"Exploring Erik Rostad's Journey Through The Great Books (2023)"

In this episode, join us as we sit down with Erik Rostad, the mastermind behind Booksoftitans, to delve into his inspiring journey into the realm of the Great Books in 2023. Erik's voyage begins with the very first book known to humankind, Enheduana, and takes us through the epic adventures of Gilgamesh, the wisdom of ancient Egypt's writings, and so much more. Tune in to explore the literary treasures Erik has uncovered and the profound insights he's gained along the way.

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Transcript

00:00
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00:56
We're offering exclusive perks like early access to episodes, behind the scenes content, and the chance to influence the direction of the show. Head over to patreon.com forward slash Scott Townsend show today. Welcome to the Scott Townsend show brought to you by Deetso Man Productions. Welcome back to the Scott Townsend show. And today I have with me our annual guest is becoming a tradition here at Deetso Man Productions.

01:25
Eric Rostad. Eric, what's going on, man? Too much. Good to see you again, Scott. See you too, Eric. Eric is a prolific reader, and he has he's the creator and host of the Books of Titans podcast, as well as the Books of Titans Instagram page. I'm sure you're elsewhere, too. Yeah. But mainly mainly on Instagram and then the website. Books of Titans dot com.

01:53
where I keep track of everything there. Right, and so Eric chronicles his journey through his book reading adventure. And so yeah, I highly encourage you to check out his website, booksatitans.com, and his Instagram feed. It's always interesting to see what he's reading and his thoughts on those books, which brings us to today. Now, last year I had you on, I think the year before we had you on, talking about the...

02:21
2001, 2002. Now we're going to talk about your 2003. The book that you've read this year. First, what'd you have for breakfast this morning? Same thing as last year? Um, let's see. This morning I just had, uh, gosh, what did I have? I don't even remember. I had a lot of coffee. I know that for sure. So let's talk about 2003. You, last year you were talking about some kind of a reading plan. Actually that

02:49
Episode is in our, in my top five. So people really get a big kick out of that one. You were talking about a 10 year plan, which I think you're the only person I've heard of that's had that has a 10 year book reading plan. Take it away. How did it go this year? Good. I would say this is my best year of reading I've ever had just in, in terms of the, the books that I've read and, and, uh, just kind of being amazed at them.

03:17
So I did proceed with that 10 year plan and this was year one of that. And so it was the plan to read through 200 of the great books. And so I have this plan going forward of dividing up the year, just so it's not 12 months of straight great books. And so I start each year and I take January and February and just read straight through some version of the Bible. And so that's how I started this year.

03:47
that was January and February. I actually finished it right on February 28th. And then I divide the year, I kind of call it like a school year. So I start spring semester then on March 1. And I do spring semester through the end of June. So I call that spring semester. And then I have summer break and that is the month of July. And so whereas in spring semester, I'm solely focused on the great books. Once I hit July in the spring,

04:16
summer break, I'm reading books on my to be read pile. So these are more modern books. These are books that just kind of come up and or else I see people talking about that. I'm like, man, I really want to read that one. So that just gives me a break from the great books. It gives me a break to read some stuff that I really want to read. And then I'm back into fall semester at the beginning of August. And that goes from August through the end of November.

04:41
And then December, the month we're in right now, I'm back to a break. So I call that winter break. And so I've got seven books I want to get through here in December. And so I'm reading through those now. So yeah, just starting with the great books in March, I made a list of like two, it's a little over 200 of the great books. And I'm just starting from the oldest and then going to the newest book. And then I'm trying to pair one other book with each book.

05:10
and I'm calling that kind of a guidebook of sorts. So just some other book that helps me to understand the great book that I'm reading, just because I'm doing this on my own. I'm not part of a class or a college doing this. I'm just doing this on my own. So I need a lot of help in understanding some of these works. So how did you determine what's great? I consulted quite a few lists and then I sent that.

