My first entry, and probably the longest one ever

My first entry and what a perfect day to start. Today must have been the most stressful day that I've ever had to endure in school. It began with my 5 absences from weight lifting, to my 3 missing assignments in physics, to my 3-4 missing assignments in english. All which had to be made up by the end of the day. I have to say that I am never skipping ever again, no matter how much I would like to. I STILL need to make up my Beowulf quiz 2, test, and vocab 3.. all of which will be done on monday. Saturday (tomorrow) is Renee's party, and Renee disinvited Corey and Shannon, so I'm not sure what's going to happen tomorrow. I would really like to go to the party, especially since I invited Caitlin, her friend, and Brian Z. My situation doesn't uncomplicate there. There are at least 2 new girls at school who have expressed interest in me. But I can't return them that interest because I'm more confused about the future that I've ever been in my entire life. So... gah!!!! Then to top things off my parents told me at 5 that i'm babysitting my litte brother for the rest of the night, meaning all of my friday night plans have been ruined. Today I just don't know what's gonna happen, thinking of just going running for hours until my head clears. Finally got back to training for winter track. I've been running 2 miles a day on the track, on top of 30 min of straight jump rope, and then the gym lifting weights daily. But I have to say that I'm quite gloomy and borderline depressed. :(

More to come... Sorry to be so sad. To top things off my self confidence has been the lowest that it has ever been in the past year. I'm generally a very confident/ borderline annoying person when it comes to the opposite sex. But recently I've just lost my romantic(ness) and I don't understand what's going on. It's most likely a huge amount of confusion, hiding feelings from myself, and a general total lack of understanding of women in general. I swear I've losing my ability to read people. I give up, if I don't cheer up by tomorrow, I don't know what's gonna happen to me this weekend. To make things worse, I've been leaving home more and more, my parents have become unbearable, they take full control to try and prove that they are in charge and dominant in the household. Gah!!!

I am re-reading all of Dante's famous works.. the Inferno, Divine comedy, etc. In addition i'm reading The Longfellow's Prose - which btw I like very much. Next I want to read... well here is my list of books to read/re-read by the time that I graduate from law school (yeah right more like by the time that I die), I've been working on it for a while now and If there is anything missing that should be read someone leave me a comment. I've read only about 10% of what I need so it's time that I dig deep and get my checklist going. If you ask why I need to read these books... I feel that i need to see the world through the eyes of some of the world's greatest writers. I've had debates with myself about the meaning of life, and how we all die in the end, so all the reading and education of my life really doesn't mean a single thing. But I feel that we've been given a chance to live a life, and we should at least not make waste of it. Anyways ..the list... sorted by country of origin and topic.


History:

Greece:

Herodotus: Histories
Thucydides:The Peloponnesian War
A History of Greece, by J.B. Bury & Russell Meiggs

Rome:

Livy: History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita)
Caesar:The Gallic War
Tacitus: The Annals
Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars
A History of Rome, by M. Cary & H.H. Scullard
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. D.M. Low

Europe:

Godefridus Monmouth: Historia Britonum
A History of Europe, H.A.L. Fisher (Oxford, 1939).

USA:

Petrus Cardinalis Bembus: "De Novi Orbis Per Columbum Detectione," which is the first history of Columbus and the New World.
Paul Johnson: A History of the American People


Bible:

Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John (I'm worried about this one!)



Literature

Greece:

Homer: Iliad and Odyssey
Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days
Aeschylus: Oresteia.
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
Euripides: Bacchae
Aristophanes: Clouds

Rome:

Plautus: Pseudolus
Catullus: Poems
Cicero: Orations Against Catiline, Philippics
Vergil: Aeneid, Eclogues, and Georgics <-- loved reading this after reading Dante
Horace: Odes; Satires, Book I
Ovid: Art of Love (Ars Amatoria).
Juvenile: Satires
Petronius: Satyricon

England:

Chaucer: Canterbury Tales <-- can't wait to read it this year in english
Fitzstephen, William: Caedes in Ecclesia (Thomas Becket)
Malory: Morte D’Athur
Sir Thomas More: Utopia, Epigrammata
Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear, Henry IV, and al. (most everything other than Othello, Hamlet, and the histories)
Donne: Poetry
Milton: Paradise Lost, Latin Poems
Pope: Essay on Man, (Horatian) Satires, Translations of Homer
Poetry: Tennyson, Coleridge, Yeats

United States:
Early American Latin Verse: An Anthology, ed. Leo M. Kaiser
Relatio Itineris in Marilandiam, Andrew White
T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland and Prufrock
Everything transcendentalist written

France:

Racine: Plays
La Fontaine: Fables
Moliere: Plays
Claudel, P.: Poetry
Mallarme: Herodiade; Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui...

