Having finished, I genuinely believe in occasional deep projects, for a variety of reasons. I offer a wide variety of ideas for proceeding, the mechanics that make it possible. For me, that included physical books, note-taking, weekly writing. I also share how those habits shaped not just my understanding of the texts, but my ability to engage deeply with them. Along the way, I developed better reading and study skills, gained confidence, and discovered unexpected joy, patience, and even peace in sustained intellectual work.

There were highs (Aristotle, Shakespeare, poetry) and lows (a few truly painful reads, and moments of doubt about the project itself). But even the difficult parts proved valuable.

Most of all, this year confirmed something I didn’t fully believe before: reading widely and seriously can change you. Not all at once, but steadily, quietly, and for the better.

The happiest news? This isn’t an end. We are just getting started! Season Three starts May 19.

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Week 52 and, somehow, the end of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities project. We've got time to process all the emotions next week. For now, on to the readings!

This final week brings together a really cool set of 20th and 21st century works—Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Tim O'Brien, the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, and David Foster Wallace—all circling what Gioia calls “untenable situations.” How do you find your way through a problem that seems to have no exit?

Butler’s "Bloodchild" is visceral and unsettling, asking what we owe the people we love.

Didion’s "The White Album" treats memories as snapshots, raising questions about how we make sense of a life at all.

O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried" explores both physical and emotional burdens, especially the pull of home.

The Big Book is strikingly direct: change begins with honest self-confrontation and surrender.

And Wallace—unexpectedly one of my favorites of the whole year—follows a drifting young man who stumbles into meaning, not heroism, but something smaller and real.

Together, they offer a glimpse into what it means to be a modern human. But here's a spoiler: I don't really think it's all that different than it ever was.

Come back next week for the season finale and a wrap-up of the whole project!

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We have a treat this week: My husband Bill read Brave New World shortly after I did, so today we discuss it together!

BNW presents a dystopian world that feels less like oppression and more like a perfectly engineered system. In this world, humans are no longer born but manufactured, sorted into castes, and conditioned for their roles. The goal is “community, identity, stability,” maintained through constant consumption, casual sex, and a drug called soma that keeps everyone comfortably numb.

When Bernard, an uneasy insider, brings John “the Savage” back from a reservation, the cracks begin to show. Raised on The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, John sees what others cannot: a world without family, love, or real freedom.

Huxley’s warns us about seduction. This is a society people don’t resist—because they’ve been trained not to want anything deeper. Which raises the real question: if everything works, what exactly have we lost?

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I begin with Susan Sontag’s famous essay “In Plato’s Cave” from On Photography. Writing in 1972, she asks how photography changes our relationship to memory and experience. At the time, photographs were printed objects. We saved them in albums, books, or wallets. Today we carry thousands in our pockets. If photographs once captured moments, now they seem to overwhelm them.

Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” pushes this further, asking what happens to art when it can be endlessly copied. Photography and film, he argues, transform not just art but perception itself.

Finally, José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses explores the rise of “mass-man”—a culture where opinions are everywhere but the pursuit of truth is optional.

Taken together, these essays were more uncomfortable than I expected: the problems of our modern media world may have been visible long before smartphones, if only we'd paid attention.

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Beauvoir’s The Second Sex asks why “man” is treated as the default while woman becomes the “other,” raising questions that still echo in modern debates about biology, identity, and women’s health. It even makes an appearance with an interaction I had with ChatGPT!

Foucault’s “Eye of Power” examines surveillance and the famous “Panopticon,” showing how systems of observation quietly shape behavior. This is an idea that feels spookily prescient in our world of cameras, cookies, and algorithms.

Finally, René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire and scapegoating offers a striking explanation for why humans compete, blame, and sometimes unite against a chosen victim. Spoiler: I really love Girard.

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We start with a review of myth, fantasy, fairy stories, and magic: why we need them and what purpose they can serve in our lives (aside from being really fun). Kafka’s tragic insect-turned-son is an isolated, powerless creature, unable to find even a way to communicate. Borges dazzles at a remove, writing about books that never existed and worlds that ought to. García Márquez slows us down in Macondo, Colombia, where memory, invention, and the wonder seep into ordinary life.

Together, they sketch the contours of magical realism, worlds where the bizarre is presented as normal and the universe feels just slightly tilted. It’s a genre I love, one that resists strict materialism and invites wonder back into fiction.

And for art? We look at **La Sagrada Familia**—Gaudí’s breathtaking, almost-otherworldly cathedral—an architectural reminder that the strange and the sacred often live side by side.

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1. O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi” (1906): A charming story of love and sacrifice.
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” (1922): Wealth, excess, and a surprising twist.
3. Ernest Hemingway, “The Killers” (1927): Sparse, tension-filled dialogue.
4. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929, excerpt): Challenging, with shifting time and perspective.
5. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1947, excerpt): A powerful sense of invisibility and identity.
6. Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” (1948): Disturbing and unforgettable.
7. Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1955): A Southern Gothic tale with shocking turns.

Together, these works feel spacious, restless, and distinctly American—and they remind me how much more willing I am now to embrace difficult, even strange, books.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for a little Magical Realism.

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What struck me first was Freud’s immense influence. What followed was a growing discomfort with how fully his ideas have saturated modern thought. Freud offers a powerful explanatory system: the division of personality into id, ego, and superego; the dominance of unconscious drives; the reduction of human action to instinct, repetition, and adaptation. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he goes further, proposing forces like the death drive to explain trauma and repetition.

But in explaining so much, Freud seems to make the world smaller. Virtue, meaning, and the idea of an embodied soul quietly disappear, replaced by mechanisms and drives. I’m not convinced we’re better for it—but understanding Freud helps explain the shape of the 20th century itself.

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This week’s readings were Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Woolf was entirely new to me, and her novel took my breath away. Influenced by modern painting, she creates a luminous, fluid narrative that feels like opening your eyes underwater—challenging at first, but deeply rewarding once it clicks. I won’t spoil it. This is a book to discover on your own.

Eliot’s poem, famously difficult, benefited enormously from Mary Karr’s advice: don’t dissect it—let it wash over you. I did. I didn’t fully understand it, but I’m glad I read it.

Make sure to check my Amazon list for that edition with Mary Karr's introduction. It's essential!

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Joyce surprised me—in the very best way. “The Dead” is rich, intimate, and beautifully written, capturing married love, memory, and Dublin itself as if the city were another character. The opening of Ulysses was stranger and more dreamlike, but not impenetrable; I’m no longer afraid of it, even if I’m not sure the whole novel is in my future.

Beckett, on the other hand, infuriated me. Waiting for Godot struck me as deliberately empty, a meditation on meaninglessness that simply wasn’t for me, even while I understand its cultural impact.

This week underscored how much I’ve grown as a reader: more patient, more persistent, and open to genres I never imagined loving. Eight weeks to go—and I’m grateful for every page.

Oh, and the answer to that question? Well, you'll just have to listen to find out.

The beautiful videos can be found in my substack post!

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Douglass’ firsthand account of slavery is harrowing, beautifully written, and unforgettable. From his stolen childhood to his carefully guarded escape, his story exposes not only the cruelty of slavery but its spiritual damage to everyone caught in its system. His reflections on faith, suffering, and corrupted Christianity are especially powerful. This is one book I believe every American should read.

DuBois offers a sociological lens on life after Emancipation—Reconstruction failures, education debates, segregation, and his idea of the “Talented Tenth.” While insightful, his approach felt more theoretical to me than Douglass’ lived experience.

Both are worth reading—but Douglass, especially, will stay with you.

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Flaubert’s short story “A Simple Life,” from Trois Contes, follows the entire life of Félicité, a housemaid whose quiet existence unfolds in a series of small, often bleak episodes. It’s beautifully written but profoundly sad—an example of realism so stripped of meaning that the character almost disappears.

Baudelaire proved even harder for me. Despite repeated attempts (in both English and French), I found Les Fleurs du Mal abrasive rather than illuminating. This week reminded me that this project isn’t about comfort or personal taste—and sometimes, that’s the point.

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Week 41 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities Course made me realize something startling: these books weren't picked for my enjoyment--and yet I loved them anyway. This week’s readings, Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton and the “Overture” to Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, carry us right into the early twentieth century.

I approached James with dread, expecting a slow narrative, but instead I found a moody, infinitely readable novel built around obsession, property, and desire. With a small cast and dialogue-driven scenes, it feels almost theatrical, no surprise since James briefly wrote plays. But it's also chilling in its fixation on “stuff” and ownership. This one was a winner.

Proust, meanwhile, surprised me with prose that felt dreamlike, luminous, and unexpectedly funny. I had expected dense, boring, and pointless--Proust was none of those. The famous madeleine scene becomes a meditation on memory that expands from a sensation as small as a crumb into an entire world.

Though radically different on the surface, James and Proust share a similar impressionistic quality, finding vast meaning in subtle gestures. A brilliant pairing--and a week I adored, even if Ted doesn’t care.

The Housekeeping:

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Tolstoy’s novella, written after his spiritual “conversion,” is a devastating meditation on death, meaning, and self-deception—circular in structure but spiraling ever deeper. It may be the finest short work I’ve read so far. 

Dostoyevsky’s famous parable interrupts the narrative of The Brothers Karamazov to pose unsettling questions about freedom, faith, and institutional power, turning conventional religious assumptions upside down. 

Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil proved the most challenging: dense, contrary, and deliberately destabilizing, it rejects inherited moral frameworks in favor of examining desire, psychology, and power. Together, these works confront the shifting relationship between God, morality, and the modern self—making this one of the most intellectually intense weeks of the project.

We are back next week with French writers who offer a totally different tone. See you soon!

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Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (chapters 1–6) was funny, humane, and immediately engaging. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and “The Raven” used ornate language to heighten unease, while Emily Dickinson’s poems felt weightless and startlingly modern. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was quotable and provocative, if ultimately grating, and Herman Melville surprised me most of all: Bartleby, the Scrivener lingered with quiet power, and the opening of Moby-Dick left me eager for more. 

This week revealed a real shift in voice and sensibility—and changed my mind about American literature. I’m looking forward to going back and reading more, but first we need to move on to Week 40 and Russian Literature!

I thought I knew this one inside out, which was ridiculous because I had never actually read it. (When will I learn?!) This is a punchy little novel, and you can read it aloud over the course of less than a week with your kids. I hope with this episode to offer a little reassurance and inspiration: You can do this, and you'll be so glad you did.

I end with a little discussion of some of the movie adaptations--there are so many! And we will be back next week with Week 39 and a ton of American lit.

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Darwin’s early chapters focus not on sweeping conclusions but on careful observation—natural selection as a real, ongoing process, and the frustratingly blurry boundary between “species” and “variety.” His meticulous attention to detail is both humbling and persuasive, even if the book’s once-shocking claims now feel familiar.

Mill’s On Liberty complements Darwin perfectly by arguing that truth itself depends on open discussion. A society, Mill insists, produces great individuals only when it protects freedom of thought and speech and resists dogma. Read together, these works reveal how revolutionary ideas require not just insight, but a culture willing to debate, question, and change. This week left a lasting impression—and a renewed appreciation for intellectual humility and openness.

We have a special Christmas Episode next week--be sure to check in!

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What was really fun, and unexpected, was how Darcy helped me reclaim my love of this book. I was just getting over my skis!

While I struggled more with the characters than I remembered, Darcy loved Jane in particular. I found that Mrs. Bennet, often dismissed as ridiculous, now struck me as pragmatically rational in a world where marriage determines survival. And the tidy “happily ever after” ending left me missing the moral and emotional complexity I’ve grown used to elsewhere. But for Darcy, it felt like the way the book should end, especially for Jane and Bingley.

I hope you enjoy this conversation half as much as I did!

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The Lizzie Bennett Diaries

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I revisit the Declaration with fresh eyes—its sharp list of grievances and its insistence on mutual respect still sparkle with clarity. The Constitution, shorter than I expected, impressed me with how firmly it centers the individual while still designing a workable government.

From there we move to Marx and Engels, whose Manifesto frames history as a struggle between classes and calls for radical redistribution of power. Finally, I explore Wollstonecraft’s early feminist argument for women’s education and its importance for society’s progress.

Next week: a palate-cleansing turn to Jane Austen. Join me!

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The Preamble, in case you need a refresher!

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That’s the world our poets wrote in. This week I used Pocket Book of Romantic Poetry and read Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats (skipping Novalis and Hölderlin). I loved some poems, disliked others. Blake’s mystical, anti-Christian tone left me cold. Wordsworth’s childhood wonder won me over. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner shocked me--it’s gripping, almost epic. Byron was brilliant, scandalous, and endlessly readable. His Prisoner of Chillon might have been my favorite poem of the week. Shelley felt dreamlike and visionary, while Keats, to me, seemed talented but young. What did the world lose when he died?