05:38
my final list to a number of people to get their comments. And so one of the things you'll notice in a lot of the lists out there is it's the great works of the Western canon. And I wanted to expand outside of just the Western canon and also hit the Eastern canon as well, or just other parts of the world. And so I consulted a number of different lists and we can link in the show notes, I've got

06:09
consulted in all the different lists. And then, yeah, and I would just ping people on Twitter and just say, you know, what am I missing here? And so yeah, it's kind of a constantly changing list, but I do have roughly like 220 books on there right now. I want to try to stick to as close to the number 200 as possible, just so this doesn't go, you know, 20, 30, 40 years.

06:39
10 years is long enough, man. But yeah, you'll be reading way past 10 years, but I get it. Let's talk about the books from this last year. I'm on book 49 right now. So previously for the project, I had a goal of reading 52 books per year. And I've shelved that. That's not the goal anymore. The goal is to get through these great books. So, and some of these great books are huge. So I'm not, but just the way it was this year, I've...

07:07
I've gotten close to 52. I'll probably have 52 by the end of the year. So, um, so yeah, it's, uh, with, with the great books starting in March, uh, one, one thing that really stuck out is I started with Gilgamesh and Gilgamesh is, is usually first on a lot of the great books lists, the epic of Gilgamesh. Um, and this is a, this is a story that comes out of Mesopotamia and

07:36
it, I mean, we, we only rediscovered it in the last hundred years. And, but it's just, it's a fascinating story. Uh, there's a flood story in Gilgamesh. So there's like a deluge, like a Noah's Ark story, but this was written a hundred years before the Hebrew Bible. And so, uh, I had always heard that, that there are other flood stories out there, but I had never read any of them. And then just in some of the other reading this year, I came across quite a few.

08:06
flood story. So that was really interesting to me. But yeah, just starting off with Gilgamesh, I just, I fell in love with the story. I probably ended up reading it four or five times this year, just, I mean, it's relative, you can read it in like a couple hours, but I read different translations of it. And then I became part of a reading group where we were going through it. And so I just ended up reading it quite a few times.

08:30
So Gilgamesh is the first on most lists. Some of the other lists will start with Homer, but Gilgamesh was well before Homer. But then in April, so I started the project in March, in April of this year, a book came out called In Hedawanna. And it was translated by Sophus Hell, who did a translation of Gilgamesh. So I was reading this Gilgamesh translation by Sophus Hell, and then I see that he's got this other book coming out, and that was just April of this year. In Hedawanna is an author,

09:00
from the city of Ur in Mesopotamia from 2300 BC. So she Gilgamesh they say is around 2100 BC and Hedewon is 2300 BC. And this is the first time all of her works have been translated into one book. And so I got that book in April and read it. And that became the first book on my great books list now in terms of the oldest book that we can.

09:29
in the oldest that we can attribute to an individual author. So that was just kind of very cool timing. Like the fact that I started reading the great books in March, and then in April, there comes a work by a woman from 2300 BC, which is 1500 years before Homer. And it's the set of poems that she wrote. And so that was really cool. That just kind of blew my mind, right at the start of the great books reading.

09:57
So they used to think that Gilgamesh was the first book. Is that right? Yeah, and I mean, if you just ask the average person on the street, they'll probably say Homer. And he, you know, this, so most people think of Homer as the first, well, you can't attribute Gilgamesh to an author, so Gilgamesh is the main character in the story, and he was a historical figure, but this is kind of a.

10:25
book about Gilgamesh. So we don't know who the author of Gilgamesh is. So when you look at these great books lists, most times the first author where you can attribute a work to an author is Homer. But Homer is 700 BC. Now you've got this in Hedawana, 2300 BC. So roughly 1500 years before Homer, you have a female author that is potentially the first author that we know of that we can attribute an actual work.

10:54
to what she put out. So how did she write the book? Is it, you know, I'm thinking pen and paper, of course. Was it an actual book or was it, how was it published or produced? Yeah, so this would have been in the time where they wrote in cuneiform. And so these would have been on clay tablets and Gilgamesh as well. That's how we have Gilgamesh is from these clay tablets.