Italy:

Dante: Divine Comedy
Petrarch: Italian and Latin poems
Boccaccio: "Decameron," Latin poems

Spain:

Cervantes: Don Quixote

Germany:

Goethe: Sufferings of Young Werther, The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister, Faust

Holland:

Erasmus: The Praise of Folly, De Copia Verborum, De Ratione Studii
Aesthetics / Literary Criticism:
Aristotle: Poetics
Horace: Ars Poetica
Quintilian: The Orator’s Education
Isidore of Seville: Etymologiae
Burke: On the Sublime and Beautiful
Schiller: “On Naive and Sentimental Poetry”
Matthew Arnold: Culture & Anarchy
T. S. Eliot: “Tradition and Individual Talent” in The Sacred Wood

THERE ARE THE IMPORTANT ONES - all pertain to law (law school)-- Truely must be read by the end of law school
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Political Philosophy:

History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss & Joseph Cropsey
Plutarch: Lives: Lycurgus and Solon
Plato:The Republic, The Statesman, The Laws
Aristotle: Politics
Cicero: The Republic, The Laws, On Duties (De Officiis).
Thomas Aquinas: Treatise on Law
Machiavelli: The Prince
Hobbes: Leviathan
Locke: Second Treatise of Civil Government
Rousseau: On the Origin and Foundations of Inequality
Edmund Burke: Reflections on the French Revolution
Chateaubriand: Essai historique, politique et moral sur les revolutions anciennes et modernes; Genie du christianisme.
J. S. Mill: On Liberty
F.H. Bradley: “My Station and Its Duties” in Ethical Studies
Ortega y Gasset: The Revolt of the Masses
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Federalist Papers
Modern Conservative Thought:
Russell Kirk: The Conservative Mind
Roger Scruton: The Meaning of Conservativism, and Conservative Texts

Philosophy:

The Oxford History of Western Philosophy, ed. Anthony Kenny
Modern Philosophy: Introduction and Survey, Roger Scruton
Plato: Republic, Meno, Apology
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics

Cicero: On Duties (De Officiis), On the Ends of Good and Evil (De Finibus), On the Nature of the Gods (De Natura Deorum), Academics (Academica), Tusculan Disputations (Tusculanae Disputationes), Stoic Paradoxes (Paradoxa Stoicorum), The Republic (De Re Publica), The Laws (De Legibus)

Seneca: Moral Essays
Augustine: Confessiones
Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
Descartes: Meditationes De Prima Philosophia, Discours de la methode
Vico: The New Science
Berkeley: Treatise the Concerning Principles of Human Knowledge
Spinoza: Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demostrata
Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Treatise of Human Nature
Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
Hegel: Philosophy of History
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History of Science:
A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, J.L.E. Dreyer

Plato: Timaeus
Aristotle: Physics, Heavens, Parts of Animals, On Plants
Euclid: Elements
Lucretius: De Rerum Natura
Pliny: Historia Naturalis
Galilei: Sidereus Nuntius
Bacon, R.: Opus Maius
Bacon, F.: Novum Organum
*Kepler: Astronomia Nova
Harvey: Exercitatio de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
Newton: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Berkeley: Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision



Economics:

Xenophon: Oeconomicus
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class
Josef Pieper: Leisure: The Basis of Culture
Keynes: General Theory of Employment
Hayek: The Road to Serfdom

I still need to include everything Chekhov and sooo much more. I've set 2 hours a day just to reading so let's see if I can fit 10-15 works a year. More to come to the journal, just editing the list has given me some relaxation and peace back. Let's see currently reading Hamlet in Russian (to see how it compares to the english version) and also focusing on Russian poetry, which I consider some of the finest. (Next to Italian of course)

But I'm still confused about life.