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The Read Well Podcast
The 53-Page Book That Consumed My Brain (So I Bought 100 Copies) | Episode 104
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Eddie Hood
I just bought 100 copies of the Death of Ivan Ilyich. Not because I'm collecting them, but because I actually think that this tiny little book, it's just 53 pages, might actually change your life. Now, not trying to be hyperbolic there, I really think that this book is worth the time to read deeply. Some books are capable of being read at a surface level. Some really need to have some time in the trenches. Now, this November, I'm teaching a 30 day course on this book. But before I invite you to join me for that, I want to share with you why I think this book is worth your time. Because the Death of Ivan Ilyich isn't about death. It's about us living authentically and well while we're on this earth. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well Podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, read, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Readable podcast. My name is Eddie Hood, and today we're talking about the Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. Now, this is a book that on the surface, Ivan Ilyich's life, he. It looks normal. He's got everything working well for him. He's middle class, respectable, he's got a career as a judge, he's got a family that loves him. He, most of the time. And he loves them most of the time. And he has this nice house out in the suburbs kind of thing. But when he becomes ill, something strange happens. And the people around him go on pretending that life is normal. They pretend that his illness is nothing and that everything's fine. This book is really about pretending and how we all spend our lives pretending. And Ivan, because he is on his death, deathbed, he also pretends that everything is going to be fine until he can't. There becomes a point in the book where everything turns and he has this moment of clarity where he asks the question, well, it's said in the book. It occurred to him that what had seemed utterly impossible before, namely that he had not lived his life as he ought, might in fact be true. So there's a point in our lives where we think to ourselves, have I lived my life well? Has my life been worth it? And how do you know how the answer to that question, how do you measure the goodness, the impact, the meaning of your Life. Ivan is faced with being here one day and then potentially tomorrow not being here. And if whatever he's done with his life goes away with him, what was it all for? What was it about? So that line is the heartbeat of this whole book. Now, I've picked a specific edition of this book. I never get their names right, but if you're reading Russian literature, you gotta get the translations by Richard Pavir and Larissa Volkonski, right? They are, in fact, the best at translating Russian literature, and we read their works all the time in the book club. So that's what I want to talk about today, is why this book is brilliant. And then I'll cover what's happening in the class I'll be teaching in November. So Ivan Ilyich is this guy that is living a lie. He's living many lies. And as you're reading the book, it's a powerful story, even though it's only 53 pages. Because every time a lie comes across the page, if you're being honest with yourself, you might be saying, I do that as well, or I behave that way, or I think that way. And as you see, Ivan's lies sort of work against him. You realize as a reader that the lies you're telling yourself won't serve yourself either. So there are three sort of categories of lies in this book that people are telling and Ivan is telling to himself. The first one is that appearance is more important than depth, than meaning, right? It's more important to look like you've got your crap together, that your house is perfectly clean, that you've got the perfect outfit on, that you're making a certain amount of money, that you have achieved a certain level of status in society. Appearance over depth is the first lie we tell ourselves. But we're all walking around every day feeling a little shallow, a little hollow, knowing that we haven't really dove into something we love, something that adds meaning to our Life. We're spending 8, 9, 10, 15 hours a day trying to get society to look at us and go, wow, you're doing a great job. But inside, we actually feel really hollow and sad and maybe underutilized is a good word, right? The next lie in this book is that career is more important than connections. So Yvonne is a judge. He is a well respected judge. He's doing really well. And every time something bad happens in his life or he gets a little conflicted, he turns to his career. He finds meaning in his career, and he continues to sort of move up the ladder in his career. Becoming more and more important. Of course, the moral of that story is that his relationships with the people he truly loves suffer from that lack of fostering. He's putting so much energy into the career that he's losing what really matters. Okay, so this is nice because, I mean, we all tend to turn to work for our meaning, but of course, we know that when we die, our career will go on without us. Now, one of the things I love about this book, when you first read it, you might find it a strange place to start, because we're starting in the first chapter where Ivan is already dead, right? And then after that, we're in life with him as he's preparing for death. But in that first chapter, as he's laying in state and all of his friends and family come and look at the body, what you're going to notice is that all of the people he's worked with, all of the people he's spent his whole life impressing, aren't sad that he's gone. They're not sad that they're going to, you know, they don't have their friend anymore. They're worried about if they're going to get his position at the office. They're worrying who's going to get his property and so on. Right? So this is a good way to. To realize that your life, if it is spent in your career, is