Reading these poets in their historical context changed everything. They’re passionate, experimental, and surprisingly radical—not quaint! We are missing out when we resort to tired anthologies to get to know these poets--something that I didn't expect to feel so strongly about! Paired with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and Chopin’s preludes, this week was a revelation.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

That cool Medieval Science Book The Genesis of Science by James Hannam

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Werther himself is…a lot. His passion for Charlotte—who is engaged, then married, to another man—spirals into obsession. When he realizes life without her is unbearable, he stages an elaborate, melodramatic exit: visiting friends for final goodbyes, embracing Charlotte while they read Ossian together (a scene straight out of Inferno’s Francesca and Paolo), and then borrowing her husband’s pistols to kill himself. The ending is bleak, as it should be.

Goethe’s writing is wonderfully accessible, but Werther’s self-indulgent emotionalism reveals the contradictions of early Romanticism: exalting nature and feeling while refusing the grounding work of actual life. Still, this novel opens a door into the powerful reaction against Enlightenment rationalism—a door we’ll walk through next week with the Romantic poets. Things are about to accelerate.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals was another story. Dense and demanding, it centers on the “Categorical Imperative”: act only according to principles you’d accept as universal law. It’s a moral system built purely on duty, not emotion.

Then came Spinoza’s Ethics, written like a geometry proof. His radical idea—that God and Nature are one—left little room for the supernatural or free will.

When reading failed, I turned to the 1987 Great Philosophers series with Brian Magee, which unlocked everything. These thinkers—Continental Rationalists all—believed reason alone could uncover truth, unlike the British Empiricists who demanded evidence. It was a mentally exhausting but fascinating stretch, and next week I’m relieved to return to fiction with Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Before we get to the books, I share some strategies for getting through a book you don't like (because I needed to take my own advice this week). Then we move on to our two books for the week.

In Confession's Book One, Rousseau recounts his early life with all the self-importance of a man convinced he’s unlike anyone else who’s ever lived. Between tragic beginnings, cruel masters, and an overshare about his youthful “discipline” preferences, I found little humility and even less personal growth. Rousseau insists his passions still rule him—no maturity, not even irony, just Rousseau being Rousseau.

Thank goodness we had Voltaire’s Candide, a complete tonal shift. This whirlwind satire—part travelogue, part absurdist adventure—follows Candide and his companions through war, earthquakes, El Dorado, and endless misfortune. Yet beneath the chaos lies a sharp moral insight: life’s purpose isn’t in grand philosophies or endless striving, but in the quiet wisdom to “cultivate our own garden.” The cinematic pacing (that Italo Calvino helpfully points out) is an interesting development, too.

Preachy Rousseau and playful Voltaire were a great combination, and Candide was the clear winner of the two. Candide’s brisk storytelling and biting humor still feel modern, even cinematic. One book made me roll my eyes; the other made me laugh out loud. Next week: Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant—wish me luck.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

First up, The Prince. I had only known it practically caricatured as a manual for ruthless rulers. Instead, I found that Machiavelli offers sharp, almost Aristotelian observations on how power works. Writing amid the chaos of Renaissance Italy — with popes, princes, and mercenaries vying for control — he tries to help leaders (well, Lorenzo di Medici) survive reality, not reinvent it. His advice is startlingly pragmatic: if you must be cruel, do it swiftly; keep the people’s goodwill by leaving their money and families alone; and above all, don’t be hated. Virtue matters less than the appearance of virtue — but even so, he respects human nature enough to work with it rather than against it. For someone with such a bad reputation, he’s refreshingly honest.

Before we move to Rousseau, I spend some time reviewing the Enlightenment: what it was, when it was, and how it changed thinking and therefore every other thing in the world! I think it’s a necessary bridge between these two time periods and books.

On to Rousseau. Two centuries and one worldview later, The Social Contract begins not with observation but with imagination: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau builds an elaborate theory of how people ought to behave, then blames reality when they don’t. His faith in reason and “natural goodness” feels detached from the messiness of human life that Machiavelli understood so well. And by the time he turns his ire on the Church in his final pages, the tone borders on bitter — foreshadowing the excesses of the French Revolution.

After this week, I find myself mourning the grounded wisdom of the Middle Ages. Machiavelli may be cynical, but at least he’s real. Rousseau feels like a man disappointed that humanity refuses to fit his theory.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605) introduces a middle-aged dreamer who decides to become a knight-errant, setting out with his baffled squire Sancho Panza to defend honor and right wrongs. The famous windmill scene is only the start of his misadventures. Quixote is absurd yet strangely noble—so devoted to his ideals that he reshapes reality around them. His neighbors burn his books, a shepherdess defends her independence, and somehow, amid the chaos, it’s all deeply human.

Molière’s Tartuffe (1664) offers lighter, sharper satire. The pious fraud Tartuffe charms his way into Orgon’s household, scheming for both wife and wealth while the women—wife, daughter, and maid—quietly outsmart him. The play’s snappy dialogue and quick pacing make it pure joy, right up until its too-neat royal ending.

Both works explore self-delusion and sincerity, showing how belief, hypocrisy, and humor can coexist. This week’s music—Spanish piano by Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados—was the perfect accompaniment: bright, bold, and unexpected.

We'll be back next week with a look at The Prince (Machiavelli) and The Social Contract (Rousseau). See you then!

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Both were brand-new to me, and both were a delight. Vasari, himself an accomplished painter and architect, profiles the greats—Giotto, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo—not as remote geniuses but as human beings: witty, flawed, brilliant, and endlessly ambitious. His writing reminded me of Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars—a chronicle of greatness, but with warmth instead of gossip. Vasari captures not just the artists but the culture that shaped them: a world where beauty was power, art was currency, and patrons competed to prove their taste and influence.

Each artist glows in Vasari’s telling. Giotto, kind and devoted to the Church; Botticelli, charming and hopeless with money; Leonardo, the restless perfectionist who could give a lizard wings; Raphael, the graceful imitator who died too young; Michelangelo, the divine genius who could never quite trust the world that adored him. Reading Lives left me wondering how Florence could possibly have produced so many masters at once—and wishing we could live, just for a moment, in a world that valued art that deeply.

Then came Benvenuto Cellini, the goldsmith, sculptor, and self-styled rogue whose Autobiography reads like an adventure novel. He’s talented, impulsive, funny, and so honest that you can’t help but like him. Cellini’s stories—his fiery temper, his father’s musical ambitions, his devotion to Michelangelo—make the Renaissance feel wonderfully alive.

This week’s title, “True Colors,” fits perfectly. Vasari and Cellini reveal the true colors of art and ambition—divine inspiration, human pride, and all the messy brilliance in between.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Cervantes and Molière.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

All the video links are available in this Substack Post

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

To start, though, I covered a little of Shakespeare's own history, so that we can better understand what was happening around him as he wrote his plays.

The Henry IV plays are part of Shakespeare’s “Henriad,” tracing Prince Hal’s transformation from tavern-dwelling prankster to King Henry V. Part 1 sets up the tension between fathers and sons — King Henry and Hal, Northumberland and Hotspur — while Falstaff brings both comedy and chaos. I was surprised by how much I loved the histories: the mix of battle and banter, the political drama, and the emotional depth. By Part 2, the story turns elegiac. Henry IV is aging, Hal is ready to lead, and Falstaff’s charm finally wears thin. The final father–son scenes left me sobbing under a tree outside our hotel — Shakespeare reached across 400 years and hit me right in the heart.

Then comes Othello, which could not be more different. Where Falstaff is funny, Iago is chilling. He’s not a misunderstood fool — he’s pure manipulation, the “honest” man who deceives everyone. I was struck by how quickly Shakespeare draws each character: Desdemona’s sweetness, Emilia’s courage, Othello’s nobility. The tragedy lands hard because we believe them all. And even here, amid jealousy and death, Shakespeare finds humor — like a quick, ridiculous debate about national drinking habits.

I watched the Royal Shakespeare Company productions of Henry IV with Anthony Sher’s Falstaff, and they were brilliant — vivid sword fights, excellent pacing, and real warmth. By Othello, I’d developed my ear enough to read without watching.

This project keeps surprising me — and this week, it reminded me why Shakespeare endures. His plays aren’t ancient; they’re alive, human, and heartbreakingly funny.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists and Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

In short, it was almost ZERO.

I tell you this so you can have confidence as you start your own Shakespeare journey. I have been shocked, amazed and gratified at how rewarding the time put in with Shakespeare has been. And now, on to the plays!

This week’s Shakespeare trio is a true mix of tones.

Romeo & Juliet isn’t merely a teen love story—it’s an indictment of a society where everyone stays locked in their roles. No one is evil, yet parents, the Nurse, and Friar Lawrence all fail to act, and two young lives pay the price. Far more than “star-crossed lovers,” it’s a drama of systemic failure that rewards an adult reread.

After four tragedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream felt light and mischievous. Dame Judi Dench as Titania (in the 1960s BBC version) was delightful, though I found myself too drained for full comedy—still, it’s hilarious on stage.

Finally, The Tempest surprised me most: part adventure, part morality play. Prospero’s obsession with magic—and his choice to reclaim true leadership—offers a sharp reminder that power and technology can distract from real responsibility.

Three plays, three moods, and a deeper appreciation for Shakespeare’s range. And we aren't done! Join us next week to finish our Shakespeare trilogy with a couple of histories and the wonderful, tragic, Othello.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

My Romeo and Juliet Movie Pick

My Midsummer Night's Dream Movie Pick

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Shakespeare can be daunting, so I offer a few thoughts on how to approach him:

• Watch a movie FIRST
• Get a good edition (hello, Folger Shakespeare Library)
• Keep a one-line-per-scene summary as you read
• Enjoy!! It will get easier and the plays are so very worthwhile.

Hamlet dazzles with layered characters and razor-sharp language. Prince Hamlet wrestles with grief, revenge, and perhaps madness, while Claudius broods over the cost of his own sin. My own final note: “Everyone dies except Horatio.”

Macbeth feels darker and almost Greek. The witches act as oracles, but Macbeth isn’t their puppet—he chooses evil. Lady Macbeth is more accelerant than mastermind, and the play pulses with ominous energy.

King Lear hit me hardest. Lear is not villainous, just weary and reckless, longing to lay down his burdens—yet no one gets that choice. Dividing his kingdom invites betrayal from his elder daughters and the scheming Edmund, while steadfast Cordelia stands tragically apart. The repeated “nothing” captures the emptiness of abdicated duty.

Together they reveal Shakespeare’s trademarks: sudden madness, clever disguises, and language that still crackles, showing three kinds of downfall—the victim (Hamlet), the villain (Macbeth), and the feckless ruler (Lear).

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

My Hamlet Movie Choice

My MacBeth Movie Choice

My King Lear Movie Choice (Not actually that good but I still think about it)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

• Dante's bravery (or chutzpah!) in writing his poetry and scholarly works in Italian rather than Latin;
• Who Dante is for (spoiler--it's for YOU), and why (the title of this episode is a big hint!);
• How people of different ages see Dante in a different light;
• Why a map of Heaven is really hard to draw, especially compared to Hell and Purgatory.

Jack wrote his thesis on part of Paradiso, and he has a lot of experience in the classroom with the Divine Comedy, so he brings a lot of his knowledge to expand on what we've been talking about for the last two weeks.

This episode forms a kind of trilogy on Crack the Book: two weeks ago we discussed Inferno, and last week my friend Lisa and I covered Purgatorio. It's my hope that these three podcasts will inspire you to pick up your own copy of the Divine Comedy and jump in.

Next week we start Shakespeare...so get ready.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Crack the Book, Inferno Episode

Crack the Book, Purgatorio Episode

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

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Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

We have a wide ranging conversation about translations, "ways in" to the Comedy, and the usefulness of Dante in everyday life. I hope you enjoy this conversation! Links to a few of the resources we discussed are below.

We left Dante and Virgil climbing down Lucifer’s frozen body—and suddenly what was down is now up. They emerge at the base of Mt. Purgatory and climb past shades until reaching its gates in Canto 9, just a quarter of the way into the book. From there, the journey ascends through purgation, penance, and eventual joy. At the summit, Virgil departs, and Beatrice steps in as Dante’s new guide, leading him into the spheres of Paradise and toward the Highest Heaven.

Reading Purgatory quickly has given me a fresh perspective. Unlike Hell’s hostility, the shades here are eager to talk with Dante, sometimes asking for prayers, sometimes simply glad to meet him. Light is everywhere—Dante’s shadow a reminder of the sun, not the flames of Hell. Each sin is purged through fitting penance: the proud bowed low under heavy stones, the slothful running ceaselessly, each step of the mountain carved with examples of virtue--carvings that move!

One highlight: the poet Statius meeting Virgil through Dante’s introduction. One heartbreak: Virgil’s final farewell.

If you missed the first episode about the Divine Comedy, check out "Week 24" for a discussion of Inferno and Dante's Nuovo Vitae. Next week we finish in Paradise with another guest and Crack-the-Book frequent flyer, my son Jack!

