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:
