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On the Shortness of LifeTimeless advice on the art of living well, from the celebrated Penguin Great Ideas series The writings of the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca offer powerful insights into stoicism, morality and the importance of reason, and continue to provide profound guidance to many through their eloquence, lucidity and wisdom. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves and each other. They have inspired
Timeless advice on the art of living well, from the celebrated Penguin Great Ideas series
The writings of the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca offer powerful insights into stoicism, morality and the importance of reason, and continue to provide profound guidance to many through their eloquence, lucidity and wisdom.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. The Penguin Great Ideas series brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.
Softcover
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4.4 ★★★★★
Based on 17 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
Reads like a video game
Format: Paperback, Format: Paperback
Reads like a video game. Captivating, entertaining and hard to put down. If you like stories where your character becomes stronger and more skilled as he overcomes his enemies, gaining titles and unlocking quests, then this book is for you. I am honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this book. I can’t wait for book 2 to arrive.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2026
★★★★★ 4
Entertaining, stats go burr, some annoying writing quirks
Format: Audiobook
This series is like following along your favorite video game MC. It has a decent amount of plot, although there occasionally is too much tangential action before resolving a plot. Don't expect amazing depth and you'll be pleasantly surprised by how mindlessly entertaining this story is. Yes, the male MC is so lucky that he survives everything even without a clever plan (ever) but at least the author kinda explains this with a high luck stat. It's basically an in-world explanation for plot armor, which I kinda respect in its audacity.
That said, two complaints:
1) As a biologist, it's annoying to hear the myth that the "law of the jungle" is "only the strong survive" as the "way of nature" repeated over and over. This is an old fashioned and inaccurate understanding of evolution, which is primarily about survival of populations and certainly has selection at multiple levels (genes, individuals, familial groups, & populations). The idea that the system's goal of "strongest survive" in this novel producing anything like evolution is an annoying and persistent reminder of how poorly most people understand evolution. Fitness is defined by how well an organism matches its niche and how many offspring it has, not how many it kills or how strong it is. So if a cultivator in this novel becomes amazingly powerful and has zero kids, they would be a total unfit creature as defined by evolution.
To add on, "law of the Jungle" understood as "every man for himself" is also an old misunderstanding of Kipling, who was actually making a point that even animals in nature follow some rules, after all "the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack". It has always baffled me how such a small scale collectivist phrase has been so thoroughly misunderstood my our individualistic culture.
2) The author has several annoying writing quirks, like needlessly using the word "itself" all the time. Similarly, adjectives are heavily repeated. Author favorites are "powerhouse" & "monster". It makes no sense that every culture would have the same slang and it's annoying to hear the same words so often. Might I suggest a thesaurus? It's fine if Ogras always says "monster" but everyone can't do that or it just seems like the author has limited vocab.
On that note, too many things are described as near endless, limitless, etc. That is a nonsensical concept, which covers for not explaining something in measurements or metaphors. This is a common issue with authors who don't do math, but something "near" infinite, is actually infinitely far from infinite. Something is infinite or it's not. Again, lets find other terms like "vast" or "enormous." Or get even better and say something "stretched across a province/country/continent/planet/solar system/galaxy/etc". Those all provide size without saying something nonsensical.
2) Stats go burr to the point of confusion. We're supposed to track attribute points, Dao, race, core, skills, nodes, bloodline & bloodline skills. We need more charts at the beginning of each book. How about one showing how skills merged? And what's the difference between 50 and 100 strength. How about 1000 or 10,000? It'd be nice had even rough comparison to picking up some mass like 100 strength means picking up a car and 1,000 is picking up a mountain.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2024
★★★★★ 5
Outstanding litrpg novel
Format: Kindle
Sympathetic, proactive protagonist; good pacing; good dialog; good progression; believable secondary characters.
The rules of the magic system are introduced gradually, so there isn’t a huge boring info dump at the beginning.