This is a year-long reading list from Ted Gioia and his Honest Broker Substack. This is Part 1 of Week 25.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Robin Fitzpatrick's Divine Comedy translation

100 Days of Dante

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

We begin with Dante’s early autobiographical work, the Nuovo Vitae (“New Life”), a short book of prose and poetry reflecting on his youth and his great love, Beatrice. It’s tender, romantic, and surprisingly fun, especially because Dante explains his own poems. For me, it echoed Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy with its mix of prose and verse, but here the focus is entirely on poetry itself.

From there, we step into The Divine Comedy, starting with Inferno. This vast poem of 100 cantos (divided among Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso) is written in tercets, here translated by Mark Musa into smooth iambic pentameter. His translation is highly readable and captures the poem’s rhythm without forcing rhyme.

The journey begins when Dante the Pilgrim finds himself lost “halfway through the journey of our life.” Guided by Virgil, he descends through the nine circles of Hell, encountering mythological figures, historical personages, and unforgettable imagery. The punishments fit the crimes (the doctrine of *contrapasso*): the lustful are blown by winds, fortune tellers walk with twisted heads, flatterers choke forever on filth.

I’ll share tips for reading Dante without getting bogged down: read quickly, jot a one-line summary of each canto, sketch a map of Hell, and above all, focus on Dante’s evolving relationship with Virgil. More than an epic, Inferno is a story of finding yourself in darkness and but not staying there—and having a friend to help you. Next to the Odyssey and the Bible, this is one of the books that merits your effort.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Purgatorio.

LINKS

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

The complete list of Crack the Book Episodes: https://cheryldrury.substack.com/p/crack-the-book-start-here?r=u3t2r

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

When Gioia built his list, he gave himself some rules: keep each week under 250 pages, make it global not just Western, mix in art and music, and move (mostly) in chronological order. I’ve tried to follow his structure, but I’ve also set some rules of my own: stick to the weekly schedule, read hard copies whenever possible, take notes faithfully, and—my personal favorite—skip the introductions until after finishing the book. These boundaries have kept me grounded and helped me push through the tough weeks.

Along the way I’ve discovered a few key tools that make this project work. “Warm-ups” like short lyric poetry before longer epics have been surprisingly helpful in easing into a big text. Good translations (thank you, Penguin Classics) have been essential, while flashy but unreadable editions only get in the way. Writing in my books, flagging footnotes, and taking notes have become indispensable habits. And yes, the occasional YouTube lecture has saved me when I got stuck—no shame in that.

There have been highs: falling in love with epic poetry, discovering Boethius’ *Consolation of Philosophy* with my son, and realizing Aristotle’s *Ethics* was hard but worth it. There have also been lows: weeks that felt too open-ended, a disappointing second half of *Confessions*, and the frustration of wanting more time to chase connections between authors. But even the “hate-reads” (looking at you, Mwindo Epic) have taught me something: knowing why you dislike a book can be as valuable as knowing why you love one.

Most of all, I’ve learned that this project has changed how I read. I’m less afraid of poetry, drama, or “hard books.” I’ve discovered that reading fast has its place, that writing alongside an author can deepen the experience, and that I actually thrive on having a big, purposeful challenge in front of me.

So here I am halfway through, still going strong, and more convinced than ever that the classics have something to offer ordinary readers like you and me. Next week we begin Dante, and I can’t wait.

This is a year-long challenge!

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

This week’s reading was the letters of Peter Abelard and Heloise, a glimpse into one of the most famous love stories of the Middle Ages. Abelard was the leading logician in 12th-century France, at the height of his career, when he fell in love with his brilliant student, Heloise. Their secret affair led to a pregnancy, a clandestine marriage, and eventually Abelard’s castration at the hands of Heloise’s furious uncle. Abelard turned to monastic life, Heloise became an abbess, and the two carried on a remarkable correspondence that reveals their faith, intellect, and conflicted love.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of Abelard. He begins his account by one-upping a friend: “You think you’ve got problems? Listen to mine.” In later letters, he almost calls Heloise a nag and suggests she should be grateful to be an abbess instead of burdened with children. As a wife, mom, and Christian, I found his dismissive view of marriage hard to swallow. And yet, the more I read, the more nuance emerged. Abelard gives thoughtful counsel, treats Heloise as his intellectual equal, and writes powerfully on women’s roles in Scripture.

Heloise’s voice is even more compelling. She never stops loving Abelard, body and soul, and her honesty about desire and devotion is stunning. She also wrestles deeply with how to lead her convent well. Abelard pushes her toward embracing service to God, but it’s clear the struggle was harder for her than for him.

Their letters touch on everything from the Rule of St. Benedict to church politics that nearly destroyed Abelard. By the end, through the testimony of Peter the Venerable, I found myself unexpectedly moved by Abelard too.

To round out the week, I dipped into “Lark in the Morning: The Verses of the Troubadours,” a gorgeous collection of poetry from the same era. This little volume is truly on of the highlights of my library now, and I think everyone should own it! It offers some history as well as beautiful translations of Troubadour poetry. These voices, along with Abelard and Heloise, offer a vivid entry point into the medieval world.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for a halftime review of this reading project.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Sundiata follows a young prince who can’t walk or talk, is exiled, then returns to save his homeland with his griot (advisor and best friend) at his side. I accidentally ordered the children’s edition, but the cut-paper illustrations were gorgeous, and the story had heart. It’s staying on my shelf.

Then came Mwindo. He’s born walking and talking, survives his father’s attempts to kill him, becomes king, and… that’s basically it. No character growth, no larger themes—just the same boast repeated endlessly. The translation is a nightmare: bizarre metaphors (“the anus of a snail”), anatomical oversharing, and footnotes that explain nothing about the culture but plenty about which Swahili word was swapped for “aardvark.” Add in no glossary, no chapters, and sentences that flat-out make no sense, and you’ve got my least favorite reading week so far.

If “epic” means hero’s journey, friendship, or fulfillment, Mwindo is none of the above. It’s childish, thin, and—between the scrotal elephantiasis curses and dietary warnings about bodily fluids—utterly unreadable. I’ve now read 21 weeks of world literature, and this one sits alone at the bottom.

So unless you’re collecting nightmare translations or snail-anus similes, skip Mwindo. I’ll be spending my reclaimed time with Euripides, Chaucer, or Virgil—where the metaphors may be strange, but at least they make sense.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week as we read look at the Letters of Abelard and Heloise and explore poetry in the Troubadour tradition.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Both were new to me, which now feels shocking—how did I miss even a snippet of Chaucer or Arthur in school? Ted’s excerpts kept our reading manageable at about 250 pages total, but I’m glad I didn’t have to choose between them. The shift from Greece and Rome to medieval England was disorienting: the worldview feels earthier, even more “pagan” in spirit, with a Christian overlay steeped in legend.

In The Canterbury Tales (Prologue, Knight’s Tale, Miller’s Tale, Wife of Bath’s Tale), Chaucer’s mastery of distinct voices shone. The Knight’s romantic chivalry contrasted with the Miller’s bawdy humor and the Wife of Bath’s abrasive self-portrait—the first woman narrator we’ve met so far. These tales, rich in character and social observation, left me curious about the medieval English church, its distance from Rome, and the lived faith of ordinary people.

Le Morte D’Arthur surprised me by being harder to read than Chaucer’s verse. Malory’s prison-penned prose follows the Holy Grail quests of Galahad, Perceval, and Launcelot, where success hinges on chastity, humility, and freedom from sin. The Christian themes were far stronger than I expected, yet still tangled in a world of knightly pride and mortal failings. Galahad’s virtue is his power; Launcelot’s moral struggles bring defeat.

This week left me wanting more—more Chaucer, more Arthur, and much more medieval English history. The period feels misty, almost secretive, and I’d like to learn what was happening between Rome’s fall and England’s flowering. Ted’s pick, Beethoven’s late string quartets, proved a thoughtful companion, deserving focused listening in its own right.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Written around 400 A.D., Confessions traces Augustine’s path from pagan philosopher to Christian convert. His story is deeply personal, full of reflection on education, desire, ambition, and the slow turning of a heart toward God.

Highlights from the reading:

• Augustine’s mother, Monica, is a quiet force of grace and persistence. She’s a moving example of faithful motherhood.
• His critiques of education—especially content that stirs up harmful desires—feel surprisingly modern.
• He’s hard on his parents, who overlooked his vices in favor of worldly success. Food for thought for sure!
• His conversion, sparked by Bishop Ambrose and a reading of Romans 13, is profoundly moving.
• The book overflows with Scripture, especially the Psalms, and includes beautiful reflections—like comparing his misuse of gifts to the prodigal son.

The final chapters shift into dense theology and left me missing the warmth of the earlier story. Still, the first nine books are extraordinary.

Music this week: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion—challenging, but deeply beautiful.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

I also tried a technique I’ve used before: reading both texts in tandem, switching back and forth every few sections. The hope was to let the texts “talk” to each other. While the Gita turned out to be far more cohesive than I expected, the method still worked; it helped me reflect more deeply and spot some surprising resonances.

The Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu sacred text, is a dialog between Krishna and the warrior Arjuna, who is paralyzed by moral doubt on the battlefield. Krishna urges him to act according to his dharma—his essential nature and duty—without attachment to outcomes. It’s a powerful reflection on purpose, identity, and spiritual freedom. And despite some troubling implications about who gets access to enlightenment, it’s my favorite of all the Eastern texts so far.

Meanwhile, Benedict’s Way offered a glimpse into monastic—and any kind of communal— life centered on humility, community, and attentiveness to God and neighbor. It’s full of practical, humane wisdom, from leadership advice to a firm stance on not grumbling.

Together, these texts suggest that joy, discipline, and love of the divine aren’t exclusive to one tradition. And both offer something compelling for modern life.

This is a year-long reading project! Next week: Augustine’s Confessions. (Spoiler: it’s so good.)

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Interview with Jonathan Haidt and Jordan Peterson

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Once in the king’s bedchamber, her sister (it’s kind of complicated) asked for a story. Scheherazade spun a tale but ended it at a cliffhanger. The king, wanting to hear the end of the story, decided to let her live and bring her back for a second night. With stories that included Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin, Scheherazade lived a thousand and one (and more) nights.

The actual stories are collected from around the 8th century until the 13th, from Persia and India predominantly. They were translated into English around the 17th century. I’d imagine that the exotic stories captivated European audiences!

For me, the experience of reading the stories was similar to reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The stories are fun, and very interesting—I loved some of them, especially the seven voyages of Sinbad. But when I say they didn’t leave a mark, I just don’t think I’ll take a lot from this week’s reading. I didn’t find any of them to demonstrate particular lessons, to teach virtues or make some kind of grand statement about the human condition. They were really fun, and I will definitely keep this book around because it is terrific bedtime reading. That’s not a terrible thing to say about a book.

A year ago I read the wonderful Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, about a little Iranian boy who emigrates to Oklahoma with his mom and brother. There are vignettes in which the author directly references these stories, related as a way for him to hold onto his Persian heritage. I do think I’ll go back and reread that one, just because I really loved it and would like to be able to know it a little better. Now that I’ve read Arabian Nights, that should be easy.

LINK

Daniel Nayeri, author of Everything Sad is Untrue

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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Unlike Aristotle’s structured tragedy guidelines (see Week 5's Poetics), The Golden Ass defies unity of action, place, and time, weaving a tapestry of digressions and sub-stories. Lucius’ transformation serves as a spine for tales like “I heard…” or “So they told me…,” echoing the nested narratives of The Odyssey and The Aeneid. The standout sub-story is the myth of Cupid and Psyche, the earliest known version, which stunned us as the inspiration for C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. Its late appearance for a myth feels significant, reflecting a decadent, fatigued Roman worldview. Fortune, personified as in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, reappears, underscoring this era’s preoccupations.

Sarah Ruden’s translation is a triumph, preserving Apuleius’ puns, alliteration, and bawdy humor. This farce, second only to Lysistrata in humor, is delightfully NSFW, with outrageous scenes that shocked even our son Jack. Ruden notes comparisons to modern humorists like Wodehouse or George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series, and we see parallels to Forrest Gump—Lucius stumbles through events without driving the plot. The book’s influence extends to A Confederacy of Dunces, sparking new reading threads for us, exactly why we joined this course.

We paired this with Scott Joplin’s ragtime, evoking The Sting’s lively vibe. Initially, the rags blended together, but subtle differences, like occasional piano percussion, emerged over time, enriching our listening. Next week, we continue with more narrative, music, and art, including Vincent van Gogh’s works, in this eclectic journey.

Join us next week as we travel east and read The Arabian Nights.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

O Brother Where Art Thou

Circe

Ragtime (The Sting, YouTube)

Young Gun Silver Fox

Ted's "New" Yacht Rock post

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Before we start, though, we talk about graduation speeches...and share the graduation speech we wish we'd heard.

