My missus bought me The Art of War, I suspect because Tony Soprano reads it at one point in The Best TV Show Ever Made, preferring it to Machiavelli. Well, much as I appreciate the sentiment, Tony is the head of a mafia family, whereas I'm, well, I'm not. And while TAoW is much more concise and less repetitive than Marcus Auralius' Meditations, the first of the other two ancient books of wisdom that I've read, it's nowhere near as applicable to my life as the other one, Hagakure. Some of it is good stuff, and no doubt would be even more so if I was a high-powered businessman capable of doing some straightforward transference, but much of it relates to, for example, terrain, and my commute is pretty flat and largely free from confrontation now that I don't have to take the tube, so it's just not all that useful. It's also not as funny as Hagakure, as nowhere near as much of the advice culminates in decapitation. Ho hum.

Favourite quote:

There are five ways
to attack by fire.

The first is to burn
men;

The second is to burn
supplies;

The third is to burn
equipment;

The fourth is to burn
warehouses;

The fifth is to burn
lines of communication.