This Is How Reading Is Supposed to Go

"We Stoics don’t just get a book and put it up on our shelf. We devour it. We take notes. We fold pages. We throw it in our backpacks and suitcases when we travel, it sits on the front seat of the car in case we have a few minutes. It moves with us from college to our first apartment to our first home and then, if it’s really good, perhaps, one day we’ll give it to our own children."Ryan describes what books mean to a Stoic, and introduces the newest product from Daily Stoic: our collectible, leather-bound edition of The Daily Stoic, Ryan's page-a-day book of Stoic wisdom. Get the leather-bound edition of The Daily Stoic: https://dailystoic.com/leather/***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. This is how reading is supposed to go. It was sometime around the year 141 A.D. that Junius Rusticus gave Marcus Aurelius a gift. In addition to all the things he would teach this young, future emperor about character, about truthfulness, about getting

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

  to the point, about forgiveness, Marcus would recall most gratefully Rusticus's gift of "the remembrances of Epictetus, which he supplied to me out of his own library." How well-worn this copy must have become. As Marcus would say, Rusticus had taught him never to be satisfied with just getting the gist of things he read, but encouraged him to read deeply, repeatedly, and forcefully. Considering how many times Marcus quotes Epictetus in Meditations for Memory, it's likely that he treated this copy of Discourses like a Bible, returning to it time and time again. Certainly, by the time Marcus died, there must not have been much left of this prized possession, so well-traveled it would have

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  been and made of such fragile materials. Rather than the rich leather volumes we are used to seeing in private libraries and museums, the books of ancient Rome were constructed of papyrus and wrapped in thick rolls, unsuitable for long-term preservation. "We can imagine that Seneca's copies of Zeno, Clianthe's, Chrysippus, and Epicurus must have been similarly well-worn. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers and digest their works," he advised Lucilius, "if you would derive ideas from which shall win firm hold in your mind." "Everywhere means nowhere," he said, "and the same thing must hold true of men who..." Seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them in a hasty and hurried manner.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  There is nothing so effacious that it should be helpful while it is being shifted about, and in reading of many books, is a distraction. That's what we Stoics do. We don't just get a book and put it on our shelf. We devour it. We take notes. We fold pages. We throw it in our backpacks and suitcases when we travel. It sits on the front seat of the car in case we have a few minutes. It moves with us from college to our first apartment, to our first home. And then, if it's really good, perhaps one day we'll give it to our own children or to a friend in need, as Rusticus did. Books are made to be broken in. They are mines to be dug, wells to be drawn from, sturdy posts to lean on, shoulders to cry on. Just as we never step in the same river twice, to paraphrase Marcus and Herakles,

• 3:00Ryan Holiday?

  we never read the same book the same way. That's why we read and reread, note and discuss, write and flag. The beatings our books take in the process, it's a beautiful sight. It's a sign they are doing their job. It's evidence of accumulated hours and hopefully much wisdom, too. It's the highest praise you can give an author, to really engage with the material, to make it your own, to have a real two-sided conversation. It's been almost four years since The Daily Stoic was published. This little book, the first collection of all the Stoics in one book in centuries, and certainly the only one to ever put them in a page-a-day format, has sold nearly 1 million copies in 20 languages.

• 3:41Ryan Holiday?

  It's quite possible that your copy, having been cracked open hundreds of times now, is looking a little worse for wear. So we have good news. We are releasing a premium leather-bound edition of The Daily Stoic. This limited edition comes with a host of new features to distinguish it from the original, a genuine leather cover with gold foil-stamped logos, gilded edge pages printed on premium-grade paper, and all-new illustrations to delineate each section of the book and more. Each book comes inside a custom box, which makes it great for gift-giving, and that holds the book as well as a special letter for me, the author, Ryan Holiday. And the book is On sale now, but this is the first run, which means it's a limited quantity. So don't miss your chance to own this new,

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  beautiful edition of the Daily Stoic. You can buy yours today in the Daily Stoic store or at dailystoic.com/leather.