You have a choice:

1. Impress your Star Wars Fan friends by posting "May the Fourth be with you!" or

2. Impress them with your knowledge of the literary traditions that inspired George Lucas, by reading this thread.

The path is before you, the choice is yours alone...

🧵👇 Joseph Campbell's 1949 book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, presents a theory:

Mankind has been telling the same story to itself for millennia: a Monomyth.

Lucas was inspired to create his own by the 100s of Indo-European literary and religious examples Campbell cited.

The Apocalypse. Armageddon. The End of the World.

It's captured the imaginations of authors for millennia, inspiring some of our most inventive novels and poems.

A Thread of *Classic* Literature for the End of the World... 🧵 10. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This powerful 2006 novel is already a classic.

An apocalyptic event leaves the world in ash-covered ruins.

Among the few survivors: a father and son, tasked with "carrying the fire."

It's a book that will stick with you for a long time.

Each year, readers spend billions on self-help books and courses.

But why chase the latest fad self-help guru, when all of the wisdom of human history is at your fingertips?

Instead, check out one of these classic books of wisdom: (thread) 🧵👇 1. Struggling with anger management?

Read Seneca's On Anger.

Seneca knew what it was like to work for insane bosses in a high-stress environment (looking at you, Nero).

Keeping his cool meant preserving his life.

MYTH: The Dark Ages were a cultural and intellectual wasteland.

TRUTH: The Dark Ages gave rise to many important works of Western literature.

A countdown of Dark Age Europe's Greatest Literary Masterpieces: But first, to be precise:

I'm defining the "Dark Ages" as the early Middle Ages (~400-1000) in *Western* Europe.

Rome's fall caused disorder in the West -- historical records are sparse, so our vision is a tad dim.

But, amidst the dark, there are points of literary light...

On this day in 1882, writer Ralph Waldo Emerson breathed his last.

Emerson's transcendentalist worldview is not without its pitfalls, but it is *alive* -- few wrote about the possibilities of human achievement with more brilliance.

A thread of my favorite Emerson quotes: 15. "God will not have his work made manifest by cowards...

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

~Emerson, Self-Reliance

On this day in AD 121, the Philosopher Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was born.

His diary (never meant for publication) is a reservoir of quotable sayings, preaching resilience and self-control. It's worth reading.

Here's a thread of my favorite lines from his Meditations: 🧵👇 15. Be like the rock against which the waves break.

It stands firm and tames the fury of the waters around it.

Happy Birthday to the Immortal Bard!

To celebrate, a thread of every Shakespeare play, with the most memorable lines from each:

🧵👇

1. Romeo and Juliet

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet..." (II.ii) 2. Macbeth

"...Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing." (V.v)

On this day, April 21, in the year 753 BC, the city of Rome was founded.

Or so the legend goes.

In honor of the birth of the eternal city, here's a thread of Latin literature.

12 plays, poems, or novels from Roman Antiquity that you should know: 🧵 12. Catullus's Poems (~50 BC)

Catullus's poetry is emotionally raw and personal, alternating between passionate pleas to his beloved to lashing out at those who've wounded him.

It's arresting to see such "modern" feelings from an ancient pen.

He was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know."

Or so one of his numerous, mistreated mistresses put it.

Yet, like no one else, he wrote poetry that captured the spirit of his age.

And perhaps our own.

He died, 200 years ago, yesterday.

A brief, Lord Byron appreciation thread: Others can recount the details of Lord Byron's sad, dissolute life.

You'll get no hagiography from me.

But his first great epic, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," is a masterpiece.

And it's the key to understanding the spirit of the Romantic Movement. 2/

On this day, April 15, 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was born.

He was a true polymathic genius, not just as an artist and inventor, but also as a thoughtful writer

Scattered in his Notebooks are memorable aphorisms on life, philosophy, and art.

Here are 15 of his best.

A thread:🧵 15. 𝘞𝘦, 𝘣𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘣𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘰𝘥.