Next, we journey from Western literature back to ancient China to explore two timeless texts: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (c. 500 B.C.) and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (c. 400 B.C.), roughly contemporary with Confucius and Plato. After a lukewarm experience with Confucius’ Analects in Week 4, we adjusted our approach to these aphoristic works, splitting each into five parts and interleaving them daily. While this didn’t make reading easier, it encouraged comparisons between the two.

The Tao Te Ching offers a serene philosophy of “the Way,” advocating a life of detachment and flow, like a leaf on a stream. Key insights include prioritizing essence over form (e.g., the space within walls over the walls themselves), embracing hands-off leadership, and avoiding rules or weapons that may incite vice or war. But it's passive: retreating rather than advancing in the face of evil feels challenging, especially compared to active resistance like Gandhi’s. The Tao’s detachment felt isolating, distinct from the interconnected self-emptying of the Dhammapada or Boethius’ Christian-Stoic blend.

In contrast, The Art of War is a ruthless manual of military strategy. Sun Tzu, who famously beheaded two concubines to prove his methods to King Ho Lu, emphasizes deception, swift victory, and avoiding prolonged conflict. Key takeaways: defensive measures prevent defeat but don’t ensure victory; desperate soldiers fight hardest; and spies are a humane, cost-effective tool. We ponder the status of Sun’s soldiers (free or enslaved?), recalling Herodotus’ Spartan-Persian debates on free men’s ferocity. The texts seem to clash: the Tao’s passivity versus Sun’s calculated control, though Sun’s strategic setups might align with the Tao’s inevitable flow.

We noted a cultural contrast: Chinese texts lack the narrative epics of Western heroes like Odysseus or Gilgamesh, hinting at differing worldviews. Unlike Confucius’ moral focus, neither text emphasizes goodness, which surprised us. Our Tao edition (Stephen Miller’s) felt overly modernized, while our unannotated Art of War was dry but tactically insightful, especially for business or military studies. Pairing it with Herodotus or Machiavelli could be illuminating.

Don't skip the music! Three albums each from the Beatles and The Rolling Stones...when was the last time you listened to one all the way through?

Next week, we return to narrative with Apuleius’ Golden Ass, explore Scott Joplin’s ragtime, and admire van Gogh’s art.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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LISTEN

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Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Written in a cell awaiting death, The Consolation of Philosophy is a profound dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy. Divided into five books, it blends prose (prosa) and poetry (metrea), offering wisdom through a narrative arc. Book One introduces Boethius’ despair; Book Two explores Fortune’s fickleness; Book Three seeks the highest Good; Book Four tackles the problem of evil; and Book Five reconciles divine foreknowledge with free will. The poems, rich with mythological and Biblical imagery, provide emotional breaks and reinforce the prose’s insights. As C.S. Lewis noted, this work was beloved by educated Europeans for centuries.

Boethius weaves Neoplatonism, Stoicism, and Aristotelian ideas into a Christian framework. Lady Philosophy echoes Plato’s belief in innate knowledge, urging Boethius to “dream of your origin,” and champions philosopher-kings. Stoic themes emerge as she declares the mind free despite bodily exile, while Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover aligns with Boethius’ God. The concept of exile as a spiritual crisis resonates, connecting Boethius to figures like Odysseus and Dante.

Jack and I discuss whether this is a satire, and how much both of us love Boethius as a character in his own novel.

The Ignatius Press edition, translated by Scott Goins and Barbara Wyman, shines with clear prose, excellent footnotes, and quality paper—perfect for annotating. This book demands a reread and sparks a reading list including Chaucer, Milton, and C.S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image. Join us! I think this book is for everyone, but even if you think, "Maybe not for me," you'll know what it's about and why it matters.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Sun Tzu's The Art of War and The Tao Te Ching from Lao Tzu.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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LISTEN

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Key Discussion Points:

• Virgil’s The Aeneid (Robert Fagles’ Translation): Written between 29–19 BCE, The Aeneid serves as Rome’s foundational epic, modeled on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Book 1 opens with Aeneas, a Trojan survivor, shipwrecked on Carthage’s shore due to Juno’s interference, meeting Queen Dido, an exile from Tyre. Book 2 recounts Troy’s fall, including the Trojan Horse stratagem and Aeneas’ escape with his father Anchises and son Ascanius, losing his wife Creusa. The text emphasizes Aeneas’ pietas (duty to gods, family, state). Divine rivalries, notably Juno’s grudge from the Judgment of Paris and Venus’ protection of Aeneas, drive the narrative. The Fagles translation includes maps and a glossary for accessibility.
• Ovid’s Metamorphoses (David Raeburn’s Translation): Composed around 8 CE, Metamorphoses is a 15-book poem chronicling transformations from creation to Ovid’s era. Book 1 covers the creation of the cosmos from Chaos, the division into four elements (fire, water, earth, air), and humanity’s decline from the Golden to Iron Age. It includes a flood narrative with Deucalion and Pyrrha and the story of Io, transformed into a cow by Jupiter to evade Juno. The Raeburn edition organizes vignettes with titled sections for clarity.
• The Portable Roman Reader (Basil Davenport, Ed.): Published in 1951, this anthology includes poetry from Rome’s Republic, Augustan, and later Empire periods. Catullus (c. 60s–50s BCE) offers direct, personal verses, translated by Byron. Horace (65–8 BCE) writes complex, philosophical odes, less accessible due to style. Martial (c. 38–104 CE) provides epigrams on public life, including two elegies for a deceased young girl. Davenport’s notes contextualize each era, and the anthology features prose by Livy, Caesar, and Tacitus for future study.
• Contextual Notes: The texts reflect Rome’s engagement with Greek literary traditions, adapting gods’ names (e.g., Hera to Juno) and themes. The course’s schedule prioritizes rapid coverage to identify key works and connections.

Takeaways:

I loved this week so much! It felt great to come "home" to Rome. I've got specific ideas about how to approach each of these books, but in my opinion they are all worth the time for certain people.

The music was gorgeous, arias and overtures from Puccini and Verdi! You must listen...check out my link below. And the cave paintings were worth examining as well, especially the handprints from Indonesia. See that link below, too.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for WHATEVER IS NEXT

LINKS

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Spotify Play List of Puccini and Verdi without words

Cave Paintings

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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LISTEN

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Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

The Quran portrays Allah as focused on division between believers and unbelievers, with frequent mentions of hell for those lacking faith. Submission to Allah’s will is paramount, and praying toward Mecca symbolizes spiritual alignment and community unity. The text excludes Jews from Abraham’s promise if they do wrong, though some verses suggest salvation for believers, possibly including Jews and Christians. Jesus is depicted as a prophet, not divine, contrasting Christian beliefs. Allah seems to emphasize punishing unbelievers, with hell referenced often, and fasting is highlighted as a path to righteousness, noted during Ramadan.

Familiar Biblical stories—Cain and Abel, Joseph, Moses—appear but differ from their older Genesis versions. Joseph, for example, is nearly perfect in the Quran, unlike the flawed figure in the Bible. The origins of these variations remain unclear after online research. Some Quranic verses, like “God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity” (Surah 2:286), contrast with Christian teachings, such as Galatians 6:2’s call to “bear one another’s burdens.”

Rumi’s poetry feels modern and dreamlike but elusive compared to upcoming Roman poets. Plans are in place to revisit Rumi when studying Dante, a contemporary. The Quran was read on a Kindle (Clear Quran translation), which hindered the experience due to reliance on spatial memory for physical books, making note-taking and recall difficult. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music and Islamic architecture were briefly explored but felt overwhelming. Next week’s reading covers Virgil’s Aeneid (Books 1 and 2), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 1), and selections from Horace, Catullus, and Sulpicia in Davenport’s Portable Roman Reader, with Verdi and Puccini arias and cave art.

LINKS

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Rumi's Poems

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

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LISTEN

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Suetonius, born around 70 AD to a Roman knight family, organizes the book into twelve biographies, which I've listed here for easy reference:

• Julius Caesar
• Augustus
• Tiberius
• Caligula
• Claudius
• Nero
• Galba
• Otho
• Vitellius
• Vespasian
• Titus
• Domitian.

Notably, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, from the chaotic years of 68-69 AD, were barely recognized as emperors. Each biography sketches the ruler’s family background, reign, military campaigns, and personal habits, with Suetonius excelling in the juicy details of their excesses. His vivid prose, like describing Caligula as transitioning from “emperor” to “monster,” reveals the depravity of unchecked power—think murders, incest, and shocking debauchery.

The book’s strength lies in its storytelling, but its darkness—wanton death, sexual depravity, and a lack of heroism—can be exhausting. The Roman people’s hope for better rulers is repeatedly dashed, as seen when Caligula’s assassination leads to Claudius, another cruel leader. The complex web of intermarriage and adoptions among the Julio-Claudians is dizzying, with family trees barely helping. Economically, Suetonius notes rising “value” in Roman real estate under Julius Caesar, missing that this was inflation driven by reckless state spending, a recurring issue that strained the empire and its people.

Suetonius’ perspective, shaped by living through Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian’s reigns, adds depth, though his distance from earlier emperors allows for embellishment. This week's music was Mozart’s symphonies 39-41, sweetness and light compared to Rome’s darkness.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for the Koran and the poems of Rumi.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

I misspoke! Gates of Fire was written by Steven Pressfield, not Victor Davis Hansen. Sorry about that!

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This week, I consider the Stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Epictetus’ Enchiridion, part of Ted Gioia’s Humanities List (link below!). Moving from Greek dramas to 2nd-century Roman Stoics, we first talk about the move from Greek lit to Roman, how the mindset and history will impact what we read. I cover Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus in depth, mention Admiral Stockdale (a modern Stoic) and end the episode with Rudyard Kipling's poem "If."

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations

Meditations, the private journal of a Roman emperor, emphasizes self-focus, humility, and inner peace. Key takeaways include:

• Focus on your own mind and skills, not others’ actions or opinions.
• Embrace nature to cultivate curiosity and appreciation for the world.
• Accept life’s brevity and smallness, acting virtuously without expecting rewards.
• Find peace within, not in external escapes like vacation homes.
• Hold pleasures loosely to achieve contentment in the present moment.
• I note the surprising modernity of Aurelius’ advice but question its contradictions, like the futility of life versus the call to virtue.

Epictetus’ Enchiridion

Epictetus, a former slave turned philosopher, offers a direct, practical guide in The Enchiridion. I prefer Epictetus’ straightforward style, finding it more relatable than Aurelius’ introspections. Highlights include:

• Distinguish what harms the body from what affects the will—Epictetus’ own lameness adds poignancy to this teaching.
• Know your limits and operate fully within them, committing wholeheartedly to your purpose.
• Avoid excess in speech, laughter, or indulgence, embracing simplicity.
• Consider the parallels to Biblical teachings like Colossians 3:17.

Reflections and Challenges

I don't love Stoicism, as I think it sacrifices deep love and beauty. But there's no doubt that its ideals have a place in society--Stockdale and Kipling both reflect that. Translation struggles (George Long’s arcane 1877 version versus Gregory Hays’ readable Meditations) and time management issues due to travel delayed this week’s reading. Classical music (Haydn’s Symphonies 45, 94, and 104) enriched the experience, though I skipped the art.

What’s Next

Next week, I explore Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars with Mozart’s symphonies and Italian art by Botticelli and Caravaggio. Subscribe to follow the journey!

LINKS

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Haydn's Surprise Symphony

Admiral James Stockdale

Spencer Klavan (Modern Classicist)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Reading a familiar text in a bigger reading list like this offers its own special challenges. I start with a little insight about what to do when that happens.

I think the best way to talk about these very familiar books is to take them one at a time. Then I have some thoughts about translations (again) and reading in general. 

Genesis: This is a much longer book than you think! The story starts out very broad and then narrows to tell how God decides to work through a man named Abram. We then see how God continues to work through now-Abraham’s family, through Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. None of these men are perfect, or even very heroic except possibly Joseph, but God uses them anyway. Genesis is different than the other very old texts (religious and otherwise) we’ve read in this schedule, and it’s certainly quite different than the Greek philosophy. We see a God who is personal and emotional, capable of anger and also great love, and who is both all-powerful and yet interested in every individual in the entire world.

Ecclesiastes: This is a poem of sorts, and you definitely know part of it because of the Byrds’ “Turn Turn Turn.” The main character, the Preacher (likely King Solomon), reflects at the end of his days on “What’s it all for?” He never settles on a real answer but reflects on how to live, so in its themes it is a lot more like Plato or Aristotle. It’s not didactic like Confucius’ Analects. It feels a lot more like the Dhammapada, but less fatalistic and actually lovelier in its construction. I think the weariness of Ecclesiastes speaks to the human condition, common across time and geography.

Matthew: The first Gospel opens with Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph, and I think Matthew’s emphasis as he relates the story of Jesus’ life is on the fact that the very people who should have been most willing to hear the message did not. Matthew is rooted in Jewish scripture, continually quoting prophets as he relates Jesus’ ministry. The book starts with three chapters known as the Sermon on the Mount, which is harder to read straight through than I expected. It is a lot of sayings and aphorisms, not a lot of story, and you know by now how I feel about that. The book then moves into more narrative as the miracles increase in type and scope, leading to the crucifixion. The teachings from Jesus and Matthew’s own writing are aimed squarely at the Jewish leaders here, pointing out what they are missing and their refusal to see Jesus for who he is.

Mark: This is the shortest Gospel, and I also think of it as the “immediately” Gospel. Mark uses that word at almost every transition from one scene to another, and it makes the book feel very action-oriented. I felt like Mark was sitting with me saying, “Let me tell you what happened!”

Luke: Luke is not an eyewitness at all, and even opens the book up saying he has talked to lots of people so he can get an accurate history put down. Luke's always been my favorite for a variety of reasons...

John: But I was wrong. John is the single best piece of writing I have read so far in this program. It is amazing. The entire book is crafted beautifully, and it’s now my favorite Gospel. Also, it has the very best ending you could hope for. Read it.

Romans: Okay, full disclosure, my Bible study group is doing Romans this year, walking slowly through Paul’s longest letter. Coming to Romans after the previous readings, I was absolutely struck by the vigor of Paul’s writing. It’s energetic, masculine, wide-ranging and urgent. It is deeply personal in a way that none of the previous readings were. I loved reading it in one big chunk and offer reflections on how much I learned this time through Romans. But I will also fight anyone who says Paul didn’t study Aristotle!

I reflect a little on the music, Wagner, and mourn the loss of Warner Brothers cartoons in our world! And then in my culture update, it's a little good and a little BAD.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week as we shift our attention to Rome and the Stoics.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

The book The Red Tent

The movie Tokyo Cowboy

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Ted listed SIX Greek dramas for this week: Bacchae (Euripides), Lysistrata (Aristophanes), Agamemnon (Aeschylus), and the three Theban plays from Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Oedipus in Colonus and Antigone.

We discuss how to read drama in general. I tried to read a little bit of background on each play before I dove in. One thing that’s easy to forget with Greek drama is that the audience didn’t have any spoilers; they knew all of these stories really well. They were there to see HOW it came together. That meant that some of the plot gets treated with shorthand in some ways. 

I tried to figure out the major players, and how they might have interacted with characters I had met elsewhere. It’s astonishing how all of these characters are connected by one or two degrees of separation. Bill and I joke that it feels exactly like when we moved to Charleston a couple of years ago. I swear that every person we meet knows someone else we know through one or two people. It’s the strangest thing, and Greek drama is exactly like that.

I also flag my books like crazy: one flag for the cast of characters; one for the endnotes; one for a map, even if it’s in a different book. As a matter of fact, my Fagles translation of the Odyssey came in handy this week. Not only are there some great maps, there is also a glossary of all the proper names in the Odyssey. Many, many of the characters I came across this week also put in an appearance in the Odyssey.

Finally, I kept a brief “plot summary” of each play as I read. Only Bacchae was divided into scenes, but for each play I tried to keep a brief synopsis of the action as I read. This kept me from mixing up characters too much, and also it helped me to get an idea of how the various stories fit together. 

In addition, I read out loud occasionally, especially if I found myself alone in the house. It’s easy to lose the thread of some of these long passages, especially where the chorus has an extended explication of action taking place off stage. Reading out loud helped me capture the rhythm of the language and also the drama of it in a way that reading silently could never do.

I started with Euripedes’ Bacchae, translated by Paul Woodruff. To be honest, half the reason I bought this edition was that it had Elvis on the cover as Dionysus! Not long after the founding of Thebes, Dionysus appears to bring his cult to the city. Dionysus is a son of Zeus but also the grandson of the founder of Thebes, Cadmus. Dionysus’ cousin Pentheus is now king, and he refuses to acknowledge the god-status of Dionysus. Let’s just say Pentheus regretted that decision. This play was shockingly brutal to me, even though all the violence always takes place off-stage in a Greek drama. There are ideas of redemption, and lack of it, woven throughout the play. Bacchae left me curious about anything related to the practice of the cult of Dionysus. Apparently the rites were so secret that nothing, not one thing, survives to help us understand what they did.

Next I read Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. This is a comedy, truly a farce, whose entire plot revolves around the women of Greece coming together to deny all their men sex so they will quit fighting with each other. It is hilarious, and I’d love to see this one performed live. I love a good marriage quote:

“No man can live a happy life unless his wife allows it.”—Aristophanes

Happily, I bought an edition of Lysistrata that also had three other plays translated by Aaron Poochigian. Clouds, in particular, is a send-up of Socrates and that one is definitely on my to-read list! Also, it was fun to see Aristophanes again after meeting him in Symposium. His argument for love was the idea of “you complete me,” so it was interesting to think about that in light of all of the marriage talk here.

Agamemnon was next, by Aeschylus. Here’s where things took a more serious turn. I feel like Aeschylus grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Agamemnon was the king of Argos who sailed off to Troy to help his brother Menaleus take back Menaleus’ wandering wife Helen. When he showed back up in Argos after a decade, his wife carried out the murder plot she had had ten years to perfect. This play is so dark, so full of blood guilt and pain and anger, you just can’t look away. Is there such a thing as guilt that a family can’t erase? Where does devotion to a god cross paths with family love and loyalty, and can anyone win? This is the first play of the Oresteia trilogy (or “cycle”) in which Clytamnaestra and Agamemnon’s son Orestes also is a hero. Here’s an idea for an aspiring novelist: write a novel about the Murdaugh murders, but based on the Oresteia cycle. I’m not smart enough but I will definitely read that! As far as future reading, I’m definitely returning to find out more about Orestes.

For this play and the three from Sophocles I read the towering Fagles translations. It’s not that I’ve become an expert, but even with my little bit of reading I’m starting figure out what I like in a translation, and for now, for me, it’s Robert Fagles all the way. 

Finally, I read the Sophocles plays set in Thebes: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Before I read these plays, I only knew about Oedipus from our friend Sigmund Freud and the Oedipus complex. Now I feel kind of mad at Dr. Freud, honestly, because the truth of Oedipus is nothing like the salacious diagnosis. These plays were dark, but not howling in anger like Clytemnaestra in Agamemnon. The ideas of blood guilt remain—can a family undo the dark sins of an earlier generation, or are they doomed to carry out the devastation begun by someone else? Can there be redemption? (I think that the idea of redemption like we Christians think of it is far from Greek ideals.) Can the Fates turn kind? I can’t even describe how much I enjoyed these plays, if “enjoy” also includes crying over the scene where Oedipus tells his daughters goodbye, and being furious at what a total jerk Creon is. Of the three, I particularly loved Oedipus at Colonus.

If there is any small part of you that wonders if you can do this, you CAN. And it’s absolutely worth the effort.

Music this week was Early Blues. We looked at Greek pottery for art. Links are below.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for seven books of the Bible. If you've never read it or read it a hundred times, you will get something out of next week's episode.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Oedipus at Colonnus (YouTube)

Greek Pottery

Blind Willie Johnson (Spotify)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

This week’s reading was the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Somehow I did not get Ted’s recommended translation by Susan Hollis. Instead, I had the gigantic and very, very beautiful reproduction of the complete Papyrus of Ani. This edition had a huge influence on my week "in" Egypt.

The Book of the Dead isn’t really one book; at the time of its writing (around 1300 BC) it was common to have a papyrus scroll of spells and directions placed in the coffin with the deceased. In this case, the priest Ani had died and this is his scroll. There have been many such scrolls, and pieces of scrolls, found in various tombs across Egypt. Each section of the scroll contains a text that has, for modern purposes, been called a chapter. Many scrolls have many “chapters” in common, but so far no scroll has all of them. On top of that, the chapters can be in any order. 

The chapters (are they prayers? Spells? Opinions seem split.) are, for the most part, pretty obscure. We spend some time reading excerpts, just to get a sense of them. There really isn’t a description of how a person might become “spiritualized” or “pure.” Everything is instruction for the dead in the afterlife.

Here are a few more thoughts about this reading. It might seem a little random, but this reading felt a little random, too:

• Until the Rosetta Stone was found in 1820, the text was completely unknown. The guess was that it was a book of wisdom similar to our Bible. That’s actually completely wrong—none of it is oriented toward the living. The text is all about the god Osiris, who was murdered, mourned and buried. Later myths tell of Osiris’ resurrection. The vignettes are personalized, in this case for the priest Ani (and his wife Tutu).
• Burials apparently re-enacted the death of Osiris in ritual form, delivering the deceased to the point of the weighing of the heart. There are prayers to open the deceased’s mouth, ears, and eyes in the afterlife, because all of these would be necessary to live there. There is debate whether the myth created the ritual, or did the burial ritual arise first, with the myth developing around it later to explain the actions? It’s interesting to me that we can’t know based on what the Egyptians left behind.
• Judgment in the afterlife is the literal weighing of the deceased’s heart against a feather! (I would definitely not pass.) The feather is called a ma’at, and is “Truth” or “Rightful Order.” If you are found to have a light heart, you can pass to the good afterlife, the Field of Reeds.
• The heart is the single most important part of a person, living or dead. It’s the engine of the body and the seat of both emotions and intelligence. In the afterlife it was very important not to lose your heart, even though it was now outside of your body thanks to the mummification process.
• The Egyptians saw death as the confrontation with nonexistence and irrationality. The goal of weight your heart was to travel as an akh, in the sun and in order. The Book of the Dead is a guide to thwart the chaos of the universe, and even the gods had to contend with that disorder.
• Words, images and reality were a unity in Egyptian thought. The images in the scrolls function as text, and all of it is real. In drawing or writing things, they take on reality. In fact, this was why defacing the name of a king would be regarded as a capital crime; it was no better than assaulting or murdering the king himself.
• Many gods are represented by animal faces or body parts. Interestingly, this wasn’t meant to communicate actual appearance, but to connote the attributes of that animal with that god. 

I’m coming away from this week with a new regard for the difficulty that Egyptologists have in interpreting the texts. There is still simply so much we don’t know. In fact, the translations themselves are quite difficult because of the way the language is structured, up to and including the direction of the writing on the scroll.

I’m also coming away with a sense of the weirdness of lots of beliefs. I know that is just a very Western-centric attitude, but maybe I can explain it further. The world is just a lot weirder than we want to think about. There is even a god who was praised because she was a “licker,” something I have never heard before, and the Egyptians had a Celestial Cow. I have loved this reading project for introducing me to things I had no idea of.

I’m interested in looking at some Egyptian artifacts in real life. One benefit of having these beautiful color plates in my book was that I spent a long time looking at the details of the papyrus, at the various dress of people in vignettes, trying to identify the gods from one page to the next. It was a very interesting exercise and I’d love to compare what I looked at on these pages to a sarcophagus or papyrus in a museum.

We listened to some music from Youssou N'Dour, and those links are below.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for seven books of the Bible. If you've never read it or read it a hundred times, you will get something out of next week's episode.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Egyptian Art

The Michael C. Carlos Museum (mentioned--you should go!)

Music of Youssou N'Dour

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

This week I tackled the Epic of Gilgamesh and also The Dhammapada. Gilgamesh was written in approximately 2000 BC, the oldest known story in the world, and is about 1500 years older than anything I’ve read to date. The Dhammapada is the oldest writings of the Buddha, from approximately 450 BC, which is a lot more in line with some of the other things I’ve been reading. I think it’s important to note the relative ages of these works and know how they fit together.

Gilgamesh was an actual, historical king of a Mesopotamian city called Uruk, around 2750 BC. The poem tells the story of how he angers the gods and then makes a best friend from a former wild man, Enkidu. They go rampaging, killing beasts for the sport of it, and that angers the gods. Enkidu is cursed and falls ill. When he dies, Gilgamesh is heartbroken and goes in search of a cure for his own mortality. He fails in that quest. Here are a few of my take-aways:

• The style of writing feels extraordinarily primitive to me. There is something very, very basic about the story, and many times it feels like it’s written with the mindset of a sixth grade boy: lots of graphic talk about sex and body parts, and lots of bloody killing. Until the last part, there wasn’t much nuance and there wasn’t a lot of reflection on anyone’s part.
• The Flood story is well-described here, lending credence to an actual, world-changing flood taking place at some point in history. The narrative of it is very interesting, especially the description of a square “boat” constructed and filled with pairs of animals.
• Book X is much more thoughtful than earlier sections. Gilgamesh is mourning his dead friend, searching for ways that he himself might become immortal. But the only immortal human tells him:

Humans are born, they live, then they die, this is the order that the gods have decreed. But until the end comes, enjoy your life, spend it in happiness, not despair. Savor your food, make each of your days a delight, bathe and anoint yourself, wear bright clothes that are sparkling clean, let music and dancing fill your house, love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace. This is the best way for a man to live.