11:20
And that's why we're rediscovering them. They were lost for roughly 2000 years and we're rediscovering them in Iraq, in different areas around what used to be called Mesopotamia. But what would happen is with Enheduanna and with Gilgamesh is students would practice writing cuneiform on these clay tablets.

11:46
with these works. So it would be like us learning Latin nowadays. So they would learn a language which was Sumerian, they would learn a language that was no longer spoken, but it was kind of like, this is how you get educated. And so when they're doing these excavations, they'll come across buildings. There wouldn't have been like schools set aside, but it would have just been like, you know, a house. And that's where kids met for classes.

12:15
And so in some of these places that they've discovered, maybe the roof fell down and just kind of kept everything that was under that roof secure for 2000 plus years. So when they take the roof off of this area, there'll be just rows of tablets that would have been the students' tablets where they were practicing their cuneiform writing.

12:43
And so that's how we have it. And then it's a community, so first hell, he, he, he knows cuneiform and then he translates it into, into English to where we read it today. So yeah, it would have all been on these clay tablets. And the great thing about clay tablets is that they last in, and we almost have better records from older times than we do when they started writing on papyrus, which is paper like, and then, but it can, it only might last like a hundred years.

13:12
in really good conditions. So clay tablets can last thousands of years, paper can last a hundred. So we actually, in some of these areas, have better records from the ancient past than we do in, you know, maybe 2000 years ago or something like that. Of the books that you read this year, which ones, what, which ones stand out? What's your favorite? I guess I can...

13:41
Yeah, I'd say there's four of them. The first is that Epic of Gilgamesh. I just thought it was incredible. And then three that I read in my fall semester, so between August and November, were Herodotus, the histories of Herodotus. And that was just fascinating. This guy goes around part of the known world and just encounters all these different people groups and things like that.

14:12
and he's writing about him. He's just this very, he's this guy that's just super interested in everything. So he's talking to everybody he can, people who have traveled to areas that he hasn't traveled to, and he's just getting like all these stories from all these places. And so that was fantastic. And then I read the Iliad and the Odyssey, and I'm part of a tutorial where we're...

14:39
reading through these together. So there's like three students and then a professor and we're reading through these like four, they don't call them chapters, they call them books. And there's 24 books in each of the Iliad and the Odyssey. So we're just doing like four books per session and we'll talk two hours a week about those four books. And so yeah, the Iliad and the Odyssey just blew me away. I had never read the Odyssey or the Iliad before. I had read the Odyssey, but it was 20 plus years ago and didn't recall too much of it.

15:08
Um, so those, and then especially just talking about those in these tutorials and the, in these groups. It just brought so much to life and things I would have never caught. Um, you know, discussing those kinds of things. And, and so those were, were my four favorites, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Herodotus' histories, and then the Epic of, of Gilgamesh. So the Iliad and the Odyssey are, are, are more like poetry, is it? Or is it?

15:36
They call it epic poetry. I mean, most of the translations that we have in English are just going to be more prose to where it just reads more like a story. And so some of the translators will try to put it into a more poetic form. One interesting thing, I read the Odyssey twice by different translators. And the second translation I read was by Robert Fitzgerald. And he would

16:05
He would translate everything the god Hermes said in poetic form, like where it would rhyme. But none of the other gods or none of the other people or none of the other writing in his translation would rhyme. And so it's like he picked out this one god and then would have everything of that god rhyme. And so yeah, it's... I mean, if you pick up just a general translation,

16:34
of it, it's going to be more like a novel that we have today. And it kind of like in that style as opposed to like poetry in the sense of like it all rhyming and all that kind of thing. But yeah, it was composed in a certain type of rhyme. And a lot of that, I think had to do just that it would have been performed orally. And so there would have had to be these things just to help you remember the story and in that sort of thing.

