Marcus Aurelius - Meditations: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader

Nice and thick pages, can’t see the text on the other side. Attractive and heavy hard cover. The font is big enough to be a comfortable read.That being said, if you’re in a hard place in life, this book can change your life.

This book is amazing from the start, no b.s no shortcut.. it enlightens at ease with no gimmicks and I’ve read a lot of books

very deep lecture

I recommend everyone read this book.

Marcus is an amazing person to follow

Incredibly easy read yet deeply meaningful concepts. You may find a certain familiarity in the logic despite having no direct experience with works of Marcus Aurelius. Actually quite a page-turner.

No complaints looking forward to reading this book

Anyone who has ever read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations can tell you that the original translation is very hard to read. If you can whiz through Shakespeare with no issues, you'll likely be okay with it. However it is quite a chore to read ... and then re-read ... the pages trying to figure out what exactly is being said. So much so that often I can only get through a few pages before I have to stop and take a break.I was pretty excited to see a more modern translation available ... at first I was afraid it might take away from the original message not to have a literal translation from Latin. Then I remembered that even the original translation from Latin was done years after the original text, which also was probably heavily translated into Latin.Sadly, this is still a chore to read and understand. Maybe a little less so than the original text ... but I feel like a much better job could have been done to make it more understandable without losing the original message and intent.The biggest issue I have with this is the layout. It is terrible. The text fills the entire page from top to bottom and often is an entire block of text with no paragraphs or any kind of pleasing layout. As I got through the first few pages, I wondered which was worse ... getting through the very old-fashioned language of the original edition ... or getting through the slightly modernized language with the horrible layout of this edition. I may actually prefer the original edition.It is as if someone printed this book as a word document on their computer and it didn't quite match the size layout. There's nothing else to say except it looks unappealing and amateur. As others have said, it also contains pretty obvious grammatical errors .. likely no editor went over this. It seems like a college book report that was done the evening before it was due.The original copy of the book I had was the one with the black background and closeup of the Aurelius's head from the horse statue. I think I slightly prefer that to this. It might have been cool to have a copy with annotations at the bottom which gave a brief summary of other people's history whom Aurelius mentions. I found myself going to the internet to look up Sextus and other figures Aurelius mentions.The content itself is fairly stunning. There is no doubt Aurelius was ahead of his time ... and he seems to be a very disciplined and simple person. I find that it would be difficult to be a ruler of Rome in that day and forgo a lot of the luxuries of that position. At one point Aurelius mentions being happy with a plank and a sheet for a bed and not wearing his 'outdoor' clothes in the house.Other lessons in humility, temperance, pride, anger, emotion, moderation, etc. show the reader an interesting flip side to many of the more interesting leaders of Rome ... Caligula and Tiberius' licentiousness ... Nero's greed ... Julius Caesar's lust of power, etc. I would put this book up there with Machiaveli and Tsun Tzu in terms of applicable life lessons. It is no wonder that Aurelius' lessons are catching on today.Overall, this is not the book I had hoped it would be. It has only slightly simplified the original translation ... reading this book is still like putting a puzzle together. The layout is terrible and I probably would skip this edition. If you are absolutely stumped by the original translation, it might help you a bit ... but don't expect to pick this up and be able to have an enjoyable read from cover to cover. You'll still need to work for these lessons.