Happy April Fool's Day.

On this day, in 1708, Jonathan Swift -- years before publishing Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal -- inflicted one of the first public April Fool's hoaxes on his reading public.

It was as harsh and brutal as you'd expect from him.

A thread: 🧵👇 In Swift's day, Almanacs were all the rage.

Today, we think of them like Ben Franklin's Poor Richard -- collections of pithy witticisms paired with weather forecasts for farmers.

But back then, they were horoscopes with an agenda.

The most popular was John Partridge's. 2/

Happy Easter!

Here are eight Easter-themed poems you need to read today: 8. Easter Wings by Geoge Herbert

       𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘦
   𝘓𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘦,
𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘺 𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦...

It's Good Friday.

Instead of doom-scrolling, log off and read one of these Good Friday-inspired works of literature.

Thread: 🪡 👇 10. The Dream of the Rood

This 7th-century Old English poem tells the story of the Crucifixion from the perspective of the Cross itself ("Rood" is Old English for "pole" or crucifix), blending Christian themes with Anglo-Saxon warrior culture.

A fascinating work.

For Maundy Thursday, my 15 favorite depictions of the Last Supper **other** than Leonardo da Vinci's.

Thread: 🪡 👇 15. The Last Supper by Ilya Repin, 1903

In 1887, Mark Twain was asked to name his twelve favorite books.

He responded with a list of Great Books that are all still worth reading.

Thread: 🧵 👇 12. The Collected Works of Shakespeare

In Twain's words, Shakespeare's plays exhibit "wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace and majesty of expression [...and] humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to break out."

I asked you: "What was *the first* book that captured your imagination?"

These were the top 15 responses, in order: (thread) 👇

15. The Once and Future King by T.H. White

With honorable mention to other abridged children's versions of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

14. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (illustrated by Jules Feiffer)

Happy Birthday, Michelangelo, born March 6th, 1475.

He was a truly sublime artist.

And he was a gifted *poet*, too, writing sonnets that were emotional and raw.

His poems are surprising.

They carry a weight and a sadness.

A brief sampling of his verse: 🧵👇 Sonnet VIII to Luigi del Riccio
after the death of Cecchino Bracci

"Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes
    
  Which to your living eyes were life and light,
    
  When closed at last in death's injurious night
    
  He opened them on God in Paradise.
1/

Want to get into G.K. Chesterton?

The breadth of his output -- fiction, nonfiction, humor, apologetics, poetry -- is overwhelming.

But here's where I'd start: 🧵👇

1. Orthodoxy

A breathtaking spiritual autobiography, it is one of the best works of apologetics ever written. 2. Father Brown Mysteries

Chesterton wrote several story collections featuring Father Brown, his Roman Catholic priest-turned-amateur-detective, that inspired the popular TV adaptation.

The stories are clever and funny but fundamentally are insightful portraits of human nature.

G.K. Chesterton is one of my favorite writers.

Few can match his ability to make the absurdity of the world snap into focus, with the deft turn of a phrase.

A collection of some of my favorite quotes from Chesterton, the Apostle of Common Sense. 🧵👇

Which is your favorite? “The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate... effort to persuade other people how good they are.”

~G.K. Chesterton
1/

You have a choice:

Spend tonight watching a lame movie...

or...

Read one of these classic plays.

Here are 10 literary masterpieces, from a variety of genres and eras, that will both entertain you and make you think.

How would you rather spend 2 hours?

(A thread 👇) 1. William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Lovers. Mistaken identity. Magic.

Beautiful, transcendent language.

This is Shakespeare at his comedic best, deploying all his talents to toy with the folly and whimsy of the human heart.

It's been said, “A library is infinity under a roof.”

Some libraries come close to that!

A thread of 12 of the world's largest libraries and their most priceless treasures:

1. The British Library, London

200 million volumes, including the Lindisfarne Gospels (~715).



2. The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

175 million volumes, including Thomas Jefferson's original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence