He brought home books that he was reading, and he left them lying about. I would pick them up and read certain sections, and then I would ask him about a specific idea or an author, and so we would converse. As we spoke and argued and debated, I remembered that I had once been enamoured of certain old books and authors, and discovered that I had missed out on others. Now, at a much later age, I was returning to these writers.My reading began with Petrarch, My Secret Book, a book not written for broad consumption and yet full of heart and wisdom. From there I moved on to a very close encounter with The Republic. With some consternation, I admit that I had never read all of The Republic, and so I entered it now with a particular ignorance and a specific hunger. I was surprised by the humour, the irony in the writing, the complexity of the thought. I was also taken by its clarity and its relevance so many years and civilizations hence—and for example, the idea of the balance that we must find between reason and passion.