17:05
Classic or none. Uh, well, uh, is there, is there one or a group that stands out to you that were difficult or you would forewarn someone who's about to read them that, uh, be careful cause this is a little dicey. Um, there's one I just had trouble with and that was the, the Rig Veda. Um, so that's one of the earliest works we have from, from India.

17:35
And like the Epic of Gilgamesh, I mean, it almost has the feel like it could have been written recently. Like it's just, it's easy to read, the people, yeah, it's just, it feels modern in a way. It's very strange for having been written 4,000 years ago. Like it just, it feels modern. The Rig Veda was just

18:04
it in, in maybe it's a cultural thing. I don't know, but like it, I just had a hard time understanding it and figuring out what was going on. Like who are the main gods? Like what, what's the purpose of this thing? And so that's where the guidebook really came in and helped for the Rig Veda. Uh, in the guidebook I picked out for that was, was one called the Hindus by Wendy Doniger. So Wendy Doniger was the translator of the version of the Rig Veda that I was reading. And so I saw that she had a book kind of introduction to

18:34
the Hindus, but then also, um, uh, a lot, she talks a lot about the different main books, uh, from India and the rig VEDA being a big part of the first part of that book. So, uh, I, I read the, the part that covered kind of the rig VEDA and then I went back to the rig VEDA and that, that really helped. Um, so yeah, I mean, there were a few circumstances like that where I would come across a text and just have trouble with it. And so one of my.

19:03
One of my rules for this great book project is I read the great work first, and then I read the guidebook because I don't want the guidebook to influence my reading of the great book. I just kind of want to, you know, come to it fresh, and then kind of learn like some of the stuff behind it. But if I come to a great book and I'm like, I just have no idea what's going on here. I will, I will shift those to where I read the guidebook first, just to kind of get my bearings. And so that was a good lesson,

19:34
close to the beginning of when I started of just, if I'm having trouble, just stop, go to the guidebook or ask somebody like what's going on here or find a video or something, and then go back to that great work. How many, how long does it take you to read, get through one of these great books? I guess it depends on how many pages it is, but with reading and then reading guidebooks or companion literature, what's that?

20:03
time-wise look like? Yeah, it's different for all of them. I mean, I just finished November. I basically dedicated November to the Odyssey. And so I read the Odyssey twice, and then I read a companion guide along with the Odyssey, the second time I read through the Odyssey. So the Odyssey then would take about two weeks to read through.

20:33
just one reading of it. So I read through the first one, the first half of the month, the second one with the companion, the second half of the month. The Iliad took about a month as well, actually a little over a month. But then some of the others, like I read Hesiod and that might have taken a few days. I read the poetry of Sappho. And again, that was pretty short. So that might've been, I read two translations of that, that was probably within a week type thing. So yeah, some of them,

21:02
And then Herodotus' histories, that would have been a month, probably, you know, close to a month. So yeah, some of them take a whole month and then others just a few days. If we switch from classical, your great books to just some of the books this year that you read that are just, I don't know, what do you want to call them? Contemporary or whatever. Any of those, give us an example of some of the books, some of those books that you read that you really enjoyed.

21:32
Yeah, I read in my July summer break, I read a couple by one of your favorite authors, Brad Thor. Yeah. And so just at the bookstore that I'm a business manager at bookstore, and we have Brad come in and sign copies of his books for sale and that sort of thing. But when he comes in, it's really fun to get to talk to him.

21:57
And so I always want to read the book that he's coming out with before he comes in, just so I can ask him questions and that kind of thing. So I read Dead Fall, which came out this year as part of that July reading. And then I read Black Ice as well, just because the story of that is something I'm interested in with the Arctic Sea and all that. So those were, I enjoy reading Brad's books. And then I read one called In Praise of Good Bookstores.

