The first book depository is here. 2024 is here. I forgot I didn't start in 2023.
And welcome to the post wherein I'll list and maybe say a few words about the books I'm reading this year.
I finished both of these a week or so ago but I've been so busy with work that I haven't had the time or energy to get down to it until now.
The Last Days of Socrates
Here's someone else's summary:
Plato's account of Socrates' trial and death (399 BC) is a significant moment in Classical literature and the life of Classical Athens. In these four dialogues, Plato develops the Socratic belief in responsibility for one's self and shows Socrates living and dying under his philosophy. In Euthyphro, Socrates debates goodness outside the courthouse; Apology sees him in court, rebutting all charges of impiety; in Crito, he refuses an entreaty to escape from prison; and in Phaedo, Socrates faces his impending death with calmness and skilful discussion of immortality. Christopher Rowe's introduction to his powerful new translation examines the book's themes of identity and confrontation, and explores how its content is less historical fact than a promotion of Plato's Socratic philosophy.
I was interested in this story but I knew that I probably wouldn't enjoy Plato/Socrates' arguments. The character of Socrates makes a better case for us humans not really knowing what we're talking about when we say what we believe. He doesn't do so well advocating for something positively. Maybe there's an immortal soul that is permanent and which either goes to hell or some blessed higher realm (or somewhere inbetween) and the philosopher who seeks the truth is the sort who has the soul that goes to the latter place. But that conclusion isn't argued as convincingly as Plato thinks it is.
Still, I think it's wild that there was a guy like Socrates. A squat stone mason who didn't get drunk when he drank. Who saved Alcibiades during a battle (against Thebes I believe) and who said that his punishment for being found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens should be an annual stipend. And who died very bravely for being who he thought he had to be.
I also read Mozart in Vienna: 1781-1791 by Volkmar Braunbehrens.
It is a myth that Mozart died in poverty, forgotten by the people who used to cheer the child prodigy. Mozart had some financial problems during his last year or two because a war between Austria and the Ottoman Empire had raised the prices of everything and taken the majority of his audience and patrons from the nobility out of Vienna, either to the battle front or to their estates. As well, his wife (who loved him as he loved her, and who collaborated with him musically) suffered a lengthy illness that required expensive medical care. But at the very end, before some mysterious illness took him, Mozart had paid off his main creditor, and had some new revenue streams coming in.
That's how Braunbehrens addresses the romantic myth of the discarded artist.
Also, Mozart was not a silly man. Braunbehrens argues that his last two operas were not well received (at first) because they were not understood. Braunbehrens writes a great deal about the influence of RATIONALISM on all levels of society. Think of Voltaire and the Encylopėdistes puncturing the claims of feudalism and religious dogma. Much of what Mozart wrote in his operas (in partnership with the lyricists who are called "librettists") was in advocacy of this new thinking.
It's a good examination of Mozart's Europe, it's thinking, it's economy and all sorts of things.