• And that’s what it comes down to. Man will always and forever struggle with his mortality. We have and we will. The oldest and most enduring story is about the oldest and most enduring question.
• There is just not a lot of man-woman romance in these old stories. Only Penelope and Odysseus come to mind in the last few weeks. Here, Enkidu is seduced by the temple prostitute but there’s not much more mention of women than that. I was actually surprised to see a wife mentioned in the quote above!

The Dhammapada reminded me very, very much of The Analects of Confucius (Week 4). Books of aphorisms are very hard to read in big chunks, as I’ve already noted. It’s more a matter of scanning, trying to see how things fit together, if there are over-arching themes. I have a few thoughts here as well:

• Some of these sayings of Buddha are good sense, and we saw them in Confucius, and we see them in Proverbs. A wrongly-directed mind will do to you far worse than any enemy; a rightly-directed one will do you good.
• All the talk of “emptying” and forgetting the self is bleak to me. It’s a completely different mindset from the Greek philosophy I’ve read until now. It’s not Stoic; it’s a kind of blankness, a rejection of self but not an embrace of anything else as far as I can tell. 

Reading the Dhammapada leaves me feeling very sad, to be honest. I’ve shared before that I’m a Christian, and I’ve read the Bible a pretty fair amount. There are painful parts to it, but there is also extreme joy. The goal of the Buddha seems to be an evenness to life, a flattening out. Maybe the beauty of the Advent season as it turns to the joy of Christmas was what I reacted to, but I don’t think Buddhism is for me at all. The Dhammapada goes in the “Okay, read that one, check” box, and it hasn’t inspired any further reading from me. Curiosity about the culture? Maybe. But in a world where there are so many things to read, at least I can say “no, thank you” to this.

This is a year-long reading project! Next week we are on to the Egyptian Book of the Dead--it's going to be amazing.

The music selections this week are varied and I’m excited about them, too: choral music from William Byrd, Handel’s Messiah (my fave), Tallis’ Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the Byrd’s Turn, Turn, Turn. For art, it’s all things Michelangelo. A big, juicy week ahead for sure.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

Mesopotamian Art

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

An interesting combination this week. Ted Gioia, the creator of my reading list, called it “Love and War,” but it felt like a lot more than that. And last week, I called it a hodgepodge, but I can admit I was wrong.

Plato’s Symposium is the third of Plato’s works on this list. After wrestling with Ethics in particular last week, I was happy to get back to my friend. Symposium is written as a dialogue among friends, recalled by one who wasn’t there, a little like the game of “Telephone” we’e all played. The friends’ topic? Love, specifically eros. Given that this is upper-class Ancient Greece, there is a significant discussion of love between men; honestly romantic love between men and women is practically ignored. 

The reading plan only covered a few portion of Herodotus’ Histories, Books 1 and 6-8. For full disclosure, I did NOT complete the reading but stopped with Book 7. In my edition of Histories the assigned books were more than 350 pages and I simply ran out of time. If I had done all the reading this week I would have been around 430 pages! Given that I “signed up” for about 250 pages per week, I had to stop. Confession time over.

As always, I have so many, many thoughts about these works. For Symposium, I summarized each person’s eulogy as a way to get my hands around the text. A few ideas:

• Obviously Love held an important place in the lives of Greeks. This entire dialogue is centered around it, but it doesn’t look like love in many ways. I’m accustomed to thinking of love as wanting and being willing to work for the best of your beloved, and that being mutual. That desiring “for” someone else, rather than merely desiring them, was absent at least as far as I could see.
• There are a number of points made about Love as the dialogue progresses, and they definitely don’t agree. As always, you’re left to parse out the better and worse arguments. 
• “You complete me” (yes, Jerry Maguire) makes an appearance! That attitude has been around a looooong time. Aristophanes tells a long and pretty funny tale about how human beings were at one time two-headed, eight-limbed creatures, but when Zeus got mad and split everyone in two. Now we go around looking for our other half.
• Does Love motivate us to honor? What kind of Love would do that? Or maybe Love is a moderating force? (I found that a weak argument.) Is its purpose beauty? Those are all offered as arguments, and all are rejected by Socrates. 
• Socrates, via his mentor Diotima, argues that Love’s purpose is procreation. As someone who has actually been pregnant several times, I found Socrates’ discussion of pregnancy to be uncomfortable, to say the least. 
• There is a ton of homoerotic talk, especially from Socrates and Alcibiades. It is just so strange to me that there is virtually no discussion of love between men and women, but tons between older and younger men. As usual, my bias shows, but it’s who I am.

On to Herodotus. He’s been on my radar since I read History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer about a year and a half ago, and seeing him on the reading list was part of my motivation to jump in. He did not disappoint. The sections that I read were the origin stories of Croesus and Cyrus, and Persia, and then the beginning of the Persian War. I ended with the Battle of Thermopylae, which is an amazing story in its own right. A few takeaways:

• Every military leader should read this book. I may actually send it to my son who is in the Navy! There are examples of excellent leadership, and cranky leadership, and dumb leadership. Herodotus is opinionated, funny, and incisive, if not always historically accurate. When Demaratos, the exiled Spartan king, advises Xerxes to use caution as he plans his war, he points out that men who are free will always be braver, better soldiers than men who are slaves. Xerxes brushes him off, but Demaratos then points out that Xerxes has no experience fighting with an army of free soldiers. It’s profound and brave, considering capricious Xerxes.
• Geography rules everything. The mountains, plains, islands and bays are vitally important to history. We ignore it at our peril. The ancient world was certainly ruled by it. And on that note, modern maps often relegate the eastern Mediterranean to the very edge of the map. How refreshing to see the Med as the center, with Europe, Turkey, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa on one map. We (I?) are so Western-focused that it’s easy to forget that the water goes a long, long way past western Greece. My edition of Histories was full of excellent maps and they went a long way in improving my experience of reading.
• Sometimes the whole world can turn on one jerk. The Greeks held Thermopylae, a tiny mountain road, until a servant decided to show the Persians the “back way” through a secret mountain pass. The Persians ambushed the Greeks from behind and that battle was lost. It took that one guy.

I could keep writing a long, long time, but it would get boring. I loved reading the Histories, but probably my favorite role of Herodotus was “anthropologist.” There were so many different cultures that clashed in that area and he was alert to all the differences: the matrilineal Lycians; the cannibalistic Scythians; the dual-monarchist Spartans. He digresses and chats and then gets back to the story. 

If you are interested in reading this, I can’t recommend The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, edited by Robert Strassler, enough. It’s well-illustrated and -mapped and the translation (by Andrea Purvis) is eminently readable. The footnotes are just enough, without dominating your attention. This is how a history book should be. 

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Gilgamesh and the Dhammapada.

LINK

Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)

My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)

CONNECT

To read more of my writing, visit my Substack -  https://www.cheryldrury.substack.com.

Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cldrury/ 

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crack-the-book/id1749793321 

Captivate - https://crackthebook.captivate.fm 

Ethics is the most challenging reading I’ve done, possibly ever. I’m not sure if it’s because I am out of the habit of reading deeply, or my attention span rivals a gnat’s, or if this text is actually that hard, but I pushed through. After reading about virtue, and habit, and endurance, and choosing pain because you know it will lead to the good thing, I was not about to stop.

We talk a little about the importance of a good translation (more on that to come!) and take a deep dive into note-taking. This is a big project, and I wanted to be sure to retain the big ideas as I went along. I share the things I'm doing, what seems to be working and what I don't do.

There is so much to this text. (Maybe that’s another reason it was so intense?) In no particular order, just a few notes. 

• There are three basic ways of life: pleasure, politics, and contemplation. Don’t confuse pleasure with happiness, because they aren’t the same. Contemplation is great—you might be happy—but there’s no real action, and that is part of what virtue requires. So, political life, a life lived in relation to others, is the highest good.
• A virtue is typically the middle way between the vices of too much and too little. For example, courage is the middle way between recklessness and cowardice.
• Reciprocity is what holds a community together (there’s the politics!), and economics is even based on the idea of reciprocity.
• Friendship. My goodness, I could have used these thoughts at 18, or 24, and can definitely use them now. There are three types of friendships: of utility, of pleasure, and complete. Complete is rare, and so you should attend to it. But it can end if the friends become markedly less equal in some way. Knowing that might help you inoculate against it.
• Aristotle breaks everything into taxonomies—I mean, the man was obsessed with categorizing everything. It’s much more of an engineer’s approach to life than Plato’s with his ideas about Forms.
• Regarding Poetics, what amazing guidance about storytelling in tragedy or epic. I wonder if modern filmmakers ever have to read this.
• Metaphor is the master poet’s tool.

When I began this project I said I’d read introductions minimally and try to engage solely with the text as much as possible. I needed help with Aristotle, and I highly recommend Larry Arn's series from Hillsdale College.

Music this week was Bach’s Cello Concertos. Beautiful, lush, varied. I have a real love affair with the cello so this was a pleasure to listen to! You can listen here.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week as we return for love with Plato and war with Herodotus.

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First, The Analects is a lot like the book of Proverbs in the Bible: aphorism after aphorism, with very little narrative and not much to connect each paragraph. It was truly like drinking from a firehose. That’s exactly how I felt this week, trying to get through the book.

I did, in fact, try to put together a few cogent thoughts about The Analects itself, ideas I can take forward with me into further reading:

• The most important virtues for Confucius are courage, wisdom, and Goodness. Goodness is embodied as adherence to type. Whaley’s description (from 1938, if that helps) is that it’s like calling someone a “true Englishman” as the best compliment. It is attainable by aligning yourself with it rather than chasing it.
• Ritual is supremely important. Adherence to ritual is necessary to attain the Way of the Good (which is the Ancient, and better way) rather than the Way of Violence (which is the current-day way). Further, respect for parents is a crucial part of ritual.
• There is a tension between the life of the mind, which is what a gentleman is to develop, and the practical life, which is for common people. Confucius says more than once that a gentleman doesn’t pursue practical knowledge but only contemplates ideas.
• I saw parallels with Stoicism occasionally, and there was some Utopianism, it seems to me. There were also plenty of times when it struck me that Confucius was actually complaining that even though he had great ideas and great teaching, he wasn’t getting hired by anyone important.

Additionally, I found this podcast about Confucius, by professors at Mount St. Mary’s University. A Catholic theologian who likes Confucius was really helpful for this Christian to get a handle on the work.

Here's an interesting album of Chinese music.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week as we tackle two texts from Aristotle.

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Read more about Confucius

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I'm a beginner at reading the classics, but I've decided to just "crack the book" and get started. Here are a few of my key take-aways from this week:

What will I take from this week? Let’s see:

• A deeper understanding of Greek mythology. I have a copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology on my bookshelf and will probably be dipping in and out of it soon. 
• A better view of the ancient world, its customs and habits of life. I know it’s fiction, but the way the poem describes the interactions between people of different classes, between men and women, and between city-states is eye-opening. I’m tempted to carry my modern worldview into these stories, and to find fault with various people. Instead, I really have to suspend my judgement to understand what is going on and how it compares to what I already know.
• A richer view of the Bible, believe it or not. I’ve read the Bible through about ten times (maybe more). Reading other ancient works ADDS to my understanding of the world the ancient Hebrews lived in. It’s one thing to understand the Old Testament, but so much richer to understand how very different the Hebrews’ struggles with God were compared to the Greeks’ encounters with their array of gods and goddesses.

Finally, my last take-away is one that deserves its own paragraph. I am angry, honestly, that every bit of this kind of literature was erased from my education. Who did that? Why? Who decided that Flowers for Algernon was worth my attention but Odysseus and Telemachus and Pallas Athena and Penelope weren’t?

Jack and I also have a long discussion about the heart of the Odyssey. What is it truly about? Is it a homecoming, or a story of exiles, or a model for suffering? How can we as 21st-century Americans relate to these ancient Greeks?

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week as we head to eastward and read Confucius.

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I'm a beginner at reading the classics, but I've decided to just "crack the book" and get started. Here are a few of my key take-aways from this week:

1. The surviving Greek Lyrics are very male-dominated, full of war and fighting and politics, with not a lot of attention paid to nature or beauty, or even romance. That is, until you get to Sappho, a woman. Her verses are really beautiful. I can’t help but wonder why. Is it just what survived? Or is that an accurate reflection of Greek society? I thought it was the second until I read Homer.
2. The Odyssey is full of male and female characters, and they are both important to the story. So where the poetry was very male-centric (except for Sappho) Homer absolutely isn’t. I mean, Penelope seems kind of weak, but Athena is absolutely crucial to the plot. I will have to think about this a lot more.
3. Odysseus is a pain in the neck. While I love the story, I'm not a fan of the guy himself so far, at least by Book 10. For instance, when he gets ready to pass by the Sirens, he is told to lash himself to the mast of the ship IF he wants to hear the Siren Song. And that’s what he chose to do! Why would he not just say, “Nope, I’ll put beeswax in my ears like the rest of the crew and we will just sail on by.” It seems supremely arrogant.
4. Telemachus, on the other hand, seems to me to possibly be the better hero. I’m looking forward to seeing him find his dad.