going to come down to your assets and your property and how it's going to be divided. So really, really, really brutally true, and I love it. Now, the third lie here is that comfort is more important than curiosity. So he spends his life, Ivan Ilyich does, trying to set himself up in a comfortable and respectful way. He wants to have the nice couch. He wants to have the nice curtains. He wants to feel as though he has made it and come home to a comfy spot. Right. He values that over his curiosity. So he's never really, truly honest with himself and what he loves and who he is. He never lives authentically. And if you live authentically, you're going to have to give up some comforts at times. You're going to have to sort of stand on the edge and do what scares you. And Yvonne is not willing to do that. Okay, so before I get into the class I'll be teaching in November, I want to point out some of the questions we'll be covering together as a class. And if you. If you decide to come, we'll dive into these deeply. But if it's not for you, and you want to consider these on your own. Here are some of the bigger questions I would love for you to think about as you're reading this tiny yet mighty little book. First of all, what am I really chasing in my life? When we start our class this November, we're going to start with that question, what is it that you are chasing? What is truly authentically important to you? And the reason why I'm teaching a course on this book is because I get a lot of questions about whether note taking for fiction is different than non fiction. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is this strange book that actually straddles both sides there. If you ask me, it's fiction, but it also has some non fiction elements because it is so packed with lessons, it is so strongly sort of endowed with philosophical ideas that I think it's both. And it's a really great exercise for us in taking deep, meaningful notes. So the first question, if you're going to read this on your own, is what is it that I'm chasing right now? What is truly important to me? And the hard part is that you have to learn to be honest with yourself. You have to learn to analyze your heart. And what I have found is that most of us, and myself included, often live like Yvonne, where we think we have given ourselves the correct answer. But if you really analyze that answer, what am I chasing? You're going to find in their seeds of society that have have made you think that you should achieve a certain level at work or that you should do something specific with your life, but in your heart. Maybe you want to be a professional watercolor painter. I don't know what it is. And that thing would bring complete joy and authenticity and beauty and meaning to your life. It is what you've always wanted, but you've put it in the back room because you're scared of it. Instead, you're going to go be an accountant. Haha. I'm an accountant. It is what it is. I like accounting, but what I'm saying is, is accounting my heart's passion? No, what's my heart's passion? This community. It is reading books, it is writing books, it is all of that. So when I, when I told my partners at work, guys, if I don't go start this community and start a book club and do the things that I love, I'm going to lose my mind. And when they let me do that, or they made allowance for me to have time in our work to do that, the meaning in my own life sort of skyrocketed. I'm so Excited every day just to be here with you in front of this goofy microphone, talking about books I love, like the Death of Ivan Ilyich. So that's what we need to identify first before you read this. Now, the next question I would love for you to ask as you're reading this book is, why do I avoid discomfort? What is it about your life? Because we're all doing it that is keeping you from going into that back room, getting out your watercolors and becoming a painter? Is it that your parents might shame you for this decision? Is it that your. Your religion tells you that it's not something you should do or be right? Is it something that you feel you can't do because it's not going to make you enough money and therefore is a waste of time? The third question, of course, is, am I living on autopilot? Am I being like Ivan Ilyich? I have a good job. I have a good home. I'm just doing the same thing again and again. And you know in your heart that when you get to the end of your life, you're going to go, ooh, I lived comfortably. It was nice. But was it worth it? So those are the big questions I would love for you to ask as you read this book. Now, here's the strategy I'm going to take reading this book in November, if you decide to spend time with me. So we're going to start by sending you a package of materials. First of all, of course, you're going to get this copy. This is my favorite copy, and I like the COVID Actually, if you look at the top here, it's split in half at the very top. We've got Leo Tolstoy in his writing den. Here. It's an old sepia photograph. I love it because it's this old man sort of looking out. It looks like Ivan Ilyich looking at me. Tolstoy has this, like, really wise, yet kind of eerie look on his face. Below him is a picture that is, like, oversaturated. And I don't know if I'm getting the terms right here, but it's, like. It's really highly saturated, and it's a bunch of people sort of sitting next to a river. And the reason why I love the COVID of this book is because it. It reminds me of the fact that life moves on like this little river. It's just rolling on and people are doing their thing, but above it, there's an old man sitting at his desk who's trying to figure out the meaning of life. He's, he's. I can see Tolstoy himself in the writing den writing this story partly because he wants to inspire you to live more authentically, but also because he wants himself to live more authentically. He's trying to figure out his own meaning, which is really great. Do you get a copy of this book? Also, I'm going to be teaching my note taking system as an in depth class. So a note taking system for me