The protagonist ends up overpowered compared to literally the entire human race, but it definitely feels like he earns it, and the threats he deals with scale to keep things challenging.
The progression system is kind of complicated, but the protagonist ends up with a few strong abilities instead of dozens that are impossible to keep track of.
The book is not a comedy by any means, but it does a good job of occasionally playing up the murder-hobo aspects of the protagonist for comedic effect.
Story ends in kind of a weird spot, but I’m not complaining. The story blows past the first logical end point, dramatically shifts gears, and just keeps going. Then it ends a little abruptly at what feels like the 2/3rds mark of a second novel. You get more than one book’s worth of solid story though, so again, no complaints.
All and all, I would judge this book to be somewhere between rare and epic quality.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2021
★★★★★ 5
MUST Read for any age.
Format: Paperback
I read this book as a sophomore in college for a unit on banned books. Knowing that there is a generation of students who won't get to read this book and think about/discuss the themes Lo presents is devastating. Despite the debates surrounding the book’s appropriateness for younger kids, I believe this book is EXACTLY what children need to be reading. Specifically, I think middle school-aged children could gain a lot of value in reading this book to help them understand sexuality, relationships with family and friends, and that not everything is as black and white as some people may believe. Lily and Kath’s relationship is written so beautifully, and as a reader, it felt real.
Even though I would categorize this as a YA novel, anyone at any age can gain a lot from reading this. The story is captivating and real. Lily (the main character) doesn't get everything she wants, and while the ending is somewhat satisfactory, it leaves the reader wanting to know more, which I think has its pros and cons. Personally, I liked the general ending, but to be honest, I wanted to know more about what ended up happening regarding some of the storylines of the book. For example, Lily’s father had some issues regarding his immigrant status. We hear bits and pieces here and there, but we never really find out if/how it gets solved. Relationships like Lily and Tommy’s (a performer at the Telegraph Club) spark interesting conversations about power dynamics and where the line is between nurturing and overstepping.
I understand parents, guardians, and teachers may be worried about “exposing” children to “difficult” content and discussing things like sexuality with young individuals. But in my opinion, books like this are the perfect way to lay the groundwork for those types of conversations. We are delivered messages and lessons through an interesting story with layers about what it is like to be a teenage girl in a World of uncertainty– something I think many can relate to. Please read. Please give to your children to read. Please don't let this book be erased.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2025
★★★★★ 4
sweet tale of a child of immigrant parents figuring out her own truth
Format: Kindle
1950's San Francisco Chinatown is complicated enough for second generation Chinese teenagers, what with racism whenever they leave their safe neighborhoods, the Nationalists vs Communists entangling families in politics, and the ever present Red Scare excusing blatant police and enforcement inequities.
Imagine falling in love with a white person of your own gender at that time.
Lily is fascinated by the ad for a male impersonator at a local club. When she realizes the only other girl in her advanced math class also likes that ad, she begins sneaking out of her house and her "good Chinese daughter" persona to hang out in a club where terms like "butch" and "dyke" show her another world where women like her live and love.
Lily is naive, and loving, and just wants to do the right thing, but she'll have to face the constant choice of living true to herself or telling lies to appease her family.
The romance in this is understated and reserved, and its far more a historical exploration of 1950's Chinatown culture and the most interesting (to me ) intersection of cultures where the second generation children of immigrant parents must negotiate their identities within conflicting expectations. Lily is part of a large extended family that includes close knit families of Chinatown and her actions have repercussions on many people-- including her non-citizen father.
I didn't personally care for the sudden changes in POV to Lily's mother and Aunt...they added little to the tale I thought and their voices were too similar to Lily's to be interesting to me. I found myself skimming those bits to get back to Lily. The addition of timelines with historical and Lily's family events were interesting, but also confusing as the flashbacks jumped back and forth.
Very historically interesting, sweet, tale that keeps you anxious for Lily's welfare but never goes down a truly dark path.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2021