The Stoic Challenge

A very narrow exploration into 1-2 stoic techniques backed by psychology and every day life examples.

By all means not the ultimate book on stoicism, but it came to me as a much needed refresher and enthusiasm bump for re-reading some classic Seneca.

Read this if you struggle with anger, fear of death or setbacks.

First book read on stoicism. I'd give it 3.5 rating.

The first third was great. Short, concise, gives you some historical facts and a gentle into on what's it all about.

It then becomes slower, a bit bloated, not providing much new information. Sometimes it was going off-topic for a good few pages.

It was still an overall short, easy to read book. Ideas are presented in a digestible manner. I'm sure there are better books than this one on the topic, but I'd also imagine there are way more that are worse.

Worth quick reading in a few days.

This was fine. I didn't love it. I thought there was a great deal of over-explaining and “cutesy” names for the tests. Even the author knew it was getting confusing at one point and spent several pages having to reexplain his “tests” and the names he assigned them. I imagine scholars of Stoicism would be quite bored with this and those new to the ideas would probably benefit more from reading the source material. Or [b:Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance 27213329 Grit The Power of Passion and Perseverance Angela Duckworth https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1457889762l/27213329.SY75.jpg 45670634]