is both analog and digital. So everybody's going to get a copy of my handcrafted reading notes. This goes right along with the book. And in here we're going to be using this tool, which is my color coded system. I teach in the Read well podcast to not only highlight the book and annotate what's in the book, the major themes and ideas here, we're going to be transferring those to our own journals so that we can keep this with us at all times to live a more purposeful and meaningful life. It's going to be awesome. Of course you'll get an Edgewater bookmark. I love these things because they have a chance for you to track your progress. Now this is a small book, it's again only 53 pages. So having a bookmark like this is a little overkill, but it gives you a sense of how to set up an appropriate reading habit that works for your life. I think one of the things I get a response I get often is that people want to know how to read well, but they feel like they don't have enough time. They feel like Ivan Ilyich who is sort of stuck in the day to day cycle of life. And so having a little bookmark like this, even just to teach you to show up and act meaningfully is really quite important. Of course I'll also be sending you some note taking materials. These are the post it notes I like and the highlighters I like and so on. There's going to be a ton of video you'll have access to. I'm going to be recording 14 different reading sessions where I'm actually going to read the book with you live each morning. We're going to read five pages roughly, give or take. We'll have a top down camera. We'll be going through the pages together and I will read them and we'll be highlighting together, annotating together, and you're going to see what it looks like to actually read deeply and meaningfully. Now I'm holding these courses in the morning. I understand that not everybody can do that, but the point of doing it in the morning is that I'm hoping we can get as many of you starting your day with thoughtful processes rather than just opening your email and, you know, running to work. Now, for those of you who cannot join us in the morning, that's totally fine. Everything will be recorded. Recorded and the recordings will be kept for an entire year. So when you come home at night, if you're an evening reader, you'll be able to access those and follow along. So I will be teaching in addition to the 14 live reading sessions. We're annotating each of those. I expect to be about 45 minutes to an hour. Might be a little less. We'll see. It might be a little more, depending on the questions you have in class. I'll also be teaching two workshops. One on the analog system. I have again my notebooks and my highlighting system. And another class on my digital note taking tools that I use to make my notes more searching, because that's a critical thing. It is one idea to take your notes and have a nice set of highlighted ideas that you can reflect on. It's another thing to take those notes and connect them to other ideas from other books. Because then you have these sort of idea babies, right? This idea and this idea come together to make this new fantastic idea that you can use in your own personal life. So this is what the concept of the class is going to be. And I want to tell you one last thing here. Why am I doing this? Well, first of all, a couple different reasons. I've been asked several times to teach a class on the actual act of deep reading rather than just these shorter YouTube videos. So, yes, this is gonna be a full month long. Now the classes will be on the weekdays. That will give you Saturday and Sunday off. And we're gonna be quite busy during the month of November. But there's a deeper reason why I am running this class. And I want to be completely honest with you. This class exists because I'm trying to raise some money for a down payment of a building. I want to open Edgewater Bookstore as a real place, a real bookstore. Right now, it exists as an online bookstore. And I want a place in my community for people to go where we can read deeply together, we can think about important ideas and so on. So if you join, you're not just getting into a course that I'm going to put my heart into and give you everything I have, but you're also helping to build a bookstore in a local community and make that dream a reality. Okay, so if you feel like you want to read more deeply, you're tired of reading books and not retaining what you read. In fact, I had a comment from a lady yesterday. She just joined our community. She said, I've got a degree in literature and I've been reading it my whole life, but for some reason I can't retain a dang thing and I have to go back to my Goodreads account to see if I've even read a book because I don't even remember if I've read it. So if you feel like that and you want to get out of that sense of, like, shallow reading or feeling, or if you're just tired of coasting through life and you honestly want to live a little more purposefully, then this invitation is for you. Join us this November. I'll put all the information in the in the description down below. If you're listening to the podcast, you can go to the the Show Notes there. If you're on the YouTube channel, go down below and I'll have a link to join the class. Okay, that's it. I hope to see you this November. If you join me for the Death of Ivan Ilyich, it's going to be a story that will help you live more authentically. We're going to learn about taking notes, thinking through books, and making them a more meaningful part of our lives. If you don't decide to join us, then please feel free to dig into this book on your own. It's something anybody can tackle, but it's really something you need to spend time with. It reads quickly because it's short. We're going to be reading it over the course of the month because it's more. It really is worth investing the time and it will change your life if you do that. So. So thank you for watching. And as always, read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thanks, everyone. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.