Who is doing this
Me, Reecha. By day I work in technology, where I spend a lot of time watching power move through org charts, roadmaps, and vendor calls that are all officially about "priorities." By night and on weekends I read, more than is strictly reasonable, and I have wanted for years to understand power at the root instead of at the anecdote. This project is me finally doing the reading instead of just having the opinions.
I am the sort of person who builds a four-sheet tracker before opening the first book. I know. We covered this on the home page. I have made my peace with it. Mostly.
Why power, and why like this
Because the explanations on offer are bad. Half of them are cynical shortcuts that fit on a mug. The other half are 400-page airport books that charge you real money to say "be confident." I wanted the actual lineage instead: where an idea came from, who argued the exact opposite, and how something Thucydides noticed in a war twenty-four centuries ago turns out to be the same thing running your feed this afternoon.
And because reading without writing is entertainment with extra steps. The handwriting, the cards, the weekly synthesis, all of it exists to turn reading into something I keep instead of something I have forgotten by the next book.
Why in public
Three reasons, and only one of them is noble.
One, accountability. It is much harder to quit on book four when there is a status column with my name on it and a few strangers watching it fail to move.
Two, better thinking. Writing for people who might disagree makes you honest in a way a private notebook never manages. If I am going to pick a side in Orwell against Huxley, I would rather do it where you can push back.
Three, the noble one. Someone reading this might take the whole system, point it at a subject I will never study, and build something I will never see. That is a fine trade for making my messy notes public.
What I quote, apparently
Over a year of this you should expect Rumi next to Calvin and Hobbes, Virginia Woolf next to a line of country music, Einstein next to a spy manual older than the Roman Empire, all in one paragraph, all with the receipts attached. If that mix annoys you, this may not be your project. If it delights you, pull up a chair.
Follow along is where the reading, the essays, and the tracker live. The reading plan is where you actually start.
So that is the whole thing: a person, some books, a pencil, and a promise to write it all down honestly for a year. Do remember what the Monty Python boys said. And no, not "always look on the bright side of life," but the other one: NOBODY expects the reading list to survive contact with book eight.
P.S. The framework will break. I keep saying this because it is the best part, and everyone keeps hearing it as a warning.
P.P.S. Yes, I keep a paper notebook in an age of infinite apps. The pen remembers things the keyboard forgets.
P.P.P.S. Last one. Start with Thucydides. Buy the pencil. See you on the far side of twenty-seven books.