Awesome site for free audio books

I had heard of this site before but forgot about it:

www.booksshouldbefree.com

I just downloaded a bunch of children's books to start listening to tomorrow. I'm excited to play them on my new awesome mp3 player through the stereo system while we clean or work on art or other projects. Now I just need a radio converter so we can listen in the car!!

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

I finally figured out how to read and get on the computer while nursing 2 babies, so here's a plug for The Count of Monte Cristo-- AWESOME!!! It is an incredibly long book, but so worth it I really didn't want it to end and my version was abridged and I sort of wish it wasn't. This book reads so quickly from the first page to the end and has a great underlying message. i'm not going to get into the plot because you just have to read it and if you have read it, you can comment on how much you liked it. It is really just pure entertainment and fun. My husband and children were glad to have me back once I finally finished it in about 3 days!!!

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

This was a fabulous read, such a breath of fresh air and time tested true wisdom. Marcus Aurelius is known as the last good emperor of Rome. His writings show that he must have been. I could learn a lot from his writings. One of his main themes is to accept what is and to help those around you when possible. Another great thing he wrote was of a whole bunch of people and how they had helped him and what he learned from them. That covered book 1. I should do that because I have learned a ton from people, and it made me more appreciative of what I have listening to all the people he was thankful for. I loved it, and I highly recommend this book. It is so worthwhile for the wisdom found therein. I could fill this page with lovely quotes from his meditations. But I'll try to keep it short. The whole work is found here in case anyone would just like to browse his words.

Then the first paragraph in Book 2 is:

"Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away. "

I think that is so good because it's true, we will always come in contact with people who are annoying or irritating or even bad, but we shouldn't shun them. We should be understanding and try to help them. And if that fails, then we shouldn't let their actions affect us. We should just go on with our lives.

Another great theme he expanded on was how short and insignificant this life is and then he points out how everybody dies and everybody who knows the somebodies who die will also die and then there is no one. So it is important to live your life for God and not for those around you.

"Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these, What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own ruling power. We ought then to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is without a purpose and useless, but most of all the over-curious feeling and the malignant; and a man should use himself to think of those things only about which if one should suddenly ask, What hast thou now in thy thoughts? With perfect openness thou mightest, immediately answer, This or That; so that from thy words it should be plain that everything in thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one that cares not for thoughts about pleasure or sensual enjoyments at all, nor has any rivalry or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou shouldst say that thou hadst it in thy mind. "

Here is another good one about wealth in Book 8, it reminds me of Job saying "The Lord giveth and the lord taketh, blessed be the name of the Lord."

"Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go. "

A good place to end in light of the current economy. Be happy with what you have, accept what is and move on. Another theme of Marcus Aurelius' writings!!

Confessions by St. Augustine

I originally read the first 10 chapters of this work in my Great books club and loved it as did all the ladies in the group. But then for my other book club recently I finished listening to the entire work from the beginning to the end and now I don't like it and I don't like St. Augustine. I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh, because he may have been doing the best he could with what he had, but he ended up with some very strange ideas.

First-- the parts I liked--
I liked the story of his life and his conversion. I liked how he acknowledged the hand of God in his life even when he didn't realize it up to the point where he was converted. I agree with the idea that God guides and directs our lives and turns bad experiences to our good and that he is merciful and waiting and putting circumstances together that will help us in the long run. I agree that we don't often see the hand of God in our lives until after the fact.

I liked the description of Augustine's education and teaching experience. He was a master of rhetoric and knew Latin and Greek, studied a lot of philosophy and I found that quite interesting and enlightening.

I liked his mother's stalwartness and her approach to dealing with her husband. Back then, wives were very like property of their husbands and it was the man;s right to punish her as he saw fit including hitting. Monica, Augustine's mother, was never hit because she let her husband have his say and blow off steam, so that he wasn't so angry with her and things mostly went her way, because she had patience and self-control.

That's pretty much all I liked. Now to the issue dealing with women since I already started talking about it.

I don't like the ancient attitude towards women. They really thought that women were almost a different species and even mentioned how surprised they were that Monica had such fortitude when they were traveling at one point.

I also didn't like Augustine's personal actions toward women. He had a mistress to whom he was completely faithful for like 14 years and she was too and they even had a son together, but when his mother arranged that he be married for advantage, he sent her away and kept their son. He writes about how he felt like his heart was torn out, but instead of bringing her back and standing up against his mother and the society, he just got a new mistress to last until his betrothed was old enough to marry. It seemed to me that his friends and mother came above everything else even the mother of his only son.

One funny part was when about ten of the guys thought it would be great to live together and take turns providing for the necessities of life so that they could use that time to study, and they thought it would work great until someone asked how their wives would feel about it, and the whole plan was discarded.

