The book The Slow Regard of Silent Things is part of the Kingkiller Chronicle series. Though I haven’t read any other books in the series besides this one—and this book is not the first entry—it feels like it can be read on its own. Still, I can’t say that for certain.

The story is about a girl who lives beneath a university, in a hidden network of old rooms and tunnels. She maintains the pipes that run through the tunnels and keeps the rooms clean and organized. This is not a high-stakes story; it’s more laid back. If it were an anime, I might call it slice of life, though that label doesn’t quite fit either—it has a certain surreal quality. The girl never speaks a word to anyone, and her actions are often strange.

The writing style in this book is quite unique. It uses a lot of short sentences—you rarely see one that runs longer than a dozen words, and most are abruptly ended with a full stop. I think this is intentional, meant to reinforce the idea that there isn’t one big, important event happening, but rather many small things. And by making all the sentences equally short, it suggests that all these little things hold equal value.

This is my interpretation of the story: to me, it’s about control and desire. In the spirit of the ancient Greek Cynics, the girl lives frugally, never taking more than she needs, striving to be satisfied with simple things. We see this multiple times throughout the story—she has the opportunity to take more than she needs, but when the desire arises, she reprimands herself.

It’s also in line with the Stoic tradition in two key ways. First, it follows the theorem of control: only caring about things within our direct power and disregarding everything else. For example, even when a day arrives that she dislikes, she faces it without despair, because it’s outside her control. Second, there’s the idea that things are guided by a rational principle—the logos—which gives everything its purpose and determines fate. The girl believes that everything has a role, even mundane everyday objects, and she believes she herself has a clear purpose: to take care of things. Although she occasionally questions this purpose, she remains steadfast in her conviction.

The last influence I want to mention is the Buddhist one. Throughout the book, there’s a recurring theme that “wanting is bad.” While this could be explained using Stoicism—i.e., not desiring things outside one’s control—the book goes further, suggesting that all desire not directly related to one’s personal purpose is harmful. This closely resembles Buddhist doctrine or Schopenhauer’s philosophy, both of which argue that the root of all suffering is desire. In keeping with this, the book emphasizes the appreciation of small things, the quiet joy of doing basic tasks, no matter how boring or gruesome they may seem, and doing them with care and enjoyment.

I’m divided on this book. Although I appreciate what it’s trying to do—and I genuinely feel it shows a great deal of creativity and human authenticity—it personally felt a bit boring to me. If the message was really what I think it was, the book could have been substantially shortened and still conveyed the same idea.

Furthermore, if the book was also trying to provide a cozy, slice-of-life experience, that aspect didn’t work for me. I think that only works if the reader is already deeply invested in the character and wants to see them in everyday situations. You need to hook the reader first before you can focus entirely on atmosphere (though I admit, atmosphere itself can sometimes be a hook). But this should be taken with a grain of salt, as I haven’t read the previous books in the series, where our protagonist has been already introduced.

I think most people are familiar with Sam Harris. In this book, he tackles the question of spirituality or mysticism through a scientific mindset, exploring whether there is any value in it independent of religious superstition and convoluted metaphysical claims.

The book contains the following sections: first, he uses philosophical and neurological arguments to show that consciousness can be divided, and from this he argues that there is no unified self — that the I is illusory. Next, he applies Buddhist meditation techniques to deepen the understanding of this insight. Finally, he explores his own experiences with spirituality.

Personally, I found one of the most convincing arguments to be the case of a split-brain patient, which demonstrates how consciousness is more complex than we often assume. You can see a shortened version of that argument here.

I think it’s a helpful book for our modern times, where — due to scientism — so much value is placed on objectivity, and subjectivity is often disdained. This book highlights the importance of the subjective perspective. It neatly fits in with other things I wrote abouts such as What it is like to be a bat?, The Eiffel Tower is NOT in Paris! and On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy.

The book The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian is a collection of writings by various Cynic thinkers, starting in ancient Greece with Diogenes and ending in the imperial Roman period with Emperor Julian. You can think of it as a compilation of short essays and fragments—no single chapter or text takes more than 30 minutes to read. This makes it perfect for picking up occasionally, reading a passage, and setting it down again. Perhaps due to it being a Penguin translation, it’s also very readable and accessible.

