Reading Books

I like reading and it is a shame I do not read as much as I used to. I did not start college right after high school, but to make up for it, I did delve into all sorts of books. Growing up, you often hear about the classics, like The Divine Comedy by Dante, The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer, works by Sophocles, The Histories by Herodotus, Shakespeare’s plays, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, and so on and so forth. Though some classical works are mildly touched during high school, I truly believe high school students fail to appreciate the greatness of such works. Such classical literature should be saved for college, and even then, it is not for everyone. You have to like it.

I started buying and reading the Greco-Roman classics first. I was not required to. I just did it for pleasure and to “educate” myself. I started with the poet, Homer, and it was a hell of a start. The Iliad is arguably the best book written by man. Even now, it is still my favorite book. The narration of the Trojan War, with all its blood and glory appealed to me and I understood why Hector and Achilles are such famous characters. Having thus read this book, I was inclined to read the exploits of Odysseus after the Trojan War, his quest to reach his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, after 20 years of absence, in Homer’s The Odyssey.

Reading both works, I personally preferred the Trojans over the Greeks, and was disappointed that they lost the war. You see, up to that point, wars were fought with honor but the Greeks cheated with the ruse of the Trojan Horse. Thus, I picked up Virgil’s The Aeneid, which narrated what happened to a large group of Trojans led by the hero, Aeneas (second only to Hector from the Trojan ranks). Aeneas had his own “odyssey” and eventually he and his men landed on Italy and seeded what would become Rome and the Roman Empire. Romulus and Remus were descendants from the Trojans who landed there. Virgil is such a terrific writer (he wrote the Aeneid for Augustus Caesar) that, personally, I think he is on the same league as Homer. We will never know if such works were real history or mere fantasy, but evidence points to true history with some fictional exaggeration.

After Virgil, I picked up something a bit more “modern”, Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Why? Well, the protagonist, Dante, is guided by Virgil through all the levels of Inferno (hell), purgatorio (purgatory), and guided by Dante’s ideal lady, Beatrice, in  paradiso (paradise). It was and is a very interesting book. Most people’s perception of heaven and hell are based on this book, NOT the Bible. Such things as devils with tridents and angels with wings are from Dante and also from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the classic and mesmerizing work I picked up soon after. Keep in mind that all these works I have talked about are poems, though not in the traditional modern sense. 

From Dante, I went to the Bible, and read it all. The challenging literature I had read helped in understanding the Bible more. In the process, I discovered that reading such works had helped my writing.The Holy Bible is a great work, as you know. The problem is that everyone interprets it differently, and believes every darn letter. God did not write the Bible, men did, and you can argue that it was men inspired by God and the Holy Spirit but I will tell you that this is just a conjecture, for there is no proof, that is why it is called “faith”. I tried to stay on task and finish most of the Greco-Roman literature, so I read Ovid, Sophocles, Pericles, Euripedes, Cicero, and Plutarch. I then discovered philosophy reading Plato’s The Republic, and then works by Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, Sun Tzu, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas More, Nietzsche, and several others. 

I was mostly done with the classics after Beowulf, Gilgamesh, A Thousand and One Nights, etc.. Reading had become an addiction, and I read different books in different genres throughout the day. My hard drive was filling up and slowing down. From poetry to military history to philosophy and science, I immersed myself into all I could, I did not want to feel entirely without knowledge. The last books to touch were the recent writers like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Burgess, Orwell, Steinbeck, and the other American and English greats. Currently, I focus more on science books. I love the way Ralph Leighton (Richard P. Feynman’s friend and collaborator) wrote, Surely, You are Joking, Mr. Feynman! ; this book should be read by all science aficionados, so pick up your copy today. The co-discoverer of DNA, James Watson, writes very well. Read his novel, DNA: The Secret of Life, and you will ace Bio 1. Delve into Glenn T. Seaborg’s Adventures in the Atomic Age, and you will have an in depth view of the atomic age during the Manhattan Project and beyond. One thing I find fascinating in Seaborg’s novel is that nuclear energy was looked down upon in his day, but if you do some research, it is the cleanest and most abundant form of energy to be tapped and I know we will someday, all over America. He knew this. Finally, The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking is a great overview of physics, no math, just concepts.

Most of what I have learned, I did not learn in college or high school, rather it was due to reading books. By  the time I started college, I had much to talk and write about, I was more spread out. University studies are mostly a review of something I stumbled upon before, with some added detail. It is more important to read, learn, and retain than to just make an A on a test and forget. Has reading made me happy? No. The more I read, the more I know that I do not know, and it is depressing as hell. Knowledge is not happiness, and ignorance is bliss.

I still recommend everyone to read, though…