How to Live
How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love--such questions arise in most people's lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honourable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them 'essays', meaning 'attempts' or 'tries'. Into them he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and more than four hundred years later, Montaigne's honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment--and in search of themselves. This book, a spirited and singular biography (and the first full life of Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years), relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored.
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What Hacker News says
- This book
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty, by Sarah Bakewell (2011)
is an incredible introduction to Montaigne. I greatly enjoyed it and recommend it fondly to anyone's interested in the man or what he had to say.
- As an intro to Montaigne and his world, try the excellent "How to Live" by Sarah Bakewell
- I read the following "interesting" books this year and what I learnt is that "life is big". Meaning that my mind has been expanded in some intriguing way by reading each of these books. I have also read some thrillers and other rubbish but I observe that you did not request those so I omitted them. You're welcome.
Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Endurance by Carloine Alexander
How To Live by Sarah Bakewell (Life of Montaigne)
Now Way Down by Graham Bowley
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall
How to be a Liberal by Ian Dunt
Short Stories by Brian Friel
- I highly recommend “How to Live, or a Life of Montaigne” by Sarah Bakewell. The book follows the life of the French nobleman of the 1500’s who was a wine grower, philosopher, and essayist named Michel Eyquem de Montaigne.
The book is organized by his writings on the various aspects of life, and his thoughts on what other philosophers have written on these topics.
I found the book to be inspiring, especially for personal journaling of my own thoughts on life.
- A couple of books that changed my life:
Sarah Bakewell's 'How To Live: A Life of Montaigne': https://sarahbakewell.com/books-3/how-to-live-a-life-of-mont... - the book started my journey into philosophy. Montaigne's life is extraordinary, mainly in how he was the first person (that we know of) who wrote essays about everything. Everyone can relate to what he writes of. And Bakewell does this by boiling down his many essays and biography into one single book. Absolutely engaging.
* William Burroughs - "Naked Lunch". This book tore me up when I first read it when I was 12 years old. Not your atypical yoot book.
- Anything by Alain De Botton but especially "Consollations of Philosophy" and "Status Anxiety", "How To Live: Micheal De Montaigne" by Sarah Bakewell, and "Philosophy for Life" by Jules Evans. None of them are hardcore academic works; they're just really interesting introductions to how philosophy can actually be useful.