22:26
And that was really good just with my work with a bookstore. It's kind of fun to see here from another bookseller and what they've done, what they haven't done, what's worked, what hasn't worked, that kind of thing. So those are a few. I read Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia because that actually ties in with Inhadawana because Agatha Christie knew some of the archeologists.

22:56
and was actually friends with some of the archeologists who found references to the actual Enhadawana. And so the book Murder in Mesopotamia was actually based off of her time with those people who found some of the Enhadawana stuff, which was just kind of a fun connection point to the great books as well.

23:21
I haven't read any Agatha Christie. I need to, I keep threatening to read some Agatha Christie, but I just haven't haven't done it yet. I need to though. Well, they're, they're fun and they are, um, when I tell people is like, especially, I think they would be wonderful for high schoolers because you, you have to pay attention. So it's, it's like, it's a really good book for learning how to read because you can't.

23:49
You can't slow chop. You can't like take four pages and just like, Oh, I'm just going to kind of breeze through this, like you have to pay attention to every detail because. There's details throughout that are giving you hints and all that of who did the murder. And I mean, some books you can read and you can, I mean, you could just kind of zone out for like a chapter and it not matter, but like Agatha Christie is good practice in reading. I mean, they're, they're entertaining store. I like reading them, but like.

24:18
When I'm reading them, I'm just thinking, man, this is really good. Like, I think these are going to help me read other books just because you're forced to pay very close attention to them. What else? What other books this year stand out? The contemporaries. Of the contemporary. Well, I just started Elon Musk's biography this morning by Walter Isaacson. Yeah. I love Walter Isaacson. Yeah. I've just, I think I've read five or six by.

24:47
Isaacson now and I just, I love it. So I just started the Elon Musk one this morning and I mean the first chapter was about Elon Musk and it's just like seven pages, the first chapter, but it's like of his growing up in South Africa and just getting the crap beat out of them constantly. His dad just ripping into them all the time. And it's like, holy cow. I mean, this guy, this Elon would go to school and just get punched in the face continuously. They would hold them down and just, just beat them. And like you just, you

25:17
for when you write, I mean, when you write a biography, you have so many different places you could start. You could just, you could start with, Hey, Elon was born on this day, this year. But I just found it very interesting that he frames the whole thing with that. Like this is this man's childhood and it was insane. Like this is going, this kind of a childhood would impact you. And I'm sure we're gonna see the threads pull.

25:46
all through his life, but like, it was, I don't know anything about Elon Musk. So like, it was very interesting to, to start with that, the prologue this morning. Of the contemporary books that you've read this year, which would you pass on or suggest to somebody, eh, don't worry about it. I mean, I just read one called the, the, the book of the Duncal and

26:14
I just finished that a couple of days ago and I've heard, I had heard so many good things about it that I think I, my expectations were like super high and it was good. I enjoyed it, but like I hit a point during it where I was like, am I going to make it through this one? And it's, it's not a long book. Like it's, it's a 200 something pages. It's not, you know, it's not like crazy. And um, and I finished it and I enjoyed it, but like I'd say that was the, the only one where I've, where I questioned like.

26:44
Do I really want to finish this one or not? But even that was, was still a, uh, an excellent book. Well, Eric, I really appreciate you stopping by once again. Uh, it's been, I can't believe it's been a year. Uh, it seems like it was just yesterday. I remember in July thinking, well, I think you and I talked in July. I was like, Hey, I need to have you on the show. Let's, uh, have you on at the end of the year. And before I know it, it's the end of the year. Here we are. You know, so,

27:12
Thanks for stopping by once again. If you want to get in touch with Eric, you can find him on Instagram. You can find him at his website, books of Titans.com and, uh, follow along with him as he reads through the greats, some of the good contemporary books and yeah. So thanks Eric. I appreciate it. Thanks Scott. Good to see you again. So for Eric Rostad, this is Scott Townsend. Thanks for listening to the Scott Townsend show. Have a great day.

27:42
Everything's gonna be all right. And we'll talk to you later.

28:07
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28:11
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28:27
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