Review: Discourses and Selected Writings

Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There's a section of Discourses titled "On the Treatment of Slaves". I understand there is a nuanced difference between the slaves of Ancient Greece and the brutality of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but having a class of people with no rights is still not a good thing. Still, there seems to be a lack of self-awareness on Epictetus' part where he rants on and on about freedom but seems to be okay with a slave cleaning his house. I point this out to explain the overall tone of this work, a journal of sporadically good advice mixed in heavily with outdated thinking.

I could probably write a companion work to Discourses highlighting every ounce of the archaic, but I would mostly be repeating myself throughout most of it. As the one example I'll give, Epictetus makes several points about how illness can't hurt you because your body is meaningless when compared to the mind. While I won't dispute the overall point, the thing is, in Epictetus' time, if you got sick and didn't get well on your own, you probably just died. Sure they had doctors, but their solution to everything was leeches. I don't oppose the mindset of Stoic thought, if I did I wouldn't be reading Discourses, but with Epictetus there always felt there was a lack of flexibility.

There's also an underlying religious element to Discourses along with a strong believer in fate. When shit happens, I've always been a 'it is what it is' kind of person, but Epictetus leans heavily into it being 'God's will'. On a practical level, those mindsets aren't that different as both allow you to accept whatever happens with resolve, but how you frame it does matter. The way Epictetus frames his thoughts allows him to drift, occasionally, into self-righteousness. Example: There's a bit about how he thinks you should avoid sex until marriage. While I could argue that sex is a skill like any other that needs to be practiced (Queening, tickling the pearl, etc.), honestly, Epictetus comes off as believing this not because of Stoic thought, but because he's just a prude.

The phrasing is also entirely intended for cis-gendered males of a certain class while the translation is so obviously done by a British person(s) that I felt myself colonized just by purchasing it. But I won't even bother unpacking all of that.

Discourses is basically a couple hundred pages of a guy arguing with himself. However, despite certain outdated aspects, there is good to be had here once you cut through all the stuffiness. He hits upon several gems of wisdom but also suffers from not being able to recognize when he's wrong about something. As a stoic tome, I would say it's required reading. As anything else, I would describe it as an extra-long opinion article in the New York Times. Something intelligent and well-written, but you'll end up turning up your nose to it more than once.

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Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, here you are. At the very last final conclusion. ...Or are we? There's an inherent flaw with a series, especially when it becomes a full-fledged franchise. And that's the inability for people, even the creator(s), to just fucking let it go. There always seems to be one more series to beat out of the corpse or a sequel that is crapped out twenty years too late. And Harry Potter, the little tosser, isn't any different. While the Grindelwald stuff has its place in the story, JK races right past the need for it and starts pitching their next idea. And, let me tell you, rolling your eyes makes it really difficult to read a book.

I hate to start off a book review like that, as it undermines it, but the inclusion of a backdoor pilot does the same for the book as well. There is a need to be reflective about Dumbledore and to acknowledge that he lived an entire life (if not several) before Potter was even born, but I have this feeling it takes up too much space in the story. It is fair to say that I might not have even noticed it if I read this book before the next movie series emerged from the capitalist boardroom, but I think it's equally fair to say that JK only allows the subplot to take as much of a hold because of their future franchising.

It's also a problem I have with the latter three books in the series. As the pacing seems to suffer from the inclusion of various unneeded things. There is something to be said about a book series that was able to grow up with its audience, but the latter novels just don't hold up on their own. I could see myself re-reading Prisoner of Azkaban on its own, but never Order of the Phoenix. That's the biggest issue with a book series such as this, they need to live together or die alone.

I suppose I need to talk about Deathly Hallows as a book on its own. It's fine. I would even say it's good for the most part. It just needs to be trimmed down a couple hundred pages. When it shines, it really fucking shines. The rest of the time, I'm kind of waiting for the next good bit. If the book needs downtime to establish something, that's great, but here I feel we have an author who has the authority to do whatever they want. So, bottom line, it's mostly good with a side of bad pacing.

One thing that stuck out to me was the actual Battle of Hogwarts. JK taking a very much JRR Tolkien approach to battle writing. As in we don't actually see much of the battle as we have to follow around some noncombatant asshole. It's more of an observation than a criticism, but I will say this is why third-person omniscient is the best literary perspective. That's a hill I will die on.

There we have it I suppose. A book series I finally got around to reading and didn't feel I wasted my time. Which is probably the highest praise I can muster unless your last name is Heinlein. A book, and series as a whole, that was clever, charming, and well-written, but got more and more up its own butt. The last never becoming a fatal flaw, but probably would have if they wrote two or three more books/movies.

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