4 ms·

I can't seriously be the only one who read this review and was amazingly frustrated by the lack of detail. I have not read the book but, to the author's credit,

I can't seriously be the only one who read this review and was amazingly frustrated by the lack of detail. I have not read the book but, to the author's credit, this review made me want to read it because there is so little information about the book and so much attention to cheerleading for it. "One of the first things I learned was that ... [Stoicism is] just another way to lead one's life" This doesn't tell me anything about it except that it's different. Give me some detail! Something to grab onto, to pique my interest! A few paragraphs later: "Several times while reading I was amazed at the insight the Stoics had. Okay so if it happened a lot, just give me some tidbit. Anything. I don't mean to be intentionally negative but this is a book review and the author has included nothing but a buzz-wordy sounding definition of the purpose of Stoicism: "to have a joyous, happy, fun-filled life by better learning the art of living". I understand the "you have to read it man!" kind of attitude about books that lead to huge paradigm shifts but there's a middle ground where one or two ideas can be explained, an outline of content can be created, modern ideas and these ideas can be contrasted.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Thanks for your comment. I'm the author of the review. I struggled with this as I wrote the review. How much of the material should I paraphrase? Not being a classicist, and only having a layman's view of things, I felt very uncomfortable trying to put words in the book author's mouth. As you can see from another comment on this thread, from what I've said, I'm already being told that I seriously misrepresented Stoicism (I disagree with that commenter's point, but it's not important). So after some thought I felt that the more I tried to make the review into a tl;dr the more I'd probably screw it up. I put in as much detail as I was comfortable with. If you read down to the bottom of the page, there's a product description from Amazon. It goes over things from a different angle. You can also click on the search box to see what hackers on other technical sites thought of the book. That's just below the review in the box titled "the buzz". As I was researching other reviews before I wrote mine, I found a heckuva lot of detail around exactly what you are asking about. I suggest you give it a couple of clicks and see if your questions aren't all answered. I also didn't want the piece to sound too cheerleading-ish, but heck, I really liked the book. I read 30 or more books a year, and this is probably the best book I've read so far this year. While I have my doubts about lasting impact, what can I say? I really liked it. Not going to lie or exaggerate about that one way or the other.
tree_of_item 16y ago
I assume there's so little detail because he wants you to click his affiliate link and buy the book.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Thanks for your comment. I'm the author of the review. I struggled with this as I wrote the review. How much of the material should I paraphrase? Not being a classicist, and only having a layman's view of things, I felt very uncomfortable trying to put words in the book author's mouth. As you can see from another comment on this thread, from what I've said, I'm already being told that I seriously misrepresented Stoicism (I disagree with that commenter's point, but it's not important). So after some thought I felt that the more I tried to make the review into a tl;dr the more I'd probably screw it up. I put in as much detail as I was comfortable with. If you read down to the bottom of the page, there's a product description from Amazon. It goes over things from a different angle. You can also click on the search box to see what hackers on other technical sites thought of the book. That's just below the review in the box titled "the buzz". As I was researching other reviews before I wrote mine, I found a heckuva lot of detail around exactly what you are asking about. I suggest you give it a couple of clicks and see if your questions aren't all answered. I also didn't want the piece to sound too cheerleading-ish, but heck, I really liked the book. I read 30 or more books a year, and this is probably the best book I've read so far this year. While I have my doubts about lasting impact, what can I say? I really liked it. Not going to lie or exaggerate about that one way or the other.

tree_of_item 16y ago

I assume there's so little detail because he wants you to click his affiliate link and buy the book.