** 42nd book of 2021: Equanimous Two Stars **
How to find stoic joy in reading a mediocre book?
** Negative visualization: ** imagine a world where one never had the opportunity to read this book…. wait that would make me happier.
** Accept the things you cannot change: ** Stoicism, like real estate, attracts writers of mediocre quality. Nothing I do will change that.
** Beware hedonic adaption: ** Just because we live in what may be the last golden age of literature does not mean every book is great!
** Set internal goals: ** Next time I come across a mediocre book, I will DNF it.
** Have a fatalistic attitude: ** We have to read the bad books to appreciate the good ones!
Irvine attempts for a modern retelling of Stoicism to create a philosophy of life, that can be used to guide daily decisions for living a good life. The book is short, but has less meat than many online articles, and the ancients are readily digestible. I can’t think who I would recommend this book to over reading Epictitus or Aurelius directly.