The Scott Townsend Show
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The Scott Townsend Show
#217 Exploring Timeless Epics and Reading Strategies with Erik Rostad
Erik Rostad joins us once again for his third annual appearance on the Scott Townsend Show, bringing fresh insights from his impressive reading project. Since 2017, Erik has been on a mission to read 52 books a year, but his journey has grown to encompass nearly 200 authors, exploring timeless works that have shaped literature and thought. He shares his passion for epic texts like those by Homer, Egyptian writings, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and how these classics are interwoven with Greek tragedies and philosophical musings. Get ready to be inspired by Eric's plans to explore the works of Plato and Aristotle to unearth the deep cultural connections and timeless impact of these foundational texts.
We take a fascinating look at how multiple readings of books or movies can uncover new layers of meaning and enjoyment. Eris shares the story of someone who delved into "Theo of Golden" by Alan Levi five times, each for a different purpose, and how watching "Up" 31 times revealed fresh details and emotions. Our discussion touches on the communal reading practices of the past, where sharing books aloud enriched the experience, and how such practices can enhance our connection to literature today. Erik also shares his personal strategies for retaining information, like underlining and making notes, which help him revisit and remember key insights from his reading adventures.
Our conversation rounds off with a focus on the cultural significance of foundational texts like the Iliad, encouraging readers to engage with these works through reading groups and podcasts. Erik advocates for reading original works over derivative ones, emphasizing the unique insights they provide. He recounts his own experience with Seth Godin's book on strategy, noting its non-linear structure and the standout insights that make it worthwhile. As we look forward to 2025, we reflect on the value of reading great literature and the exciting plans for future reading initiatives and projects, offering a heartfelt farewell and holiday wishes to our listeners.
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so, yeah, I've been following along, listening to your uh podcast and enjoying the uh the greek the trip through greece nice and uh, yeah, so look forward to talking about it here, letting them, letting listeners, share your, your journey uh, let's see anything else phones turned down.
Speaker 1:You got water, plenty of drink there. Like I said, if you need to stop, start over, um, think about what you're going to say, that's fine. I can always edit it out. The. The audio will be edited, uh, the video version. I'm going to try to just leave it unedited, um, and uh post it on youtube, um, and then afterwards I'll send you the media kit with all the links and pictures and whatnot thumbnails. You can do whatever you want with those. Okay, all right, so you're ready yeah, let's do it hey this is scott Scott Townsend.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the Scott Townsend Show. And today I have with me recurring guest for the third time in as many years, Eric Rostad. Eric, how's it going?
Speaker 2:It's great. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Great Good. Yeah, it's a tradition here at the Scott Townsend Show to have Eric come in on Decembers and he's got an interesting project. If you've listened before, you know he's got a reading project that he does year to year and in December we get together and talk about what he's read, what he's learned, what he's done, what's good, what's bad, you know, just kind of giving us a year-end review of his reading project. So, yeah, I'm going to turn it back over to you, but before I do that, what I always ask everybody is what did you have for breakfast this morning?
Speaker 2:I had a pretty big breakfast, so I always start with coffee, and then I had three eggs, and then I had a sandwich with um, peanut butter and honey that's my favorite A little bananas in there as well, and then, uh, my daughter's favorite thing right now is cinnamon rolls, so my wife made those, and so I usually don't have that much, but I had a cinnamon roll to top it all off. So, and an orange, cause my, uh, my colleague at the bookstore just got us all oranges, and so I had an orange as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So, uh, fill us in this 2024. Uh, you're, you know, from year to year you do different reading projects and it seems like this one spilled over from the year before. Maybe, uh, I'll kind of let let you go in to give us what was your plan for 2024 and how did it go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, yeah, and in thinking back that this is our third time talking, the first time we talked would have been right at the point where I was making a shift in my reading project. So I started it in 2017 as a way to read more books, but also to put in some experiments to better remember what I was reading. So I didn't just want to read a bunch of books and then forget them all. So the first six years of the project so 2017 through 2022, I would just make different lists of 52 books and then attempt to get through all those in a year. And between 2022 and 2023, I decided to start reading the great books. And so, for anyone who's not aware of the great books, there's a bunch of different lists out there that are just the books that have stood the test of time and the books that have kind of informed all the other books, and so there's different let's say how do you define?
