January 2026, in books and thoughts
What I read, what I wrote, and where my mind wandered
Happy 2026, wherever you’re reading this from. Andddd, thank you for making space for my words in your inbox.
Hope you had amazing moments to yourself amid all the “starting over” energy. For me, this month has been splendid: full of Greek stories and characters to talk with.
The Greek Dispatches
I’m slow reading Greek literature, tragedies, and mythology as a long, lived thing by staying inside the events until they start giving me meaning. Currently, I’m sitting and thinking with Homer, to ask why the moments and figures in The Iliad matter, and to explore how the feelings and judgments in this ancient text still resonate in our modern life and thought
Dispatches that went out this month
The Iliad poem opens in the tenth year of war, so I spent time this month to read the backstory of the Trojan war before The Iliad begins.
#3 — The war gets its first weapon, a golden apple
#4 — The war begins upstairs
Notes and a bit of side reading
Reading The Lucifer Effect, I came across this passage that stopped me mid-page. Philip Zimbardo, drawing on C. Wright Mills, writes about the “power elite” not merely as decision-makers but as those whose failure to act is itself a consequential act. Their power lies less in what they choose to do, and more in the fact that they can afford not to choose at all. It sent me straight back to my post on Zeus and the golden apple.
In the myth, Zeus’s “not my problem” is made possible by power, because he had the power. The power to step aside and refuse judgment, which inevitably lets consequences fall elsewhere, more precisely cascading downward. This kind of power belongs to those who are positioned high enough that they will not bear them. Mills puts it plainly: occupying such positions matters more than any single decision, because inaction reorganizes the world just as surely as action does.
Myth and social theory are meeting the same idea here, named differently: responsibility flowing downward but not power.
Thank you for being here and reading alongside me!
I’ll post another letter next month on what I’m reading, writing, and thinking. Until then, take care!
Yours in thought,
Yana