I have a lot of other thoughts this week, especially about the Fagles translation I read.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week to finish the Odyssey. We'll be joined by a fun guest!

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I'm a beginner at reading the classics, but I've decided to just "crack the book" and get started. Here are a few of my key take-aways from Plato:

1. Human nature just doesn’t change.
2. The distinction between an Idea (maybe think of it as a quality, like Beauty) and the thing that has the beauty (like a beautiful vase, for example) is important.
3. These books covered things I had heard of, like the Theory of Ideas, the Argument from Affinity, and the Theory of Recollection, as well as reflections on the nature of the soul.
4. Book I of The Republic is all about “doing right,” a phrase for a Greek word that is also translated “justice” but incorporates a much bigger and more moral sense than mere legal justice.
5. Finally, the Cave Allegory. I thought it was basically about not seeing things clearly, but learning to see them as they really are. In fact it is much, much more than that.

This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for Greek Lyric Poetry (the text from Richard Lattimore) and The Odyssey.

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If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the thought of diving into those classic books you feel like you should have read by now, but don’t know where to start, Crack The Book is for you.

I’m your host, Cheryl. I stumbled upon a list of classic books and realized how much I’d missed. I wanted to understand these stories and ideas and didn’t know where to start. But I was tired of feeling out of the loop and told myself - I can do this.

And you can too.

In each episode, we unpack an all-time classic book - Plato, Confucius, Dante, and more - exploring their stories, their lessons, and how we can apply them to our lives today.

We’re going to take a walk through the humanities, starting from the earliest epics ever written through to the 21st century modern classics.

So come along with me - I’ll break down the big ideas, share my honest take on what’s worth your time, and show you how these classics can connect to your life.

I’m by no means an expert on these works, but I’m excited for you to join me on this adventure of curiosity and discovery.

Whether you’re new to these books or revisiting them with fresh eyes, you’re in the right place.

Subscribe to Crack The Book now on your favorite podcast platform.

The first episode launches March 18th.

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Buying a boat is easier said than done. And finding the right one isn’t that simple either. Thankfully, we had Michael Bach on our side when we bought our sailboat, Abide.

Michael joins me in this episode to share his story of becoming a broker which started out working in shipyards and racing. We then uncover the process we went through together of finding the right boat and arranging the purchase and works.

This episode is packed with surprising stories, professional expertise, and practical advice for anyone interested in sailing!

Highlights from this episode:

• Our broker Michael’s journey from boat racing to finding Abide.
• How Michael sniffs out the duds when looking for boats for his clients.
• Who is the typical boat owner?
• How the boat buying process works.
• How COVID prompted us (and many others) to sail more.

Stay subscribed so you don't miss our new podcast adventure!

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Michael Bach - mbach@bycyacht.com.

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Are you feeling hungry? You will be after listening to this episode!

Vanessa Verster, our chef on board our sailboat, Abide (and Roland’s wife), joins me on this episode to give us a behind the scenes look into life as a private chef on the sea.

We discover Vanessa’s story of how she got involved in chartering, despite having no initial sailing experience. Vanessa is now part of our crew where she uses her culinary mastery to feed us breakfast, lunch and dinner in a space smaller than most home kitchens!

Highlights from this episode:

• Vanessa’s journey to chartering, from South Africa to the USA.
• The challenges of cooking for up to ten people in a tiny galley kitchen.
• Life on mixed charters and handling diverse groups of guests.
• The differences between restaurant and private cheffing.
• The process of crafting a menu and why guests don’t get to see it before boarding.
• Nightmare guest stories!
• The no-go topics of conversation for mixed family charters…

Stay subscribed so you don't miss our new podcast adventure!

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We love a challenge. And this story is all about jumping in head first. In episode one I uncovered the story of how our adventure began, from the first time Bill and I went sailing, to coming to own a 136-foot sailboat. If you haven’t listened to episode one already, start there!

In this episode, I’m joined by our intrepid captain Roland, who without him, our adventure might not have been possible. We pick up where we left off with Abide arriving at Belfast's Front Street Shipyard, before winding back time to introduce Roland and how he became our captain.

Highlights from this episode:

• How our captain’s journey took him from cleaning the bottoms of boats to joining our crew.
• How chartering works, and what it’s like to live on board with people you’ve only just met!
• How Hurricane Irma tore through our plans.
• Learning about the process from delivery to sailing the world.
• How our journey made us see America from a completely new perspective.

Stay subscribed so you don't miss our new podcast adventure!

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Over the past year, this podcast has been a space to share stories of adventure, discovery, and our life aboard Abide. And I thank you so much for being a part of this with me. But as all great stories must, this chapter has come to a natural close, now that we’ve told the refit story.

During our adventures, I’ve discovered how much I love how stories pop up in our own lives and how we can get to know the world as a progression of stories

I’ve also discovered how much I love podcasting and connecting with you!

That’s why, although this story has come to a close, the podcast will live on, but it’s time to steer the course into something new.

In this episode, I talk about what’s coming next in this new chapter.

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That’s how I felt when I read Homer’s Odyssey during our last trip to St. Thomas this year. The story of the epic, 20-year journey home has stuck with me, and I couldn’t help but see the parallels to our adventures aboard Abide.

That’s why in this episode, I’m sharing 5 of these parallels that we’ve learnt from. If you haven’t read The Odyssey - don’t worry, I’ll give you some context. And either way, if you’re planning an adventure of your own, there’s something to learn here.

We may not have ended up getting on Poseidon’s bad side - but there have definitely been some unexpected challenges!

In this episode, I share:

• 5 ways our adventure mirrors Homer’s Odyssey.
• How the realities of our trip differed from our expectations.
• The sirens (or distractions) we’ve had to resist along the way.
• Why “home” looks so different after spending time at sea.
• Lessons that you can bring to your own adventures.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so you don’t miss the next one.

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For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

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This week, I’m joined by my husband, Bill, as we reflect on the highs and lows of 2024 and look ahead to what’s in store for 2025.

We’re playing a little game of ‘Good Thing, Bad Thing’ - a game we loved to play with our kids around the dinner table to get everyone talking about their day. We’re reminiscing about some incredible moments from this past year - and a few not-so-great moments that we can learn from. From launching this podcast to our favorite trips aboard Abide, 2024 has been super busy and full of surprises and lessons.

Highlights from this episode:

• A look back at our year with Abide.
• Some of the best - and worst - moments of 2024.
• Our hopes, goals, and plans for 2025 aboard Abide and personally.
• Chartering a boat and why we’re doing more of it in 2025.
• And more!

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so you don’t miss the adventure in 2025.

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For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

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I’m putting my own spin on Clement Moore’s classic, ‘The Night Before Christmas’,  inspired by life aboard Abide with our family and crew (and a familiar face that shows up).

Curl up with a cup of hot chocolate (or your favorite holiday drink from last week’s episode!) and set sail with us.

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to follow Adventure On Deck on your favourite podcast platform so you don’t miss the next one.

Thanks so much for listening to Adventure On Deck in 2024, and see you in the New Year!

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If you’re planning on hosting a party, or looking for some inspiration, this episode will make it a little easier for you to make things memorable.

This week, I’m joined by our daughters, Paige and Darcy, to share three beverages we love to serve aboard Abide.

We’ve got two alcoholic cocktails to share with you and one for the designated drivers. And each drink comes with some garnish suggestions to impress your guests. Plus, we’re throwing in a couple of bonus recipes that hold a special place in our family.

Highlights from this episode:

• The must-try holiday drinks we love serving aboard Abide.
• Alcoholic, non-alcoholic, hot and cold - something for everyone.
• How making these drinks create a key part of creating a welcoming atmosphere on Abide.
• And more…

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to follow Adventure On Deck on your favourite podcast platform so you don’t miss the next one.

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For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

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Whether you’re traveling by boat or not, when planning your next vacation, you want to try to fit everything in. But it’s not always that easy, and can be overwhelming when you’re visiting a new place.

On this week’s episode, Bill (my husband!), joins me aboard Abide. We’re in Antigua as we record this one, after a week of sailing the Caribbean, and we have a strategy to share with you around getting the most out of visiting somewhere new - particularly an island destination.

These are the two things that we do every time we visit an island that allows us to uncover its secrets without getting overwhelmed.

Oh, and we’ll share a few stories with you on some of the incredible sights and near-death experiences we’ve collected from our voyages to Gran Canaria, Saba and more…

Highlights from this episode:

• How to prevent overwhelm when everything is new.
• The two things we do when visiting a new island to uncover its best bits.
• Some of the most gorgeous sights we’ve spotted that might have you planning your next trip.
• Lessons from our biggest travel mistakes!
• What you should always find out before exploring a new destination.
• And more!

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to follow Adventure On Deck on your favourite podcast platform so you don’t miss the next one.

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For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

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Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

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Roland joins me in this episode as we go over some of the top trips that we’ve taken Abide on throughout fall to cap things off before she goes back to the boat yard.

We’ll take you through the highlights, challenges, and insights from the journey so far. Fall has brought us even closer to the geography and history of some of the places we’ve visited, now with a fresh perspective from the water

Highlights from this episode:

• Reflecting on an exciting fall season aboard Abide.
• Exploring some of the most beautiful locations on the coast.
• Our trip to New York and what surprised us most.
• Tips for making the most of your own adventures.
• And more…

Whether you’re planning your own adventures or just along for the ride, this episode is the perfect way to wrap up fall.

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In this episode, Ali gives as a look into the incredible journey that she and a community of ‘loopers’ go on to achieve this momentous task.

Ali uncovers the unexpected challenges and the joys of discovery from the loop so far which she’s currently almost 5000 miles into - from navigating lakes and rivers to managing provisions and maintaining a routine on board. We dive into what it takes to commit to America’s Great Loop.

If you’re looking for some travel inspiration, or just want a behind the scenes on an incredible story, this is for you!

Highlights from this episode:

• What is America’s Great Loop and who’s taking it on?
• How ‘loopers’ adapt to life on the boat long term - and how they adapt to returning home.
• Ali and her family’s routine while traveling the 6000-mile stretch.
• Ali’s top spots from America and Canada along the route.
• The community of ‘loopers’ and how to get involved.

LEARN MORE

If you have questions for Ali, drop her an email: ahasell10@gmail.com.

For more information about America’s Great Loop, go to www.greatloop.org.

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In this episode, I’m joined again by our chef, Vanessa Verster, who’s had her hands full for the last couple of months with everything from crafting menus to styling a Japanese-inspired theme to leave an impression on brokers looking for new charter opportunities.

Prepare to feel hungry again as we dive into what it’s like to host brokers aboard Abide, the high standards expected at these shows, and the creative ways Vanessa and the crew keep things interesting. 

Highlights from this episode:

• What it takes to prepare for a boat show, from the décor to the menu.
• Inside the broker-client relationship and how boats are chosen for charter.
• How we’re going green to meet the show’s requirements.
• Vanessa’s menu plan and the crew’s role in creating a memorable experience.
• A flavored water competition and the Japanese theme for Abide!
• And much more…

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!

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CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

In this episode, Roland and I dive into the ins and outs of yacht ‘deliveries’.

We’re moving Abide to St. Thomas in preparation for a boat show (more on that in a later episode). We’re recording from Charleston, where we’re busy prepping Abide to ensure she arrives in the same condition she left in.

We discuss everything that’s involved from hiring extra crew to stocking up with enough food to sustain 9+ people for days of round-the-clock sailing.

With day-and-night sailing, delivering a yacht is more than a cruise - it’s about managing a finely tuned operation that ensures everyone and everything arrives in one piece.

Highlights from this episode:

• What it takes to deliver a yacht in one piece.
• Planning for nonstop, round-the-clock sailing with rotating crew.
• What to do in an injury situation.
• Cooking on the go and keeping 9+ crew members fueled for the journey.
• The biggest delivery danger in the water - and it’s not sharks or icebergs…
• Roland’s story of locking a crew member up in the brig during a past delivery!

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

I break down the 3 big takeaways that have stuck with me and that I urge you to think about. This project reminded me of the amazing things we would have missed if we hadn’t taken the leap, and I hope to inspire you to take your own leap into that thing you’ve been hesitating over for way too long.

Plus, we have some questions of yours to answer! I’m truly grateful for the questions you’ve sent in, and I answer them in this episode.

Finally, I fill you in on what’s been happening since Abide returned to Charleston and give a sneak peek into what’s coming next for the podcast!

Highlights from this episode:

• The 3 big life lessons to take away from Abide’s refit.
• The importance of taking risks and the rewards that follow.
• A Q&A session answering your questions.
• What’s been happening since Abide came home to Charleston.
• A look ahead at what’s coming next for Abide, the crew and Adventure On Deck.

