Six Years Ago

Another year already? Six years ago this month, I was laid up for several weeks with not much to do, and my wife told me to start a blog. I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know if I would like it. I certainly didn’t know if I would stick with it. But, at her suggestion (and after quickly discovering how easy it was to do), I started to write on my self-assigned ten-year reading plan in classic literature, and I’ve kept it up all the way until year 10. (I started the blog in year 4.)

It’s been an event-filled six years. My reading plan and blog have gone to Italy, Canada, and Ireland with me. I’ve written during illness and after surgery. I’ve written in times of stress and in times of joy. I’ve written about books I loved, and I’ve written about books I hated. This site has had over 50,000 hits (although I don’t know how many of those came from Russian spambots), and at least two friends have received inspiration to write up their own multi-year reading plans.

Here are just a few of my favorite posts from the last twelve months:

The Conclusion of Hume’s Book
Tolkien’s Historical Perspective
A Reasonable Man
William James Knows Me So Well
The Seventeen Stages of Grief
Monuments of Literature, Literature of Monuments
Oh, What Could Have Been!
Ariosto Speaks and I Hear Violins: It’s Ma - a - gi - ic!
Austen and Role-Playing
The Fortituous End of Kant
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means to Me

I probably won’t add to the blog much or at all once 2016 goes into the books. I have a new decade-long reading plan drawn up that I’ll be starting on in January. (I’ll actually probably cheat and begin a few days early, during the Christmas break in December.) But it includes a lot of literature that’s less than “great”: Alexandre Dumas, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and so on. It contains little in the way of difficult reading and absolutely no German philosophy. So I don’t know how well it would fit with what comes before. I certainly don’t feel any special need to share with the anonymous world my thoughts while reliving my adolescence. But I’ll keep it up until the last week of December. Until then, keep checking back, and happy reading!