It should be clarified that when I refer to Cynicism, I mean the original philosophical doctrine, not the modern sense of the word, which implies pessimism or distrust. The ancient Cynics can be thought of as a more extreme form of Stoicism. The Stoics taught that we should be indifferent to anything outside our control—such as wealth, fame, or power. This meant that we shouldn’t reject such things if they come to us, but we also shouldn’t actively pursue them.

The Cynics were more radical. They believed that the only truly good thing is virtue—something fully within our control—and that everything else is bad or distracting. As a result, they rejected all forms of wealth and worldly power. They lived on the streets and, following the example of their founder Diogenes, adopted his iconic image: a simple cloak and a walking stick. They were famous for their public displays of defiance against social norms—such as defecating and masturbating in public—and, like Socrates, they roamed the city provoking people to reflect on their lives.

The reasoning behind these outrageous public acts was twofold. First, they aimed to provoke people into questioning commonly accepted values, much like how Plato’s dialogues often end in aporia, a state of philosophical puzzlement. Second, their acts had a performative aspect: by doing something shocking, they intended to act as beacons for others—if they could challenge societal norms so radically, maybe you could change a few small things in your own life. Only by truly understanding the rules can breaking them be meaningful. The Cynics didn’t reject social convention out of laziness or rebellion for its own sake; they were deliberate and principled in their actions.

Because Cynicism was deeply rooted in Greek mythological and philosophical traditions (with Heracles being an ideal figure), it eventually faded with the death of Emperor Julian, the last pagan emperor of Rome. Even during his time, Julian criticized the Cynics for having strayed from their original path and becoming diluted. That said, one could argue that Cynicism and its spirit of asceticism were adopted by Christianity—first through figures like Jesus (who may or may not have had direct exposure to Cynicism) advocating a life of poverty in service to God, and later through Christian hermits like the Stylites.

If I have one criticism of the Cynics, it’s that they seem to have traded the philosophical rigor of their counterparts—the Stoics, and even Socrates—for a more witty, performative approach. The book is full of clever one-liners describing how Cynics reacted to various situations, but it lacks in-depth philosophical argument. However, this can be explained by the fact that Cynics replaced theoretical rigor with a philosophy of action. If the philosopher’s task is to know oneself, then for the Cynics, that meant acting in accordance with virtue rather than engaging in abstract metaphysics. They preferred to embody their values directly in the world.

Accordingly we must go back to the divisions of the Cynic philosophy. For the Cynics also seem to have thought that there were two branches of philosophy, as did Aristotle and Plato, namely speculative and practical, evidently because they had observed and understood that man is by nature suited both to action and to the pursuit of knowledge. And though they avoided the study of natural philosophy, that does not affect the argument. For Socrates and many others also, as we know, devoted themselves to speculation, but it was solely for practical ends. For they thought that even self-knowledge meant learning precisely what must be assigned to the soul, and what to the body. And to the soul they naturally assigned supremacy, and to the body subjection. This seems to be the reason why they practised virtue, self-control, modesty and freedom, and why they shunned all forms of envy, cowardice and superstition.

~ To the uneducated Cynics

My favorite story about the Cynics involves Zeno, who became a pupil of Crates of Thebes—the second most influential Cynic after Diogenes. But Zeno couldn’t bear the constant public humiliation that came with Crates’ lifestyle.

Crates, desirous of curing this defect in him, gave him a potful of lentil soup to carry through the Ceramicus (the pottery district); and when he saw that Zeno was ashamed and tried to keep it out of sight, Crates broke the pot with a blow of his staff. As Zeno began to run off in embarrassment with the lentil soup flowing down his legs, Crates chided, “Why run away, my little Phoenician? Nothing terrible has befallen you.”

Zeno was so embarrassed that he went on to found his own school of philosophy—Stoicism. He eliminated the public displays of defiance and chose a more disciplined, internalized form of virtue. In hindsight, this may have been for the better, considering how influential his philosophy became.

In modernity, cynicism is referenced through Nietzsche in his work The Gay Science, particularly in the aphorism “The Madman.” It depicts a man walking around during the day with a lamp, asking, “Where is God?”—a metaphor for the death of God. This image is a reference to:

When asked why he went about with a lamp in broad daylight, Diogenes confessed, “I am looking for an honest man.”

~ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VI, section 41