Is “reader’s digest” an epithet?
It was for a teenager studying the koine New Testament Greek.
Now I got a full time job and two kids.
When do I have time to read the full text?
In the original language?
I don’t have the energy or days to catch them all, in depth.
Give me those reader’s digests!
And as audiobooks, I can learn while doing the dishes!
Paul Starthern’s “in 90 minutes” are cheeky accounts of the philosophers’ lives followed with short sections of collected quotes from their work.
Most of them run closer to 75 minutes, even shorter at 1.5x speed.
The summaries produced by Pat Childs are a bit longer.
They skip the wry humor, instead quoting extensively from the subject and commentaries.
These are fancy productions with famous narrators with other voices for the quotes (using ethnic accents based on each author’s origins).
I’ve dived into the ancient philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Lao Tzu, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.
The pairing of two summaries in quick succession has worked well.
I don’t know enough to catch bias, much less discern what’s missing.
It’s better to avoid relying upon only one source.
And the repetition is a feature, so I better remember the highlights.
The two complementary perspectives provide a succinct survey on a subject.
A good base for choosing what next.
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But I’m not sure about the next steps.
Maybe continuing with their surveys of modern philosophers and writers,
Or diving deeper into these classics,
Or wandering into other survey series or lectures from The Great Courses.
Time (and Grizzlypear) will tell…