Speaker 1:how do you define a great book? I think you know like I think Stuart Little's a good, great book, but it doesn't necessarily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let me get into that in just a minute. So I went, I looked at all these different lists and then I made a list of like the two, roughly 200 of the ones that I wanted to read, and instead of it being 200 great books, it's more 200 great authors, just because I don't want to just read one book by Shakespeare, I want to read a bunch of his plays. I don't want to just read one thing from Plato, I want to read a bunch of them. And so it'll end up being more kind of like 200 authors. And, um, yeah, at first I didn't really know. Uh, back to your question. I didn't really know what a great book meant, other than that it just was really good and and had had had an impact. But what?
Speaker 2:What I've, what I've started to see, is that the great books talk to each other. And so, for instance, I started reading Homer last year, and I started with the Iliad, and then I read the Odyssey, and and then in this year 2024, I got into the Greek tragedies. And what happens at a lot of these Greek tragedies is that they are, they're commenting on or referencing things that happen in Homer. So there's there's this direct connection where they're, they're kind of riffing on what Homer has introduced. And then this next year, 2025, is when I'll start getting into the philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, and for what I understand of them is that they're also taking ideas from Homer and they're talking about them more in a philosophical manner and in the tragedies you're kind of dealing with the ideas that have been brought up in Homer in a tragic situation, but one where it's kind of like you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, and so it just puts you in this impossible situation. But one where it's kind of like you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, and so it just puts you in this impossible situation. But looking at whether issues of morality, questions, deep questions like what should you do in a given circumstance, but with these tragedies it's just like these impossible circumstances. So you really get kind of a working out of what.
Speaker 2:What does this look like? What does it mean? What does it mean to say this or to have this ideal? But then what does that look like in real life? So yeah, the great books. So then you know, going further on, st Augustine writes Confessions, but writes it in the structure of the Odyssey. Nietzsche writes a book about tragedies. He's referring to the Greek tragedies, and so that's kind of. This connection point with the great books is that they're speaking to those ideas. So I'll see, as I go along, if there's kind of these individual books along the way that just stand alone without referencing. But I have a feeling that a lot of the books on these lists are going to be ones that are referencing one another.
Speaker 1:So you went back. How far back did you do you go? Did you go regarding the great books? Uh, I know you do the Bible once a year at the beginning of the year. Uh, how far back do you did you go with these?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I, when I made my initial list, it I think it was around 1800 BC, which would be the Epic of Gilgamesh I think it's around that timeframe.
Speaker 2:And then I started reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and one of the translations I used was by a guy named Sophus Hell, and as I was reading Gilgamesh he came out with a translation of an even older work by a female author from 2300 BC and her name is in Hedawana and she lived in the city of Ur, which is where Abram was called out of in the Bible.
Speaker 2:But she was a priestess and she went around and wrote about the different gods and the different temples in the city of Ur and it's really interesting. And so that kind of became the new, oldest book. We just found the tablets that her poetry was written on within the last 50 or 100 years, so it's relatively new where we found these tablets, and then they were translated and then this is the first complete works released by her and it was just released last year. So the oldest one now is 2300 BC, which puts that roughly 1500 years before Homer. So a lot of the great books lists will start with Homer, and rightly so, in the sense of just the impact that Homer has had. I like to go back a little further with works from Egypt, gilgamesh, and then this in Hedawana as well.
Speaker 1:Right In the 2024 Reading Project. Are there any books in this list that surprised you? Any that you thought were like wow, that was like really awesome or that wasn't quite as great as I thought it was going to be, was there?
Speaker 2:any surprises. Yeah, I'll do one of one. Of each one a surprise, and then one not, not as good as I thought it would be. So, um uh, uh, let me just preface the good one.
Speaker 2:So I, I read the Iliad last year for the first time in my life, but I wanted to read the Iliad and the Odyssey twice just to make sure I got the story down and all that. And so my second reading of the Iliad occurred in March of this past year and I just love it. I ended up reading it one more time and I led a reading group on it later this year. So I think, just uh, overall, the Iliad is, it's, it's my new favorite book. I just, anytime I would pick it up, whether it was I only had a few minutes to read or like an hour to read, I would just get something like this is incredible, you know, even just like one page would just be a stop, uh, astonishing. And so I, I love the Iliad, I think the thing. So partly the Iliad in terms of what surprised me. But secondly, after the Iliad, I read this book called Greek Epic Fragments, and what it did was go into fragments of works that we don't have the full work and what was contained in that book was something called the Epic Trojan Cycle and that was made up of eight works, and the Iliad and the Odyssey are two of the eight works, but there are works number two and seven, and so there is a work before the Iliad, not necessarily written by written by Homer, and in fact they probably weren't written by Homer, but there was this group of eight works that the Greeks would have known. They would have known all the stories in these we only have two of them, um, but that just fascinated me. Like we're missing six of these works. We kind of have a rough idea what was in each of those, cause someone in the ancient time did a review of or kind of a summary of each of the works. Uh, so we, we know what's inside and we know some of the myths and all that and the stories from from other works. But I just I had no idea that, uh, that these, that the alien, the odyssey, were part of this, this, this grand work of like eight works together that made up the epic Trojan cycle, and just coming across that was was really interesting to me, so that, on the good side that was, that was a big surprise.
