Meditations is essentially Marcus Aurelius’ journal or personal writings or whatever you want to call it. It is therefore formed of passages in various lengths, from quotes to long paragraphs. They were never initially intended for publishing therefore its content is quite sporadic and doesn’t read like a normal book would.

I sort of enjoyed this book. There’s obviously a lot of ‘wisdom’ in here and Aurelius was quite the man, however I don’t think I enjoyed it that much because I read it in the wrong way. I don’t think it’s a book that you should read in big chunks because it’s essentially just a collection of private notes/journal entries which doesn’t take the form of a continuous story like most books. I think I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more if I had just read small bits here and there and then thought about them. I guess it also serves as a primary source for Stoicism so if you’re into that then it’s quite good for extracting some of those teachings.

I also think my copy gave a historical context to each part of the entries which was beneficial to give more context to the statements. I’d recommend it but probably as something you read on the side and pick up every now and then to get a dose of inner workings of Marcus Aurelius’ mind.