Reddit reviews How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
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How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Questions and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell.
"Apology for Raymond Sebond" and "Of Experience" are his most well-known.
Think of Montaigne as a proto-blogger. There's no overarching theme, really, other than he's trying to understand the world and himself. He comes from an earlier Humanist tradition that is inductive and bottom-up as opposed to deductive and top-down. He's not there to present an argument as a lawyer would; he's there to explore an idea wherever it takes him. (For more on the difference between Montaigne's essays and modern essays, this post is essential: http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html) I disagree with the other response here: there's no reason not to skip around and read whatever interests you.
If you still need some guidance, though, Sarah Bakewell's How To Live is helpful: http://www.amazon.com/How-Live-Montaigne-Question-Attempts/dp/1590514831
The chapters are organized thematically, so there's no need to read that one straight through either. I think she has a tendency to get bogged down into too many details, so feel free to skim.
Lots of great recommendations in this thread; I've added a few to my reading list. Here are my suggestions (copied from a previous thread):
And, the following two are a look into the lives of two great men that lived in the 20th century; both offer many points worth emulating.
>To be fair, my interest in being less "automated" in my Stoic thoughts was inspired only recently after a discussion on this subreddit. My dive into skepticism has been a means to assess and challenge my beliefs in a different way, as the surviving Skeptic works delve more into epistemology than surviving Stoic works..... ..... ....Epictetus, when talking about evaluating impressions, mentions that we need to examine it by the tools at our disposal and chiefly the dichotomy of control. Skeptic tools fall in the former for me.
This is something that's been bothering me also when put into practice. I've been considering applying the Socratic line of questioning - haven't developed a full-fledged approach yet apart from an acronym CARPIQ (clarify, ques. assumptions, reasons, perspectives, implications, and question). But it seems cumbersome at the outset itself - I mean it's not going to be like second nature nor is it going to be easy implementing on a machine-like organ that produces thousands of impressions. Being preoccupied with a lot of things, this might take me some time to figure out.
You've given me an additional direction to explore. I'm grateful for that. I'll definitely make time to explore this.
>When I get the chance, I'd like to pick up Outlines of Pyrrhonism from Sextius Empiricus.
Interesting. Adding this to my list. Thanks!
>Oh! What book about him did you pick up?
How to Live, or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer, by Sarah Bakewell
https://www.amazon.com/How-Live-Montaigne-Question-Attempts/dp/1590514831
This is the book
You can grab the audiobook in Frame translation, the narration is quite nice.
I've done some research into the best translation and the consensus seems to be that Screech is the most "accessible and modern" http://www.amazon.com/Michel-Montaigne-Complete-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140446044/
Although the best book on Montaigne is http://www.amazon.com/How-Live-Montaigne-Question-Attempts/dp/1590514831 which I found thanks to Farnam Street and I would recommend reading it alongside the original.