chapter was wild.
The conclusion was one that Trauma is one of the most devastating things our country has ever faced. It
made me want to work with trauma victims. I’m not going to. It was a very popular book. I think it has
inspired people a lot more qualified than me to go into the field.
The Transformation of Commodity Capital and Money Capital into Commercial Capital and Money-
Dealing Capital (Merchants Capital)

Volume III

Das Kapital

Karl Marx

He doesn’t like merchants. He has a bigger problem with them than industrialists. He does allow for
them to receive payment for moving products from point A to point B. He even allows for merchants to
make a bit of profit, allowing for the fact that having to buy inventory up front counts as a capital
expenditure. But he thinks that merchant profits are just too high. I don’t know if I brought this up at
the time, but he actually thinks that industrialists make too little profit. The way the types of Capital
transform into each other is basically globalization.

Book IV

Memorabilia

Xenophon

2/13/23

The last chapter is not a dialogue, but does talk about the circumstances of his death and functions
much like a modern obituary. It differs from Plato’s and even Xenophon’s apology. He was accused of
claiming to be divine. A better way to read this would have been chapter by chapter rather than book
by book. That way I could think about it one at a time. Socrates is very malleable. That is why he is so
popular, people can read him into either side of any modern debate.

The Classical Synthesis Encounters Modernity

The Norton Anthology of Islam

2/19/23

The one that really sticks out is Ayatollah Khomeini. His writing is really good and it seems reasonable
and convincing.

This is then end of reading through these anthologies. After six years, I have finally accomplished it.
Part of me was expecting to get something at the end. Well, there was sort of something. “One cannot
enter into dialogue of one does not recognize the legitimacy of other people’s convictions. Not to share
them is one thing, but not to recognize, deep in one’s heart, their right to be is another…Reading the
Torah or the Bible for a Muslim, Qur’an for a Jew or a Christian, or the Bhagavad Gita for all three is
certainly useful and necessary in order to try and understand others’ convictions, but these readings
should inspire meditation and questions not a simplistic accusation.”

Job

2/23/23
It’s hard to figure out what to focus on, every line is a banger. I like God’s line the best. I had a new idea
for my rap song. God should be one of those really fast rappers. The ones where it sounds like they are
spinning around like a whirlwind.

Ruth

2/24/23

This is a very pro immigrant book. It shows how people can join Israel an subsequently any Abrahamic
faith. I don’t understand the scene where Boaz has to “buy” Ruth from his other relative. It seems like a
pointless complication.

Winter Dreams

F Scott Fitzgerald

3/1/23

This wasn’t very good. It’s only notable because he wrote it while writing The Great Gatsby. It was sort
of similar in that there was a man and a woman and some vague drama about whether they should be
together. I don’t know if the drama was vague, maybe it just seemed gauge because I wasn’t paying
attention.

Absolution

F Scott Fitzgerald

3/7/23

This one is a little better. It was also written during The Great Gatsby. It is similar to The Great Gatsby
in that it has to do with regret. And a complicated relationship with that regret.

Bernice Bobs Her Hair

F Scott Fitzgerald

3/11/23

First off, I don’t precisely know hat a bob is. It is probably fairly mundane. And I suspect that most
reasonable people back then thought that it wasn’t a big deal then. Anyway, the story is a woman who
is trying to be accepted while still trying to be herself. She is at a dinner party and just tries do start a
conversation that will draw attention to herself. She talks about bobbing her hair. And a lot of men
start paying attention. She has no intention of doing it, she just wants to say something. She is also
trying to be accepted by the older women in her family, who are scandalized by the fact that she might
bob her hair. I feel like with other people taking such an interest in her appearance, she doesn’t car
what she looks like.

The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

F Scott Fitzgerald

3/18/23
This is a fantasy. Not a fantasy the way Gatsby is a fantasy. It’s almost like a time travel story. I just
realized, it’s El Dorado. It never uses the word El Dorado, but someone discovers a city of gold. He
becomes very rich, but since he has to keep it a secret he can’t convert a lot of what he owns into
wealth. He lives like a tribal chieftain, which in my opinion is a worse life than the New York
industrialists. Even though they have less money from an accounting perspective.

How to Live on $36,000 a Year

F Scott Fitzgerald

3/18/23

The more money you make the more you spend. Taken to a ridiculous extreme where some of it
literally disappears.

Echoes of the Jazz Age

F Scott Fitzgerald

3/20/2023

Even I had trouble following the references on this one. Early on he says that it is probably too soon to
write a retrospective on the jazz age. And I think he was right.

Book III-IX

Elements

Euclid

3/21/23

He starts to go into arithmetic. Which is odd, because he never brings up numbers he stays with the line
as a unit, but he doesn’t take advantage of that. When he begins to multiply, he imagines lines being
duplicated in sequence, he doesn’t use a rectangle. When he talks about square numbers, I think he
doesn’t even think of a geometric square. It is hard, because the word square is in the English
translation and it is so ingrained in the English language that a square number is like a geometric square.
But this seems foreign to Euclid. He also talks about cube numbers.

The Division of Profit and Interest and Profit on Enterprise

Volume III

Das Kaspital

Karl Marx

4/11/23

This functions very well as a finance textbook. I don’t think that Marx himself would like me saying this.
When I took Finance in college, I think this book helped me to do well in that class. Especially, the part
where he talks about the relationship between interest and profit.
Romans

Paul

4/23/23

This is the first epistle in the Bible. It is probably the most straightforward explanation of Christian
theology in it. Galatians talks more about why Christianity works on a philosophical level and
Corinthians talks about how to live as a Christian. Romans is in between. It also has good lines, “The
wages of sin is death,” “Hos the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel
for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?” The best parts are in the first half, and it sort of
peters off after that.

Hosea

4/28/23

This is a bit different from Amos. It focuses more on Israels apostasy and unfaithfulness while Amos
focuses on Justice. That is the clincher that makes Amos the better book. However, this one is more fun
to read. Chapter 8 is the best. “they sow the wind,

And they shall reap the whirlwind.”

It also has a bit that I thought Paul came up with. It is one of the most famous parts of Corinthains, “O
Death, where are your plagues?

O Sheol, where is your sting.”

His mairrage to Gomer is brought up in the beginning, but the metaphor quickly moves to the
relationship between God and Israel. The metaphor continues, though. God gets all mad then talks
about how he can’t stay mad at Israel the same way (presumably) Hosea can’t stay mad at his whore
wife. “I will not execute my burning anger;

I will not again destroy Ephraim;

For I am God and not a man,

The Holy One in your midst,

And I will not come in wrath.”