My total pages read for March was 893.
I finished Plato’s Five Dialogues comprising Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno and Phaedo.
I also read Luc Ferry’s A Brief History of Thought. I first read it in 2019 and noted then that I only took in or understood around 30% of the book. This time I would estimate I understood around 70% of the work - but that was 90% of the first four chapters, dwindling to around 50% (or less!) for the final two chapters on Nietzsche and then post deconstruction.
In my most recent pages read post (February) I mentioned that I had completed reading Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy. I also mentioned that I had attempted to read one of Russell’s books around 40 years ago but had given up part way through the Introduction. I now suspect that that book obtained in the the 1980s was An Outline of Philosophy which was published in the USA simply as Philosophy.
Introductory books
Having now successfully completed reading one of Bertrand Russell’s books (!) I thought it time to consider some other philosophy works. I came across a gentleman on YouTube by the name of Jared Henderson who has a video called 7 Philosophy Books for Beginners. His seven recommendations are:
My total pages read for February was 834.
I finished Daryl Thompson’s Break Through and David Saxton’s God’s Battle Plan for the Mind. I re-read The Kremlin Conspiracy which I first read around six or seven years ago. I resumed reading Flannery O’Connor’s Complete Stories.
I also read Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy. I had attempted to read one of Russell’s books around 40 years ago. I can recall having almost no idea what he was talking about in the introduction so I gave up. This time around was a little different. I could see what Russell was saying, but whilst I only understood perhaps half of it, I persevered. I have now been exposed to some of the terminology and thrust of philosophy and have a much better idea of what I don’t know (which is more than plenty).
Last week I made the decision to switch Linux distributions for my primary and secondary notebooks.
My primary notebook had been running Devuan since October 2023, and my secondary notebook had been running Debian stable since July 2024.
What prompted my decision was something I’d read the week before that Debian had decided to cease posting on X because X doesn’t reflect Debian’s ‘shared values’.
Pardon me, but I would think that a community or project (as they describe themselves) responsible for developing, maintaining and promoting an operating system would want to promulgate their ideas and communiqués on as broad a range of platforms as possible and to garner input from an equally broad base of developers and users.
As we came into the new year I gave some thought to changing the CMS behind this site from Hugo (its current static website generator) to something else. I’ve been on Hugo continuously now for 4 1/2 years. The alternatives I considered were WordPress, Joomla and Grav.
I migrated the site (sans photos) to each of those three platforms and tried my hand at changing themes and managing general site behaviour.
My total pages read for January was 299. It included continuing my Christmas presents: The World of Croquet by John McCullogh and Stephen Mulliner; and David Saxton’s God’s Battle Plan for the Mind.
I also started another book in early January, Break Through which led me to pause my reading of the first two mentioned above. Once I finish reading Break Through (probably in early Feb), I’ll resume the others.
My total for December was pretty low, but better than November! December was 320 pages.
Firstly, I finished volume 1 of Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939.
I started a couple of other books but have put them aside for an undetermined period of time. The first is Sophie Hannah’s Closed Casket and the second is Tim Muldoon’s Ignatian Workout that I mentioned here.
I also started reading two books that were Christmas presents: The World of Croquet by John McCullogh and Stephen Mulliner; and David Saxton’s God’s Battle Plan for the Mind.
I’m currently reading Tim Muldoon’s Ignatian Workout which seems to be a modern interpretation or application of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. The centrepiece seems to be a practice called ’examen'
I don’t have a good grasp in the concepts, purposes or practice of examen; but it strikes me that there are similarities between it (focussing on prayer) and lectio divina (focussing on Bible reading).
The connection and interrelationship is something that I’d like to consider (albeit briefly) in the near future.
It’s five years today since my Mum died. In the same way as with Dad, sometimes it seems like only a few years. On other occasions it feels like decades.
Our house has a few things that were Mum’s - some cutlery, crockery or glassware; paintings that Mum and Dad bought over the years. But some of these paintings can be seen in our children’s places. Having a few of these types of items around is OK, but you (well, I) don’t want to be burdened by it.
My total for November was a paltry 274.
I finished Spiritual Warfare for the End Times and have been reading ten-or-so pages each day from volume 1 of Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939.