Tag: Downtime

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The blogs that keep on giving

Blogs come and go, but some stalwarts remain.

Here are a few that I’ve read daily for years and which still provide valuable insight:

  • Cultural Offering – Music, literature, humanity, perspective and more.
  • Execupundit.com – Michael Wade’s thoughts on leadership, ethics, management and life. Michael also writes long-form essays on his Substack channel (also highly recommended).
  • Hunter Gatherer 21C – Nicholas Bate’s new home: reflections on business, life, balance, The Beatles and his own fiction.

These three are the cornerstone of my morning reading. Also highly recommended are:

And two essentials that I follow on email:

  • Steven Pressfield – a writer’s writer with much to say about Resistance, the War of Art and “Putting your ass where your heart wants to be.”
  • The Daily Stoic – Ryan Holiday on Stoicism for modern, daily life.

Check them all out. Your lives will be richer for a few minutes’ reading each morning.

Image: Andrew Munro

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What I read on my vacation

I’ve been away. I’ve been neglectful. I have been busy, but I’ve also been distracted.

However, I did manage to read some great books. Here’s a selection of loosely relevant books I enjoyed over the past couple of years.

Stoicism

  • Marcus Aurelius, The Stoic Emperor by Donald J. Robertson – a fascinating and accessible biography from cognitive-behaviour therapist, writer and Stoic, Donald Robertson.
  • The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday – A well-deserved modern classic that’s (apparenty) sold over two million copies and which I should have read years ago. It’s packed with practical insight, quotes and examples. I’ve been lending out my copy ever since I finished it.
  • Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman – I had a big birthday. Friends bought me book-related vouchers and I bought books. This is fascinating if you’re interested in where Stoicism came from. It covers the philosophy from its founding by Zeno of Citium up to the time of Marcus, and explores the lives of famous and lesser-known Stoics and near-Stoics including Cicero, Cato the Younger, Seneca and Epictetus.
  • Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar – Not altogether Stoic, but a beautifully written fiction purporting to be the memoir that a dying Hadrian wrote for his adoptive heir Marcus Aurelius. It’s both visceral and delicately sensual. Remarkable.
Continue reading “What I read on my vacation” →
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Be a man of letters

Michael Wade calls for a revival of proper correspondence…

Those odd things that you might spend a chunk of time writing and then you’d mail them and not expect an answer that afternoon. It might be a week or so before you’d seriously expect a reply. And when you received a letter, you might study the letterhead and the quality of the paper and, of course, the person’s signature.

The rest is here.

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

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Bread and Circuses

Cultural Offering’s Kurt Harden set me on an adventure in pursuit of bread and circuses, via this site, AmericanDigest.org.

The original phrase, panem et circenses, was coined by Roman poet, Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, 1st – 2nd Century CE) in his Satire 10:

And what does the mob of Remus say? It follows fortune, as it always does, and rails against the condemned. That same rabble, if Nortia had smiled upon the Etruscan, if the aged Emperor had been struck down unawares, would in that very hour have conferred upon Sejanus the title of Augustus. Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things—Bread and Circuses!

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Random

Shires, counties, counts and sheriffs – @InkyFool

Now you know…

Once upon an Old English time there were shires: Hampshire, Wiltshire, Nottinghamshire etc. The Anglo-Saxons lived in these and kept the Hobbit population under control. 

Each shire was ruled for the king by a shire-official, or shire-reeve, or scir-gerefa, or sheriff. 

The Inky Fool explains all about shires, sheriffs, counties, counts, marches and marquises, here.

His book on rhetoric, The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth, is one of my favourite references for words, speech and writing.

Photo by Andy Newton on Unsplash

ALice
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Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser

This looks interesting, a new exhibition at the V&A exploring the influence of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The Times’ Ben Macintyre has some theories on the book’s inspirations, here.

Here are a couple of fine songs inspired by Alice…

… and, of course…

The books themselves – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass – are worth a read, too. It’s good to go straight to the source.

Image: John Tenniel’s illustration from the original publication (Source: British Library: https://www.bl.uk/alice-in-wonderland/articles/alice-at-150#)