His philosophies seemed to me very involved and reminded me of the scripture "ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth". Some of the things he would say were good and there were a lot of good quotes, but his over all actions and attitudes, I thought, were disturbing.

Like all these great books, I'm really glad I read it. It gives me a better understanding of the ancient world, and where our current ideas get their roots. I am also even more grateful for the Book of Mormon to really clear up a lot of these confusing ideas about God and salvation. I love learning.

Blogging is a great outlet, it seems easier to write to someone even if nobody actually reads this, I will read it again in ten years, and I'm sure laugh at my naivity.

Thanks for reading!!

Great Books of the Western World the Ten Year Plan

Encyclopedia Britannica actually produced in 1952 a set of Books called the Great Books of the Western World. The series was edited and compiled by Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler and their board. They included as the first book a volume called The Great Conversation. In this volume they discuss liberal education, the Western tradition and how they chose which works to include in the set. It is an excellent volume that brings out a lot of good points about education. I highly recommend it, I may summarize it in another post. But the piece I want to discuss in this post is the Ten Year Reading Plan. They suggest different ways to study the Great Books series, but I was fortunate enough to be included in a book club where we started with Year One of the Ten Year plan.

It was awesome!! I wasn't sure if I wanted to take the time to attend a book club twice a month, but everytime I went, I was enlightened and uplifted. When I read the works, I could feel my brain grow and when we got together and discussed the works, we all got way more out of it. It was very interesting to see people's views change. I don't think any of us were the same after reading about Alexander the Great by Plutarch and The Prince by Machiavelli. We were learning history and philosophy at the same time, and then we were able to watch things that are going on now and compare and contrast. After that first year, I was finally able to put names and times and places together. Now when I hear great names or works or ideas, I have a place for them to go and a foundation to base my ideas. The works chosen follow a chronological order for each year of the plan. It was awesome.

I loved it so much, I wanted to include the plan here. I will type them in sometime in a different post, here is a link on someone's website with the plan and links to the works themselves. It is past copyright so it is all free!! Note: Try to get the 1952 version especially for Aristophanes. Those Greeks were kinda crazy and the older version has a nicer translation for a lot of it!!

Meno by Plato

This is a great short read, about 15 pages in the Great Books series on the subject of virtue. It is a conversation between Socrates and Meno and Meno asks Socrates whether "virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?", and the 2 of them work through a few ideas to get to end idea that virtue cannot be taught and it comes from God.

A couple ideas I found to be enlightening in this essay were about men's desire to do evil, learning consists of remembering, virtue cannot be taught and virtue comes from God.

Meno declares that some men choose to do good and others choose to do evil, but Socrates asks questions which lead down the path to realization that men who choose evil do it not because they want evil, but because they falsely believe that the evil will bring them some form of joy. Socrates says "if there is no one who desires to be miserable, there is no one, Meno, who desires evil; for what is misery but the desire and possession of evil?" So if no one desires evil, then why are so many miserable and fallen into evil? No doubt Socrates knows how to get one thinking.

Another interesting idea Socrates brings out is the idea that the soul is immortal and learning is not learning, but recollecting what we already know. To prove this point, Socrates draws a square in the dirt and has an unlearned boy answer questions for him which the boy is able to answer without any previous training and only guided questions from Socrates. From those questions the boy gives correct answers without any outside help. Socrates says " And if there have been always true thoughts in him, both at the time when he was and was not a man, which only need to be awakened into knowledge by putting questions to him, his soul must have always possessed this knowledge for he always either was or was not a man? (Obviously) And if the truth of all things alwasy existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal. " Wow!!

Another interesting idea that Socrates shows to be true is that virtue cannot be taught. There are no teachers of virtue as there are of other forms of knowledge such as carpentry or medicine. And those men who are considered to be the most virtuous would certainly train their children to be virtuous also if they could and yet he showed that their sons were not as virtuous as the fathers. So therefore, it cannot be taught. There is something more to virtue than just knowledge.

Then to show that virtue comes from God, he shows the difference between knowledge and true opinions. A person who know the way to go to a certain place and one who has a true opinion of how to get there but has not been there can both lead a person to that place equally well, so " the only right guides are knowledge and true opinion-- these are the guides of man; for things which happen by chance are not under the guidance of man: but the guides of man are true opinion and knowledge." And to end, Socrates says," the conclusion is that virtue comes to the virtuous by the gift of God." I think it's notable that Socrates says God singular and not in the usual plural form of the Greek gods. I think he is talking about a one true God here. What wisdom!!

Thank you, Socrates!!