Before diving into meditations spend 15 mins researching Aurelius. Because it's written diary style without intention to publish the context triggering his thoughts isn't always explained in the text.

e.g. Parts seemed quite obsessed with death - which is in part a stoic thing - but also just because at time of writing he was already old & his health was failing.

Meditations can be a slog - he repeats himself constantly, as is the tendency in published ancient Greek diaries/correspondence. It's a great grounding for stoicism though. I'd recommend also reading the Enchiridion and Discourses of Epictetus - I found them easier to absorb.

Re Aurelius: preview a couple different translations if you can - I have found there to be significant differences.

If you have the time/inclination and haven’t already I’d also suggest reading Epictetus and Seneca first.

NB: My favorite of all the available Aurelius translations so far is Martin Hammond (Penguin Classics)

Standard Ebooks has a nice PD edition of the George Long translation.[1] Also Elizabeth Carter’s translation of Epictetus’s The Enchiridion[2] and Aubrey Stewart’s translation of Seneca’s Dialogues.[3]

[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/marcus-aurelius/meditation...

[2] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/epictetus/the-enchiridion/...

[3] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/seneca/dialogues/aubrey-st...

Is Hammond's your favorite because it's the best read or because it's the most faithful to the source material?

I surveyed a ton of translations a few years ago and found Maxwell Staniforth's to be the best balance between readability and fidelity to the original text. Older translations (as is typical of older translations of ancient works) tend to use needlessly "elevated" language, while a lot of newer ones seem to be convinced the Greek is even more simple and informal than it actually is, for whatever reason.

Best read for me - most powerful and readable imo. I’m sure there is a better academic/true-to-source read. I’ve read about 4 different translations and Hammond always stick with me - possibly because I read it first.

Thank you - in the future I will clarify.

Get a few different translations of "Meditations". I recommend the ones by Gregory Hays, Martin Hammond and Robin Hard. The book is basically a collection of thoughts on various aspects of cultivating one's character and developing a "stoic" approach to whatever life may throw at you. It has no overarching framework/grand theory and thus you can read the individual thoughts in random order as the mood strikes you. It is quite practical and needs to be practiced in everyday life (with some commonsense changes to adapt to current time period).

You might also want to look into the works of Epictetus, Seneca and Cicero.

I just finished Kleppman last week. It took me since August since I was mostly reading during working hours, but I highly recommend it, especially as a companion piece if you already have a lot of familiarity with database technologies.

I read Meditations this year, and found it very repetitive and only occasionally inspiring.

It might be good to spread out reading it over a long time. Read until you find something that clicks with you. Repeat after a few weeks.

Meditations has some cool phrases here and there. It mostly gets very repetitive and you figure out his philosophy pretty clearly early on because he restates the same idea in hundreds of different ways. It's largely the same idea though.

It's become a yearly tradition of mine to reread this at the beach over the summer.

“craftsperson” <rolls eyes>

Thanks! Seems legit.