Review of
The
Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
by Ryan Holiday Instaread summary
Two out of five stars
My visceral
reaction to this summary was negative and that was based on two sentences in
the introductory overview and the words used in the summary. I will start with
the two sentences:
“The Obstacle
Is the Way is a self-help book intended to give the reader a solid grasp of
the basics of Stoicism and an understanding of their practical application in
everyday life.”
“The author intentionally avoids a discussion of what
Stoicism is and rarely uses the term itself.”
These two sentences are contradictory, Holiday cannot
both give a solid grasp of something and simultaneously avoid discussing it.
In addition, in the body of the summary, the word
“Stoic” and its variants are used many times. For example, the word is used in
the titles of five of the nine key takeaways. Furthermore, the word is
mentioned seven times in the one-page explanation of key takeaway three.
This makes no
sense to me as it appears that the word “Stoic” may appear more often in the
summary than it does in the entire book. If the author of the main book
intentionally avoids using a term, why would the author of a summary use it so
often?
This book was made available for free for review purposes
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