Notebook Giveaway and A Descartes Read-Along
Come Read A Discourse On The Method and Maybe Win a New Notebook!
We’re doing another read-along here on Parker’s Ponderings and I’m giving away 10 more notebooks to you!
Read-alongs are pretty straight forward, we read a book together and I write companion essays for each section in order to help you understand the philosophy and theology therein.
We started in March with C.S. Lewis’s Miracles, then we read Frank Herbert’s Dune, then Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, and we just finished up C.S. Lewis’s Out of The Silent Planet. You can find the essays for all of those in my dedicated read-along section here.
I’ve decided to alternate between straight up non-fiction philosophy books and fiction novels with philosophical and theological themes. It’s turned out to be a great policy.
So, since we just read a science fiction story, our next book needs to be non-fiction and I picked René Descartes’s A Discourse on The Method. It’s short but powerful. It represents a distillation of his philosophy as he describes the method he used to arrive at his conclusions—including the famous cogito ergo sum! If you hate Descartes, maybe this will be more grist for your mill, but I hope to help you appreciate his genius, even if you still end up disagreeing with him.
I’m going to be using the Oxford World’s Classics edition but if you have a different one then feel free to use what you have. If you want to pick up the same edition as me, use my affiliate link to further support my work: Amazon Affiliate Link to A Discourse on the Method
Here’s the read-along schedule:
Reading/Companion Essay Schedule
Oct 23rd - Essay on Part 1 & 2
Oct 30th - Essay on Part 3 & 4
Nov 6th - Essay on Part 5 & 6
Nov 8th (Saturday) @ 3pm central time - Book Club Zoom Call
Book Club Zoom Calls are for paid subscribers to discuss the book and companion essays with me live. So, if you want in on that or you want access to the past recordings of those, make sure to upgrade to a paid subscription.
After we’re done with Descartes, we’ll read Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
“Okay, cool but what of the notebooks, Park? I’m here for the notebooks!”
Ah, yes, the notebooks. Leuchtturm1917—my favorite notebook company—sent me a bunch of notebooks to kick off our inaugural read-along (Miracles) and we had so much fun giving them away to you guys that they sent me 10 more notebooks to promote our reading of Descartes. I’d love to just give them all to my paid subscribers to say thanks for supporting my work but I think that’s an actually an illegal raffle. I’m pretty sure I have to have a free way to enter into the drawing for it to be legal, so I’m including a free way to enter to win.
Leuchtturm1917 sent me five dotted A5 notebooks and five dotted A6 pocket notebooks. I’m going to give four of each away to my paid subscribers and one of each away to whoever restacks and comments on this post—paid or free subscriber alike.
So, how do you get a chance to win a free notebook to take your notes on Descartes Discourse?
Easy! Just upgrade to a paid subscription by October 15th at 11:59pm. On October 16th 2025, I will use a random number generator to pick 8 numbers and I’ll pick the paid subscribers that correspond to those numbers. In addition to a better shot at winning a notebook, you’ll also have access to our paid subscriber chat, instant access to all my paid essays and notebook tutorials, exclusive videos, access to our zoom calls and the past recordings, early access to special promotions like my magazines, and even more. I hope a shot at winning one of these notebooks is the final straw to push those of you who had been meaning to upgrade to a paid subscription to pull the trigger.
Additionally, I will be picking two of you from the comment sections of this very post! One of you will win a dotted A5 notebook and one of you will win a dotted pocket notebook (A6). No paid subscription necessary. Just leave me a comment and restack this post before October 15th at 11:59 pm and you’ll be entered to win one of the notebooks.
Commenting and restacking will help me reach a broader audience with my Descartes read-along, so thanks for that!
So, that’s that. Thanks to all of you who support my work through paid subscriptions! And thanks to those who are upgrading because of this post, I hope to provide enough value to keep you around! And thanks to Descartes for this wonderful book. I’m stoked to chop it up with you all. I’ll message the winners and post pictures of the packages before they go out. Good luck!
So cool! Cogito, ergo scribo.
Really been enjoying and consuming many of your videos. Looking forward to enjoying your written words and readalongs here as well.