Speaker 2:On the the hard side I'll say that, not like it's not a bad book, because it's it's one of the great books, but just one that I had trouble with personally was Pindar's Odes, and this is written after the time of Homer. But this Pindar, who's the author, wrote these kind of odes or songs or almost like praises of different Greek athletes, and then he tied in a lot of mythology. But the way I describe it is you almost need like a master's degree level of understanding of Greek mythology to understand what he's talking about, cause it just goes so deep and I'm maybe at like the elementary school level of understanding Greek mythology so it just so much of it was over my head. It just it. I'm glad I read it and there's some neat stories in there, but um, that was one I just had a lot of trouble with reading this year.
Speaker 1:You know when you, uh, are you redoing this for pleasure or are you doing this to learn? Is there a balance there? Is this like you sit back and you just enjoy reading about the? You know, elliot and homer and the odyssey, or is this a way to grow, develop, learn? Is there, is it one, either one or both, or what's the balance there?
Speaker 2:yeah, uh, I think probably at first it was more. I just I didn't want to die not having read these works. Just they're great. And over the last 20 years I've been buying these books with the hope that I would someday read them. But I never really had a plan to read them. It was just more of like a hope and maybe some of that comes from having read a couple books, like 20 years ago that would be considered great books, and just reading them and thinking these are incredible, like these, these are amazing. So now that I'm, I made a plan to actually get through them. At first it may have been kind of more of a I want to read them, just get through them, but the more I'm reading them now I would consider 2024 my best year of reading, in the sense of it being the most enjoyable year of reading and I would say 2023 was that before I got to 2024.
Speaker 2:I read a lot of the Greek tragedies this year and each one I would go to, each different tragedy I would go to. I was like this this is just incredible. And so the enjoyment levels of reading were just off the charts. I mean, I, I it truly was the most enjoyable year of reading I've ever had. And so, yeah, maybe it started out the one way, but like it is, it is becoming so enjoyable. Like I, I love reading. When, when I reread the Iliad, I loved that when I led the reading group on the Iliad, it was just fascinating to hear, uh, people's views on the Iliad, and a lot of them it was their first time reading it, so just kind of hearing first ideas of what they're coming across and all that. So, yeah, it's become like just an absolute pleasure and joy of reading these works.
Speaker 1:I hear the phrase. It read like a Greek tragedy. You know, the Greek tragedy. I guess that just must be the worst that can ever happen. Is a Greek tragedy that? I guess that? Just must be the worst that can ever happen as a Greek tragedy, that bad I mean yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:In some of them the levels of suffering of the main characters are off the charts. But yeah, I, but that phrase, what you, what you say, like reads like a Greek tragedy, maybe in in just how bad it is, I guess. Or like in this, like how bad it is for the people involved in the story. Um, but the the stories themselves are are fascinating and they're relatively short. I mean, you can read through one in two to three hours, uh. But they reference so many different parts of the Greek mythology or they reference different parts of Homer to where it's just fun to see how they do it. The audience surely would have known what was going to happen in each of these stories, and a lot of the times we know what has happened just from other Greek works or just movies we've seen or all that. So part of it, it's like going to watch titanic, like we know what's going to happen, yeah, uh, so it's kind of up to the movie producer in that case to make it interesting and to tell different stories going on the way.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of a lot of what's happening in the greek tragedies.
Speaker 1:Like the audience would have known what was going to happen if you had to pick one book from your 2024 list that really changed your perspective or had a big impact, which one would it be and why?
Speaker 2:Ooh, ooh, probably I mean the, the, the Iliad, but that was kind of a reread. Um, let let me go with the first tragedy I read, and that was Aeschylus. So there's three tragedy writers, there's four that are considered the greatest of all time, and three of them were Greek and they lived at the same exact time, which is just insane to think about.
