Avery > Recent Status Updates

Completed - Organon
Completed - Rhetoric
Completed - Poetic
Completed - Analytica posterior
Completed - NE
Completed - Politics

Metaphysics is my last long work to read and I don't plan on reading physics so everything else I have left after that is pretty short relatively speaking (haha ha). So I can finish this before the end of the year

"I felt the way I used to feel when the beauty of other lives was a misery and an offense to me."

i love this book so much

Completed - Organon
Completed - Rhetoric
Completed - Poetic
Completed - Analytica posterior
Completed - NE

quite literally going to be my top book of 2025

reading in my quest to read my TBR/backlists of authors I claim to love. this is really nothing special and the characterization is so shallow, and the exposition overly sentimental. I started it because I needed a break from Aristotle and just nonfiction in general and I am finishing it because I own it.

Categories
Completed - Rhetoric
Completed - Poetic
Completed - Analytica posterior
Completed - NE

I completely understand why ancient philosophers are resonating with young men. I LOVED NE.

Completed - Categories
Completed - Rhetoric
Completed - Poetic
Completed - Analytica posterior
Completed - 1-4 of NE

This book is weird and I say this as someone who has read all but his newest book and has reread a few of them. Compared to the abridged translation (Yes! ABRIDGED!) it is weird and wacky and I experience the two worlds very differently this time around.

Me, since I started reading: “Wow some parts this are poorly written. Why is he writing like that? I reread AWSC last year and it wasn’t like this at all. So weird.”

me, all of a sudden: “oooohhhhh each part is written in a distinct voice. Hard Boiler guy is just ‘like that’”

Palace security is nonexistent wow

ompleted - Categories
Completed - Rhetoric

Categories is so difficult but Rhetoric feels so straight forward

"Try searching 'China' and 'innovation' online, and instead of finding articles about innovations from China, you'll see articles that examine "Why China can't innovate""

girl why are you lying? yes this book was published 5 years ago but you cannot be serious with this. And you cannot tell me that you are speaking with non-Chinese, western analysts and they are ALL saying China cannot innovate.

allegedly at the time of writing Wang was working on a Phd from UC Berk...defund the schools but the essays lack structure and clarity

I find this to be a bit cringe The abridged translation felt a lot cleaner both in terms of the actual writing, but also the narrative he is obviously not a fantasy writer so he’s getting too lost and making sure you understand the world and it’s kind of too complicated.

“It is dreadful that once cannot tear out the past by the roots.”

“Respect was invented to fill the empty space where love ought to be!”

*insert Oprah Sussex interview gif here*

I annotated this the 2nd time I read it but it feels like I am truly reading it for the first time. I guess that goes to how deep my original biases were.

Final (200 page) stretch

‘Not exactly that he can’t fall in love,’ Levin answered with a smile, ‘but he has none of that weakness, which is necessary…’

“in spite of death, he felt the necessity of living and loving. He felt that love had saved him from despair, and that love under the menace of despair grew still stronger and purer.”