Key – DaneCobain.com

Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman – Lives of the Stoics | Review

Title: Lives of the Stoics

Author: Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count: 334

Rating: 5/5

I picked this book up after hearing about it on BookTube, which was a happy little coincidence because I’d already been getting into stoicism after being introduced to it by my girlfriend. I just wish I could remember whose channel I saw the video on.

What we have here is essentially a cracking little introduction to the key figures of stoicism in ancient Rome and Greece, and it’s written by a well-known figure in contemporary stoic circles. In fact, at the same time that I ordered this book, I also subscribed to a bunch of Stoic YouTube channels, and it turns out that the host of one of them is one of the authors of this book.

I found it to be super accessible, with the story told slowly but surely through short chapters on some of the key figures of the Stoic movement. After a while, it gets a little difficult to remember who was who, but that doesn’t really matter. The important thing here is the lessons that are on offer, and the interesting thing about the figures that are profiled is that as well as writing about and teaching their beliefs, they also lived them.

All in all, it’s a pretty accessible read whether you’re new to stoicism or not, and if you’ve been looking to learn more about the philosophy then this is a pretty good place to look. I enjoyed reading it, and I also ended up tabbing out half of the pages for my video review, which meant that I had a lot to say about it. It’s definitely food for thought.

Now that I’ve read this, I’m keen to learn more about stoicism, and I’m also looking forward to watching some more of the author’s videos. You should give it a Google and check out both the book and the YouTube channel.

Learn more about Lives of the Stoics.

Agatha Christie – Elephants Can Remember | Review

Title: Elephants Can Remember

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 224

Rating: 3*/5

Agatha Christie – Elephants Can Remember

This book wasn’t Agatha Christie’s best book, but it’ll do. Even at her worst, she’s better than most, it’s just that this book feels less “alive” than some of her others, probably because she’d been writing Poirot stories for quite a while by this point and so she was probably running out of ideas.

I think part of the problem that I had was that it felt too “cookie cutter”. It was almost a parody of itself because it included all of the tropes that Christie pretty much single-handedly invented, but this also meant that it wasn’t particularly innovative and not worth reading above most of her others.

In fact, I read this book a week or so ago and forgot to post a review until now, but I’m already struggling to remember what it was all about. The main thing that I remember about it is that it has a key on the cover, and I only remember that because that was one of the challenges on the bookshelf scavenger hunt and I had to pass on that one because I didn’t own any.

All in all, this is fine to read if you’re trying to read everything that Christie ever wrote.