Speaker 2:And they're performing these, these plays, in Athens on the hill right by the Acropolis and they're they're competing against each other Like they would have a yearly contest where they're competing, and so like that. That that was just incredible. But the the shift for me from going from Homer to the tragedies was a difficult one and I had to read the first tragedy four times to get it. And so that's Aeschylus, and that's the, the Orestia, and again each each tragedy play is two to three hours, but there's there that's, it's a trilogy, and so there's three parts to that. And I just had to sit there and read each one four times and I don't know if it was just the switch from homer's epic poetry to greek tragedy, um, but it just took me and I also had like a really hard job I was working on at the time.
Speaker 2:So anytime I would go down to to to like start reading, I would. My mind would wander pretty quickly. So but but anyway, I had to, I I'm. It was frustrating, but I'm glad I spent that time and read each one four times because I think it really helped me in the other tragedy plays, like it's like my mind got reworked into being able to kind of understand what was going on in these tragedies and how to read them and how to think about them. So, uh, that was probably the the a big, the biggest shift for me, just in in thinking, cause I I've got a huge list that I want to read. So spending time reading each one four times is it can get frustrating or, like you know, I need to keep moving on, but on the other hand, I'm really glad I took the time to do that.
Speaker 1:So many people don't read books and those who do read books do good to get through it one time, much less. Four times. That's pretty amazing. Uh, I, I actually have started enjoying reading books twice and, uh, because I get more out of it the second time than I did the first time, yeah, first time I'll just, I'll just read through it like I'm watching a tv show or a movie, and just go through it, you know, and then I'll go back and uh try to understand what, really, what was going on, who's doing what and why you know so pretty important. On that, let me.
Speaker 2:Let me make one comment I um, so I, I divide my reading, uh my each year's reading, into five different segments, you could call, and so the first one is is January and February. I read straight through a different version of the Bible. March through through June is a great books, and I just go right from. I'm reading them in chronological order, so I just go wherever I left off last and then just start. July is a summer break, and so that's where I'm reading more like newer books or just books that people have said hey, you got it, you got to read this. It's. It's not on the great books list or whatever, but uh, so most of those are books that have been written in the last five, 10 years. Then I go back into the great books and call it fall semester. That's uh, that's August through November, and then December. I'm back in a break month, so I call that winter break. So right now I'm in, I'm in my winter break, and I had a, a publisher here in the city where I live.
Speaker 2:We got together for lunch and she gave me a book and it's called Theo of Golden by Alan Levi, and she, she gave me that book and she said you need to read this as soon as you can, and so I. It first book that I read in December, but you just mentioned you're enjoying rereading books. When she gave me that book, she said I read this five times in a row, and this is a publisher. This was not for her work either. This is a publisher who is getting constant books to read from clients and stuff, and so this was just for fun. And she told me what each one was.
Speaker 2:So the first time she read it, she, she just loved it. So she wanted to read it right away again. But the first time was for the plot, like just to understand what happened. Second time she was really paying attention to the characters. The next time, the third time, she was looking at wordsmithing. So just how were the words used, like how did this particular author put sentences together and all that, and that's just kind of fascinating for her. The fourth time she was looking for Easter eggs.
Speaker 2:So you know, is he referencing what's going to happen later on? And then the fifth time I think she just wanted to read it again just for the pleasure of it. But I thought that was so interesting and it got me intrigued that somebody would read a book five times in a row like that. I mean, I've never heard of anybody doing that. You know, for what's the name of the book? Theo of golden by alan levi, and it really was good it was.
Speaker 1:It was a excellent book I've watched uh now for movies I've. I've watched uh up the movie up, yeah 31 times I've counted wow wow, and I'm still going.