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

This week, Roland and I share the last leg of Abide's first real adventure as she arrives home in Charleston, marking a heart-warming return. Recording this episode was an absolute joy.

From navigating treacherous waters to docking in Charleston, the final chapter of Abide’s journey home had its fair share of challenges. We talk Charleston history, Roland’s run-in with some feisty crabs, and the overwhelming excitement of seeing Abide back at the marina. 

Highlights from this episode:

• Navigating the treacherous waters on the way home to Charleston.
• Abide’s arrival in Charleston and seeing her in the marina for the first time…
• …only for our view to be spoiled the next day!
• Some interesting details on Charleston’s history as a major harbor.
• Roland’s crab attack and other stories that had us in hysterics.
• And more…

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode.

LEARN MORE

The sermon we listened to when Abide got to Charleston: Waiting For

For more about Abide - https://sailabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide in Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

This week, we’re taking a quick break from the refit story to give you an inside look at what it’s really like to live and work aboard Abide.

I’m joined by Jacob, our engineer, and Elizabeth, our deckhand who connected with me as they both sat down aboard our boat in Newport, Rhode Island.

We’ll dive into how they got into the world of yachting, the training involved to become yacht crew, and what it’s like to live and work in such close quarters. From navigating the day-to-day responsibilities to living alongside co-workers, Jacob and Elizabeth share a unique perspective on life aboard Abide that I know you’ll get a lot of insight from.

Highlights from this episode:

• How Jacob and Elizabeth found their way into the yachting world.
• The rigorous training required to be a yacht crew member.
• Daily life aboard Abide and how they live together as co-workers.
• Insights into the crew’s responsibilities and routines.
• What it takes to make life at sea run without a hitch.

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next episode!

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

This week, Roland and I dive into the next leg of Abide’s journey, as we sailed from Belfast, Maine to Newport, Rhode Island and onto Norfolk. 

From a major malfunction that had us moored to the dock for weeks, to the sea trials that revealed more problems, this leg of the trip was filled with close calls.

We delve into crew challenges in this episode, and how we found the crew that was right for us. And we revisit our dream of sailing round the world and talk about why we’re currently looking more locally!

Highlights from this episode:

• The Christmas Eve panic and why Abide needed clearing to dock.
• Navigating Newport's icy waters and returning to the dock due to a major malfunction.
• Three intense sea trials.
• Our journey from Newport to Norfolk.
• HR challenges on board: managing crew swaps and the importance of finding the right people for the mission.
• Is the dream of sailing around the world realistic?

If you enjoy this episode, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next leg of the journey.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

This week, I’m joined again by our captain, Roland - in person this time! We’re sitting aboard Abide as we reflect on the departure from the shipyard in Belfast, Maine. 

Abide had become part of the local scenery, with both friends and strangers showing up to give her a send off. But the decision for Abide to leave the dockyard wasn’t made by us. We revisit the chaotic moments leading up to Abide departure and the challenges that followed. 

We also dive into Abide’s sea trials - the first voyages, and finally bringing Abide into Newport.

Highlights from this episode:

• Dealing with the pressure of being forced out of the shipyard before we were ready.
• Roland’s mishap that turned the deck into an ice rink!
• The emotional farewell as friends and locals wished Abide off.
• Struggling to get off the frozen dock and into open water.
• The far-too-tight squeeze of clearing low bridges during Abide's first sea trials.

The first leg of her journey may be complete, but there’s plenty more ahead! So be sure to subscribe for the next episode.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

In this episode, I sit down with Kate Seremeth, owner of TACK studios and the interior designer behind Abide’s stunning look.

Kate shares her story from starting out in industrial design to becoming a specialist in yacht interiors. Growing up in Maine, surrounded by water, it’s no surprise that Kate found herself drawn to working on boats, but her path into this unique niche is anything but conventional.

Kate talks about the unique challenges she faces designing for the unique features of a sailboat and how she balances human comfort with aesthetics. She gives us an inside look into the process of designing Abide’s interior and shares stories of some of the incredible other projects she’s worked on.

Highlights from this episode:

• The unique challenges of designing for yachts.
• Balancing comfort and beauty in yacht interiors.
• Kate’s process for designing the interior of Abide.
• Refits vs. new builds and how no project is the same.
• How Kate designs interiors that ‘feel like the client’.
• Stories of Kate’s other projects and the ones she’s turned down.

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

TACK studios - https://tackstudios.com/

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Kate Seremeth on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-seremeth-2a620612/

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

After being kicked out of the yard in early June 2023, our sailboat, Abide, went back in the water… but it wasn’t yet habitable. It didn’t seem like we were far off, though, with visions of being out on the water within the next couple of months. How wrong we were…

In this episode, our captain Roland and I continue the story of Abide's refit during the second half of 2023. With constant delays, unpleasant surprises and our stress levels rising, we were starting to lose faith.

I know this doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but we had to go there. We wanted to be open about both sides of the story. It’s all part of it, and it’s absolutely worth listening to you if you want to hear the behind-the-scenes on the challenges of such a large project.

Highlights from this episode:

• Abide’s return to the water, and the challenges that followed.
• The harsh reality of a huge project like refitting a 136-foot sailboat.
• How we raised our spirits and pushed forward.
• The Antigua Yacht Show - our beacon of hope, and how that panned out!

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

Vanessa, our chef on board our sailboat, Abide (and Roland’s wife), joins me on this episode to give us a behind the scenes look into life as a private chef on the sea.

We discover Vanessa’s story of how she got involved in chartering, despite having no initial sailing experience. Vanessa is now part of our crew where she uses her culinary mastery to feed us breakfast, lunch and dinner in a space smaller than most home kitchens!

Highlights from this episode:

• Vanessa’s journey to chartering, from South Africa to the USA.
• The challenges of cooking for up to ten people in a tiny galley kitchen.
• Life on mixed charters and handling diverse groups of guests.
• The differences between restaurant and private cheffing.
• The process of crafting a menu and why guests don’t get to see it before boarding.
• Nightmare guest stories!
• The no-go topics of conversation for mixed family charters…

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

In this episode, we dive back into the refit of Abide during the winter of 2022. 

As the refit continues, Roland and I share a few stories behind the scenes: from the rigorous crew training that Roland has to undergo, from firefighting to spending 5 hours in a freezing pool, to some more personal trials.

Highlights from this episode:

• The impact of life’s challenges on us and the project.
• Training for the unexpected - what a sailing crew has to go through to become certified.
• Coping with sudden loss and other stressful life challenges.
• The process of Roland securing a visa in order to get the project underway.
• The moment Abide was kicked out of the shed.

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

Abide was tucked up in the warmth of her shed at Front Street Shipyard. 

Roland was slowly killing his Christmas tree… 

In this episode we jump back into the refit story, picking up where we left off in the winter of ‘22. Our 136-foot sailboat, Abide, was undergoing an intensive refit.

Our captain, Roland, joins me again to share stories from that winter in Maine and give us a closer look into the extensive refit challenge.

Highlights from this episode:

- What happened next in the refit story.

- The crazy level of attention to detail that had to go into repainting Abide.

- How to sail if you get seasick.

- Abide’s 2000-lb dinghy and how we got it on the boat (and why sailboats need one).

- The story of Roland’s Christmas as a South African in America.

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

Abide is currently sitting inside Front Street waiting to be painted. But in this episode, we’re taking you back to how it all started.

JB shares with us his story, from developing a love of sailing as a child (back when a 32-foot sailboat was considered large!), to the handshake that built the shipyard, to refitting Adibe!

This conversation is filled with interesting stories that I don’t want to spoil for you, so have a listen and you won’t be disappointed!

Highlights from this episode:

• How JB Turner and his partners built Front Street Shipyard from the ground up.
• How Front Street was able to attract its talented team (most of whom don’t sail themselves!)
• The ‘rennaisance’ of Belfast that attracted its sailing community.
• What goes into building a boat from scratch.
• What’s the hardest part of building a sailboat?

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

Front Street Shipyard - https://frontstreetshipyard.com/

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

We pick up where we left off in episode 5, with Roland and the crew setting things in motion at Front Street Shipyard, Maine. Our sailboat, Abide was being hauled out of the water and unloaded in the shed.

In this episode, we’re diving into the process and the challenges behind restoring Abide to her original beauty - and then some.

Highlights from this episode:

• What goes into restoring a 136-foot sailboat.
• Making a sailboat functional and beautiful.
• What the ‘giant-tattoo gun’ was for...
• Choosing the right wood and paint (it’s harder than you’d think).
• The supply-chain challenges of 2022 and how the refit was affected.
• The gritty details of the black water tank (don’t worry we don’t get too graphic…).
• How a sailing yacht gets surveyed.

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

Michael joins me in this episode to share his story of becoming a broker which started out working in shipyards and racing. We then uncover the process we went through together of finding the right boat and arranging the purchase and works.

This episode is packed with surprising stories, professional expertise, and practical advice for anyone interested in sailing!

Highlights from this episode:

• Our broker Michael’s journey from boat racing to finding Abide.
• How Michael sniffs out the duds when looking for boats for his clients.
• Who is the typical boat owner?
• How the boat buying process works.
• How COVID prompted us (and many others) to sail more.

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

Bachus Yacht Consultancy - https://bycyacht.com/

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

We’re picking up where we left off in episode 3 with our captain Roland. In this part of the story, the boat (Abide) is still in the water at the shipyard in Belfast, Maine, but we’re gearing up to haul her out and get started on the refit.

This was the biggest project that Roland had undertaken. We speak about how we chose the shipyard, the work that went into getting Abide into the shed and the major undertaking of preparing her for the refit. It sounds straightforward, but it’s anything but!

Highlights from this episode:

• What goes into hauling a 136-foot sailboat out of the water.
• Choosing the right shipyard for the work.
• The process of finding the crew and getting them set up.
• Getting the cost estimates for the refit… ‘estimate’ being the keyword!

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

After acquiring our 136-foot sailboat, Abide, we discovered something we weren’t expecting to find that sent us down a rabbit hole (and I’m not talking about the 23 jars of mint jelly…).

We found a huge binder of records relating to the original design and purchase of the boat. We’re talking notes from meetings, emails, and even faxes!

In this episode, my husband Bill and I share what we discovered from these historic records - the drama that unfolded that led to 35 pages of change orders or modifications before the original owner was satisfied.

Seeing Abide now, though, it looks like it was worth it!

Highlights from this episode:

• The history of Abide’s original construction and purchase.
• Introducing my husband Bill to the story.
• How Abide, a boat constructed in The Netherlands, was tailored for an American owner.
• Understanding what goes into designing and building a sailboat.
• Where we’re hoping to take Abide to next and in the future.

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

We were about to start the refit and Roland was boarding Abide for the first time. He was greeted with a frosty reception from the old crew… but this only strengthened the resolve to make this work.

Abide hadn’t been maintained too well, and she needed some attention before she would be ready for chartering. In this episode, you’ll also discover the start of the refit journey.

Highlights from this episode:

• The second part of Roland’s journey to becoming our captain.
• The frosty reception Roland got when he went to pick up Abide!
• The journey Roland and Abide took to Belfast, Maine where the refit began.
• The weird and wonderful things we found stowed away on Abide, like 23 jars of mint jelly…

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the next part of the story.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

In this episode, I’m joined by our intrepid captain Roland, who without him, our adventure might not have been possible. We pick up where we left off with Abide arriving at Belfast's Front Street Shipyard, before winding back time to introduce Roland and how he became our captain.

Highlights from this episode:

• How our captain’s journey took him from cleaning the bottoms of boats to joining our crew.
• How chartering works, and what it’s like to live on board with people you’ve only just met!
• How Hurricane Irma tore through our plans.
• Learning about the process from delivery to sailing the world.
• How our journey made us see America from a completely new perspective.

If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss part two.

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm

This is the story of how my husband (Bill) and I (Cheryl) - two non-sailors - came to own a 136-foot sailboat, with the crazy idea that we might sail around the world. If you're ready to set sail into the unknown and become inspired to satisfy your wanderlust each week, this is the podcast for you. 

In this inaugural episode, you’ll discover how this all started, from the first time Bill and I went sailing, to finding Abide - the sailboat of our dreams, and getting the crew on board.

Highlights from this episode:

• How two non-sailors came to own a 136-foot sailboat.
• How we found the crew that we would work with for the rest of our adventure so far.
• The test trip that had us doing donuts around the bay for an hour.
• The grinding halt that Covid brought to our plans and the revelation it brought us.

If you enjoy the first part of the story, subscribe on your podcast app of choice. This is only the beginning of the adventure. I’m so pleased that you’re here to join us on it!

LEARN MORE

For more about Abide - https://svabide.com/

CONNECT

Abide on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sail_abide

Cheryl Drury on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryldruryphotographer/

LISTEN

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5GpySInw1e8IqNQvXow7Lv?si=9ebd5508daa245bd

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventure-on-deck/id1749793321

Captivate - https://adventure-on-deck.captivate.fm