Reviews and Comments

I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Greg Sestero himself. Although the photos from the book are great to skim through, I would deem the audiobook version to be the best way to experience this work and preferably with a friend. Just like the The Room (as in the actual movie itself), having a friend present to share the absurd experience of dipping your toes into Tommy's world makes it even better. It's difficult not to be charmed by Greg's Tommy Wiseau impression to which my girlfriend and I often found ourselves giggling together at, even trying to imitate him for the longest time. This was a great experience for both of us and I must applaud both Greg and Tom for the good writing giving us an insight to this remarkable friendship that led to the creation of one of the best worst movies out there.

A very welcome book in an age where most popular Stoicism-oriented self-help books heavily lean only into an egoistic improvement of the individual and "life hacks", while ignoring the crucially social and universal foundation of the philosophy. It also manages to be both academically relevant and accessible in its language. Would recommend for anyone who has had modest exposure to ancient Stoic texts.

I liked this one. It includes translations of segments from Cicero's work "On the Ideal Orator" and Quintilian's "The Education of the Orator". The overall theme is the question of whether humor be taught or is it a skill one is born with. Both texts strive at great lengths to categorize jokes and helpfully provide examples with them.

An excellent quality of this work, as if often the case with Cicero's works, is the sheer amount of examples provided. There is an unfortunate overlap of themes and jokes in between Cicero's and Quintilian's texts, where the latter often references the former. But I feel like Quintilian goes more in depth into the discussion of the topics than Cicero, even if Cicero does have a good structure in his text.

In regards to the translation Michael Fontaine, the translator/annotator, put it best: "Styles of translation vary. Some are literal, others go for the gist. This one goes for the jest." And he did a good job, even if some jokes often do tend to fall short due to the subtle linguistic properties lost in the translation.

I bought this after seeing the book review by @GregSadler@metalhead.club a few months back. I've always liked Cicero's work so I'm pretty intrigued by this one.

Great assortment of moral essays by Plutarch, translated by Robin Waterfield. Introductions were done by Ian Kidd. Didn't read every essay, but I'll say I'm finished with this one for now. I'll leave a list of the essays in question here for the sake of bookkeeping: - On Listening - How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend - On Being Aware of Moral Progress - Whether Military or Intellectual Exploits Have Brought Athens More Fame (unread) - On the Avoidance of Anger - On Contentment - On God's Slowness to Punish (unread) - On Socrates' Personal Deity (unread) - In Consolation to his Wife - On the use of Reason by 'Irrational' Animals (unread)

So many texts on ethics have pointed me to this one work by Aristotle. It's incredibly easy to find free ebooks for it online but I really want a physical copy of my own.

Started out reading the introduction and I'm already really intrigued. A perfect addition to my study of greco-roman philosophy.

I thought it was a pure biography at first, but Ella (and the co-writer Randi) gives an excellent insight into the history of the Sami, how it ties to the present, in addition to what issues are currently at stake in regards to the Sami culture, people and the larger society. I'm definitely going to recommend this to anyone who wants to learn more about our culture in a short read. The storytelling is vivid and beautiful, not to mention very nostalgic for myself.