Speaker 1:So I want to hit. I'm going to get to 50. I've got this far, you know. Yeah, but every time I will watch it, just like reading a book. I notice something, I get something. I I see a little, uh like in one episode or in the episode in the portion of the movie when he and Ellie are in her old house and he lets go of the balloon. Well, when she grabs his hand to walk him up to get the balloon, you can just ever so slightly see his face blush, which I never noticed. You see this slight little tinge of red. They pay attention to so many little Easter eggs, so many little details that I just think are fascinating. So, yeah, I'm going to check this out. I'm kind of jazzed about it, theo of Golden.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and another interesting idea, kind of on that is, we had an event at the bookstore where I'm the business manager. We had an event about, uh, the author, george McDonald, who it was his, um, I guess, 200, 200th anniversary of his birth this year, and so, uh, the the person we had in was discussing George McDonald and in one of his books in particular, and she talked about it's called Fantasties and it's a work of fantasy. George MacDonald's called the father of fantasy and he's impacted people from Neil Gaiman to CS Lewis to Susanna Clark, just a ton of authors and he's got this book, fantasties, that a lot of people have trouble with. I've read it, I've only read it once, and I just I didn't know what to do with it. It's just way over my head.
Speaker 2:And what she said is that book was written at a time where it would have been read out loud amongst a family and perhaps amongst friends as well. So it would have been read in a group and it would not have been read one time. It would have been read in a group and it would not have been read one time, it would have been read multiple times. So it was written in a way as to expand every time you read it.
Speaker 2:You couldn't just read that book once and be like, okay, I've read it. It's like you had to read it multiple times and it's one of those books that's referencing stuff, hundreds of books within it, and so every time you read it you could get a lot more. But then not only that, you would be amongst other people and you would be discussing the book, and so you just think about that. Compared to how we read books now individually probably just once, if that now, individually, probably just once, if that but how these books like you can't just read some books once, like they're meant to be read multiple times. They're they're they're probably even meant to be read within a group or like even you know, homer would have been performed that was poetry that would have been been sung over many days, like it would take.
Speaker 2:it would take multiple days to to perform that, that entire thing.
Speaker 1:I think the Bible might be one of those books where every time you read it, something else comes up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and also just the fact that that was. I mean, you know there's letters in there that those letters would have been read out loud to a group of people. There would have been the person that delivered the letter, would have also added commentary and answered questions. And so, yeah, the the the book is the that it's easy to uh to, to not read a book again or or not even really pay attention deeply when when we are reading.
Speaker 1:You know you read so many books each year. Uh, how do you retain what you read? What's, uh, what's? How do you yeah, how do you do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I forget a lot. So I mean, uh, but the, the, I've experimented a lot just on the things that work for me, and so when I'm reading a book, I am um, I'm underlining- and starring.
Speaker 2:And I've got like a system. So if it's got a star on the side, that's something important I want to remember, If I underline it, that's important. I also write notes in the back of the book like this so these are kind of the most important things that I want to remember from that book. So then after I'm done it's on my bookshelf. I can take any book off my shelf and just open up to that back page in five minutes, read kind of the main things that I want to remember.
Speaker 1:What do you put in those notes? Show that note again, show that last page. So on the left or is like what is that?
Speaker 2:a black box, or oh, that's um, this thing that's like a, a upc code for for the book itself oh, okay so yeah, that's. That's just part of the book, but oh okay, I'm sorry, but yeah, the writing like I'll put a star next to something that's really important, uh, but it or just kind of a note of like what is on that page just more of like hey, look at this page for for this, this author discussing this, um.
Speaker 2:So then I know where, where to look for particular things. So that that's kind of the first stage with with the actual book itself. Then I, I I transfer a lot of those notes into this notebook which is my. I call it my everything notebook and I get one of these a year and then I put a lot of the book notes in here.
Speaker 1:The final thing.
Speaker 2:I do is I record a podcast episode about each of the books, and that that is the thing I mean. I I can tell the books that I have not podcasted on. Those are the books that I have trouble remembering. If I podcasted on a book, I have consolidated however many hours of reading into a 30 minute episode. So these are kind of the main things from the book.
Speaker 2:But the thing I think is most important for remembering what you read is just to try to remember one thing from each book If you can implement it. So if it's like a finance book, just implement one idea from the book, whether that's a certain investment you make or a way of thinking about money. If it's a productivity book, just try to implement one thing. So if you actually make a change in your life from the book, you will obviously remember that because you've made a change.
Speaker 2:If it's a novel, I'm trying to remember the thing that I'm thinking about two or three days later as I'm driving in my car. Maybe it's an idea that stuck out to me, maybe it's something that bothered me, maybe it's something that was a new idea I'd never thought of, and so at the end of each of my podcast episodes, I will share the one thing from that book, the one thing that I hope to remember from that book. And it's not a perfect system, I can't just look at my bookshelves and tell you the one thing from every book. But it certainly does help and I found if I tried to remember five things from a book, I would not remember a single one of them. But if I just try to remember one thing, a lot of times I could recall that one thing and then that would actually help me to remember other things in the book.
Speaker 1:As well, that's a good tip. Yeah, remember one thing I got to start doing that If someone listening was looking for a great read from your 2024 list, which book would you recommend and what makes it a must read?
Speaker 2:After reading the Iliad I kind of jokingly created this club called the Read the Iliad Before you Die Club and just try to get everyone I could to join it, to the point of starting a reading group in my local area here. And I think if you read the Iliad it just opens up so much more because so much of what we read references the Iliad.
Speaker 2:We have so many cultural references to the Iliad that we don't even know our cultural references. Words like hectoring come from the Iliad. Achilles is in the Iliad. A lot of the Trojan War takes place in the Iliad. So just so many things that we reference a lot, so many things that then show up in other books kind of start in the Iliad. So that's such an important place to start. It is time consuming, it is difficult. I would recommend trying to read it with a group of people to discuss it. There's some incredible podcasts and some that even came out this year that go book by book and just kind of help you walk through the Iliad yourself. So that would be a great place to start, where you, um, where you read a book and then listen to the podcast episode about that book just kind of reinforces what you just read.
Speaker 2:uh, kind of pulls out some things that are important in what you just read and and and then just kind of work your way through through the Iliad.
Speaker 2:Uh, I know, I know it's a long book, but once, once you read the Iliad, then you can pretty much go into any of the Greek tragedies and just have a firmer grasp on what is happening. So it just kind of opens up. And I'm really like my biggest heart with the Iliad is to get high schoolers to read it, because I think even if you taught a class on the Iliad at a high school and only like one or two kids got it and like you know, I love this like that would transform their lives and it would open up so much of literature because it just so much points back to the Iliad or the Odyssey and so it it. You know it's not a five-hour read type thing, but it would be a challenging book. But if you haven't read it, try to make it a point in 2025 to read the Iliad, and there's so many good, helpful tools out there to help you get through it.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm sold. I guess I'll read the elliott you can make one convert here. Yeah, good, good. Oh also, uh, I wanted to. Uh, this just came in today, oh, good, good, yeah. So, uh, thanks for the, uh thanks for the brad thor book. I really appreciate that. You wrote a little, a little autograph in there, a little note. A true patriot, keep reading. Yeah, brad Thor is really great and I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really jealous that you get to meet him and talk with him and stuff. That's a that's really cool A little a great side benefit for you there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Well, if someone wants to get more information about you, your reading what's your podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's called Books of Titans. And then I actually moved my podcast over to Substack this year. Substack that allows me to. If people get value out of the podcast, they can give money to it. So that's one side of it. The other thing I'm doing is in 2025, I'm going to start a reading group, both in person and online, where we just meet once a month and the're going to. The theme is short, great books, so I'm trying to pick books that you can read between two and five hours. So you know, nothing like the Iliad. Uh, the Iliad actually became quite cumbersome to to lead a group about cause I would have to read it and then you know, prepare, and then we'd have the discussion and we did it for nine weeks in a row and so, with my other reading and work and family and all it got to be too much.
Speaker 2:So I want to keep doing something of a reading group, but not that much. So now it's just once a month. So if you live near Franklin, Tennessee, we're going to meet the second Mondays of each month, but then I'm also doing an online version, which will be on Wednesdays, the Wednesday after that second Monday of each month, and it'll be like the first book is the Epic of Gilgamesh. The second book will be Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I've got some Greek tragedies in there. I've got A Christmas Carol for December by Charles Dickens, Old man and the Sea by Hemingway. So, yeah, just great books, but ones that we can read quickly and then have a good discussion. So if you are a paid subscriber on my sub stack, that gets you in to that online discussion piece and I've got plans that are just $5 a month. So for five bucks a month you could join and you don't have to do all 12 months. You could just kind of pick and choose the books that you want to read and discuss.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I'm just trying to introduce people to the great books, to just show that they're approachable. They're not like these things. I don't have a college degree of learning how to read literature. That's not what I studied in college. Uh, the these books, they're not meant to confuse us and make things hard, Like they're meant to teach. They're meant to be approachable and so I I hope I can get that across to where it just opens up people to to realize that there's some incredible things in these classics and these great books. So, uh, that that's probably the best way on that sub stack and that's just books of titanscom, If you, if you're interested in in the reading lists that I've had, uh, the great books list that I'm going through, I have that all at booksbooksoftitanscom and so it's just kind of two websites.
