by Marcus Aurelius (tr. Meric Casaubon)
Rating: ★★
I eventually ran out of patience with this. I'm sure Marcus Aurelius has some tidbits of wisdom in here, but that is all it was -- a very, very long list of tidbits of wisdom, heavily repetitive of the same notes, most of which I could not remember even when taking the approach of reading just one 'meditation' in the morning to reflect on during the day. The self-help genre does not in general interest me, and this format in particular does nothing to encourage me. The books do not cohere to any real theme, and Meric Casaubon's translation, while appropriately grand and archaic for the wisdom it frames, does nothing to keep one reading through the reiterated points. I discovered I was continuing to read out of sheer bloodymindedness, and getting nothing from it, so I've called it. Maybe I'll flick through another translation sometime in the future.