scripti

My unwritten books:

There is one fact that I cannot escape any longer. I need to eat better and exercise constantly, or else get my affairs in order. Don’t get me wrong. I am not yet at death’s doorstep, but I am on the path. Ten years ago, I was 100 pounds lighter, able to run several miles, able to dunk a basketball, able to bench 250 lbs, and rarely sick or tired.

Today, I get winded climbing a flight of stairs. Running does not happen at all. I have the vertical leap of a snail. I can still bench 250. I feel tired constantly and get sick easily.

I am going to do something about this.

Now.

My first two reasons for doing this are obvious.

My third is this: I have things to accomplish before I go. I want to teach my little girl to play soccer. I want to see her graduate college. I want to take my wife on a second honeymoon when we hit our fifties. I want to run a mile without feeling like the world is coming to an end. And I want to write.

In that spirit, and as a sort of visualization project for myself, I give this list of books I would like to write.

To my friends, if you see me slacking, taking the elevator instead of the stairs, taking the easy road, eating the worst choice on the menu, this is your explicit permission to get on my ass about it, to chastise me. Whatever it takes. And so:

The Good Life: Intellectual self-help from the Humanities.
A look at how the giant works and figures of the Western Humanities can help us to answer some of the persistent problems and challenges in our own lives.

A Suicide Triptych: Three Austro-Hungarian in the 20th century
An examination of the lives, works, and deaths of Sandor Marai, Stefan Zweig, and Joseph Roth.

In Their Libraries: Great thinkers and their books.
An intellectual history of how personal libraries shaped the thoughts of select individuals, including Leopardi, Thomas Jefferson, H.P. Lovecraft, and more.

Euripides the Thinker
An examination of the intellectual problems within the plays, and how the ancient author handles them.

At the Table with Friends
A foodie memoir of my family’s most memorable table talks and favorite foods. Also, a sort of philosophy of what dinner and dinner conversation could and should be.

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