Speaker 2:The one is booksoftitanscom and the other is booksbooksoftitanscom. And then I'm also on Twitter and Instagram as well at booksoftitans.
Speaker 1:Right, what was your major?
Speaker 2:I did international business, so I studied at the undergraduate level and then I worked in international business for a while and then got a graduate degree in international business. And while I was in grad school I had a teacher who taught us entrepreneurship but the basics of a lot of things, so that we could kind of bootstrap a business. And one of the things he taught us was, uh, website development, and I just took on to, I just I loved it and uh, so I kind of mixed that with my business background and and have been doing websites for different clients for 16 years now wow, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Well, eric, uh, let's do this again next year yeah we'll go for number four yeah well, good luck with your podcast, good luck with your reading and, uh, anything to look forward to in 2025 regarding your books any anything you're looking forward to.
Speaker 2:I know probably all the books you're looking forward to, but any one more than the other yeah, I, I'll be finishing the Greek tragedies and I ended up deciding to read every single one of them. So Aeschylus has seven, sophocles has seven as well, and then Euripides has 19. And so I'm going to leave one unread by Euripides, because I can't bear the thought of having read all the tragedies. So I'm going to leave one unread, but I'll close that out in my reading next year. And then I'll get into the comedies Aristophanes is a Greek comedy writer and then a few works of history, and then into the philosophy.
Speaker 2:So I've always been intimidated by philosophy. So, uh, I was, I've always been intimidated by philosophy. So I'm a little nervous about that, I guess. But uh, I think, with the background now of having read Homer and the tragedies and that kind of thing, I I may have a little more understanding of what, what is going on. So that's the hope at least. Um, but yeah, the, the, the final tragedy plays, are the ones I'm looking forward to the most, just because I've enjoyed them so much this year.
Speaker 1:It's awesome. Well, once again, thanks for the book. Really appreciate it. Brad Thor is one of my is my favorite. I'll read this again and yeah what's your book? Where do you work? What's the bookstore's name?
Speaker 2:Landmark Booksellers in Franklin Tennessee.
Speaker 1:Franklin Tennessee. All right. So if you're in Franklin Tennessee, stop by see Eric and buy a book.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, we're about 20 minutes south of Nashville, so not too far away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, eric. Well, thanks for stopping by and visiting with us again, and I look forward to having you again, uh, in about a year yeah, sounds good.
Speaker 2:Good to see you, scott good to see you too.
Speaker 1:So for eric rostad, this is scott townsend. Thanks for watching and listening to the scott townsend show. Have a great day. Everything's gonna be all right, and we'll talk to you later. And then it'll go to black and white and all that jazz. Cool, cool, all right, man. Well, have a Merry Christmas, tell the family.
Speaker 2:I said hi.
Speaker 1:We said hi.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what were some of your favorites for this year?
Speaker 1:You know I'm really enjoying the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Warren Buffett said it's probably the best book on investing ever written. Yeah, and Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I had to read that one twice because it was a little over my head and I I just refused to be confounded by it. So I tackled it a second time and enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Good you know that that had a huge impact on me doing the great books, because I read that and then that same year I read like four or five other books that all they did was take one idea from Kahneman and apply it to like negotiating or persuasion or something like that. And I'm like I didn't need to read these five other books, Like Kahneman was kind of the source that everyone is now pulling from.
Speaker 2:So it's like it's better just to read Kahneman. It just kind of got me thinking of, like there are source books out there that are the important books and there's a lot of books that are just derivative of that. I don't want to waste my time reading the derivative books. I want to first read the source books before I go back to derivative books. But yeah, that Kahneman book was like this is something important. I need to spend more time reading those.
Speaker 1:I'm reading, uh, seth Godin's uh, this is strategy. Oh yeah, I'm kind of having a hard time with it. It's a good book and he has some really great points and it'll jump out or once in a while. But, um, uh, I'm going to finish it, I'm going to go to the end and I might have to read it again because, I don't know, it seems it doesn't seem very linear. It's just kind of this way and that way and goes over here and then back over there, and it's kind of hard for me to follow along with what he's really trying to say. And then every once in a while he'll just say something that just jumps off the page and slaps you across the face, you know. So I enjoy that.
Speaker 1:But it's cool, all right man well merry christmas, happy new year and, uh, we'll see you in 2025 all right, see you, scott all right bye, bye.
