Remembered, not erased · not a book club
Reading Journey
Conversations
Conversations, not reviews. Old wisdom. Modern life.
Despite all our progress, the same questions keep returning. What is a good life? How do we stay honest, brave and kind, as we move through our beautiful, ordinary lives, with all their hidden pressures?
In Conversations. I sit with books — old and new — and let them argue with my real life: illness and work, love and responsibility, fatigue and hope. The great books are part of a long conversation between writers across centuries; this is where I take my seat in that conversation and ask what still holds, and how to live it now.
Come read with me — the conversation didn’t end with Homer, or Austen. It continues wherever someone is willing to ask, “what is still true, and how might it illuminate my life?”
Browse the conversations
Begin anywhere. Every conversation is complete in itself, together they become a way of learning to see.
-
When Momentum Becomes the Governor
Under relentless pressure, continuing can begin to feel inevitable. An ancient story reveals how interruption, shared responsibility and passing of the burden creates enough breathing space for judgement to return.
-
The Hardest Moment Comes After Success
Success creates a different test from failure. Once capability has proved itself, new possibilities appear and judgment must decide what courage alone cannot: what should be done, and when enough has already been reached.
-
The Price of a Life
Sometimes the hardest decisions aren’t about knowing what to do. They’re about deciding what we’re no longer willing to exchange our lives for. A conversation with Book Nine of the Iliad about human excellence, freedom, and what a life is ultimately for.
-
The Place of Human Excellence
Prompted by Book VIII of the Iliad, this Conversations essay asks where human excellence reaches its limits—and whether we have come to expect too much of it.
-
This Is My Life Now, For Now
In Book VII of The Iliad, the Greeks begin to understand that resolution is not as close, or as simple, as they hoped. First they face what has been lost. Then they begin to make the place survivable.
-
The Things That Govern Us
Every so often you watch someone make a decision that makes no sense. Not because they are confused. Not because they lack information. In Book 6 of the Iliad, Hector and Andromache reveal a more uncomfortable truth: some of the most consequential decisions in life are governed by something deeper than love.
-
When the Evidence Is True
A reflection on Diomedes in Book V of The Iliad, and the danger of believing true things about ourselves too completely.
-
It Only Takes One
Pandarus steps forward and at first it doesn’t fell like a decisive moment. But almost immediately, everything around him begins to move. A Conversations essay on The Iliad, Book IV — and how little it takes for something already unstable to start again.
-
The Reason Given Is Not the Reason Deciding
Conversations · Reading Journey The Reason Given Is Not the Reason Deciding Come read with me — quietly, slowly, deeply Reading: The Great Conversation, Vol 4 . · The Iliad of Homer — Book III They say it’s about Helen. […]
If something in these conversations has brought your own situation into sharper focus, you can learn more about working with me here.