- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus; Reprint edition (14 Jan 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0701178922
- ISBN-13: 978-0701178925
- Product Dimensions: 16.4 x 3.3 x 22.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 159,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
How to Live
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Review
'a lively, well researched account of the man' --Literary Review
'An instructive journey around Montaigne, exemplifying his charm and the universality of his appeal...Bakewell obviously enjoyed her time with Montaigne...her enjoyment is sure to lead many readers to Montaigne's text. And those who do are certain to appreciate Bakewell's own empathy and eloquence.'--A.C. Grayling, Prospect magazine
`cleverly retells [Montaigne's] life... she conjures up 16th century France in all its tumultuous glory.' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly
'... It's a rare achievement. Sarah Bakewell deserves congratulations for opening Montaigne to new readers so very appealingly.' --Evening Standard
`Sarah Bakewell has written an entertaining and well-researched book... a thorough account of a peculiar and vivid personality...'
--Spectator
'...clear introduction to Montaigne ... a rare achievement. Sarah Bakewell deserves congratulations for opening Montaigne to new readers so very appealingly." --The Evening Standard
'Splendidly conceived and exquisitely written ... enormously absorbing.' --The Sunday Times
'An entertaining and well-researched book. .. a thorough account of a peculiar and vivid personality.' --The Spectator
'Bakewell writes with verve ... an intellectually lively treatment of a Renaissance giant and his world.' --Daily Telegraph
"'How to Live' is a superb, spirited introduction to the master."
--The Guardian
'How to live is a superb, spirited introduction to the master' --Guardian Review
'Bakewell writes with verve. This is an intellectually lively treatment of a Renaissance giant and his world' --Daily Telegraph
'this splendidly conceived and exquisitely written double biography...should persuade another generation to fall in love [with Montaigne]' --Sunday Times
'lucidly written, vividly detailed ... her fluid structure beautifully reflects the freeform nature of Montaigne's candid meditations' --Metro
'Sprightly...It is ultimately his [Montaigne's] life-loving vivacitythat she succeeds in communicating to her readers.' --Observer
'exquisitely written' -- Sunday Times
`a bright, engaging book ... Try it and you will make a new, most intimate friend'
--Daily Mail
`illuminating and humane book... How to Live will delight and illuminate'. --Independent
`Bakewell reminds us how fascinating and shockingly original were Montaigne's meditations' --The Week
`this welding together of biography and self-help mirrors exactly the project of Montaigne's Essays'
--FT
'this lively biography is so well adapted to Montaigne's sensibility that it succeeds in reviving him for our times' --The Times, February 2010
"a haunting and beautiful novel of friendship, life and destiny"
-- Times Literary Supplement
`the most enjoyable introduction to Montaigne in the English language'
-- Times Literary Supplement
`Her considerable achievement in this work is to organise and present him without being exhaustive or reductive.'
--The Irish Times
`This exquisitely written biography explores both Montaigne's life and his famous essays'. --The Sunday Times
'An instructive journey around Montaigne, exemplifying his charm and the universality of his appeal...Bakewell obviously enjoyed her time with Montaigne...her enjoyment is sure to lead many readers to Montaigne's text. And those who do are certain to appreciate Bakewell's own empathy and eloquence.'--A.C. Grayling, Prospect magazine
`cleverly retells [Montaigne's] life... she conjures up 16th century France in all its tumultuous glory.' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly
'... It's a rare achievement. Sarah Bakewell deserves congratulations for opening Montaigne to new readers so very appealingly.' --Evening Standard
`Sarah Bakewell has written an entertaining and well-researched book... a thorough account of a peculiar and vivid personality...'
--Spectator
'...clear introduction to Montaigne ... a rare achievement. Sarah Bakewell deserves congratulations for opening Montaigne to new readers so very appealingly." --The Evening Standard
'Splendidly conceived and exquisitely written ... enormously absorbing.' --The Sunday Times
'An entertaining and well-researched book. .. a thorough account of a peculiar and vivid personality.' --The Spectator
'Bakewell writes with verve ... an intellectually lively treatment of a Renaissance giant and his world.' --Daily Telegraph
"'How to Live' is a superb, spirited introduction to the master."
--The Guardian
'How to live is a superb, spirited introduction to the master' --Guardian Review
'Bakewell writes with verve. This is an intellectually lively treatment of a Renaissance giant and his world' --Daily Telegraph
'this splendidly conceived and exquisitely written double biography...should persuade another generation to fall in love [with Montaigne]' --Sunday Times
'lucidly written, vividly detailed ... her fluid structure beautifully reflects the freeform nature of Montaigne's candid meditations' --Metro
'Sprightly...It is ultimately his [Montaigne's] life-loving vivacitythat she succeeds in communicating to her readers.' --Observer
'exquisitely written' -- Sunday Times
`a bright, engaging book ... Try it and you will make a new, most intimate friend'
--Daily Mail
`illuminating and humane book... How to Live will delight and illuminate'. --Independent
`Bakewell reminds us how fascinating and shockingly original were Montaigne's meditations' --The Week
`this welding together of biography and self-help mirrors exactly the project of Montaigne's Essays'
--FT
'this lively biography is so well adapted to Montaigne's sensibility that it succeeds in reviving him for our times' --The Times, February 2010
"a haunting and beautiful novel of friendship, life and destiny"
-- Times Literary Supplement
`the most enjoyable introduction to Montaigne in the English language'
-- Times Literary Supplement
`Her considerable achievement in this work is to organise and present him without being exhaustive or reductive.'
--The Irish Times
`This exquisitely written biography explores both Montaigne's life and his famous essays'. --The Sunday Times
Book Description
Brilliant, original, funny and moving - a vivid portrait of Montaigne, showing how his ideas gave birth to our modern sense of our inner selves, from Shakespeare's plays to the dilemmas we face today.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
86 of 88 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Montaigne's collected essays is one of the best "dipping" books you can get. Although philosophical they are written with a lightness of touch that make them as accessible a set of treatises as you will get and as valid today as they were when they were written. Sarah Bakewell takes some of these essays and relates them to modern - and historical - life whilst also providing us with a biography of Montaigne and a picture of his times as well.
This book is an immense achievement, thoroughly enjoyable,and in no way "difficult" so give it a go if you are in any way interested in the human condition.
It has quite encouraged me to dust down that old volume of essays and have another "dip" or two.
This book is an immense achievement, thoroughly enjoyable,and in no way "difficult" so give it a go if you are in any way interested in the human condition.
It has quite encouraged me to dust down that old volume of essays and have another "dip" or two.
42 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Oh how I wish this book had been around when I was a university student reading Montaigne! Sarah Bakewell brings the reader on a delightful journey of exploration around this Renaissance giant and his world. She cheekily adopts Montaigne's own meandering structure, freeing herself from biographical convention. Instead, she explores Montaigne's life and thought through 20 "How to" chapters - "How to live: see the world", "How to live: use little tricks", and so on. That Montaigne lends himself to such a contemporary structure gives some idea of how completely ground-breaking his 'Essais' were. Their free-flowing, self exploratory style were Europe's first example of, as Bakewell puts it, "writing about oneself in order to create a mirror in which other people recognise their own humanity". She does him justice, and the apparent informality of her approach is deceptive. She effortlessly contextualises the man in his time and place, evoking the life of a provincial nobleman living amid the seething restlessness of a France at war with itself over religion. Bakewell's book sent me flying back to my old copy of the `Essais' - there can be no greater endorsement of an effective biography!
68 of 72 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Two weeks ago I hadn't even heard of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - now, thanks to an obvious labour of love by Sarah Bakewell, I feel that I know him and like him, very well indeed. Montaigne appears to have been the first blogger, even before computers were invented. He was a Renaissance writer, who was also a magistrate and later major in his native Bordeaux, who retired to his family vineyard to write about life in general, and nothing in particular. In doing so he gained an army of fans, got his books banned by the Catholic Church in France, and had a jolly good time along the way.
Montaigne has won esteemed fans across the ages including the impressive collective minds of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Voltaire; Virginia Woolf; and Bernard Levin. Now that is a list of heavyweight thinkers if ever there was one. But what is all the fuss about? Well Montaigne was the first write to put down on record exactly what he thought about everyday aspects of his life, and what he thought about them. A veritable latter day Bridget Jones without the angst. He invented the `stream of consciousness' long before the term itself was coined. As Sarah Bakewell observes, `most of his thought consists of a series of realisations that life is not as simple as he has just made it out to be.'
His personal epiphany seems to have come with a near death experience when still a young man, when to outward observers he was in so much pain he was trying to rip his chest open with his bare hands; but to Montaigne himself he was transported to ecstasies of delight internally. He seems never to have taken life at face value again, but been keen to live each day as it comes, and to take each one by the scruff of the neck.
And I must confess he got my vote totally when I read about his relationship with his cat, where he tries to imagine how it must be for her to regard him, instead of just viewing the world through his own human eyes. `When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?' he wonders. He ponders in his famous `Essays' on what the world is like for all creatures through their own eyes, an almost revolutionary concept in sixteenth century Europe.
Bakewell brings Montaigne to life in this absorbing and delightful book. She affectionately writes about him as if he were also a modern day man with modern day failings. `He was the sort of man who would today keep himself busy with DIY work, and probably leave half of it unfinished.' But he did have depths of emotion that coloured his whole view of the world, such as the deep friendship with his friend poet Étienne de La Boétie, and his utter desperation at his early death. He explains their love for one another by simply saying: `"Because it was him. Because it was me."
Montaigne is not afraid to write how he feels about the minutiae of life, rather than about what he has achieved - a radical concept for his day. And his skill at engaging his readers is captured by a quote from Bernard Levin, who remarked: `I defy any reader of Montaigne not to put down the book at some point and say with incredulity: "How did he know all that about me?"'
And I defy any reader of Sarah Bakewell's brilliant new biography not to want to read Montaigne's `Essays' as a result - I will certainly be doing so very soon.
Montaigne has won esteemed fans across the ages including the impressive collective minds of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Voltaire; Virginia Woolf; and Bernard Levin. Now that is a list of heavyweight thinkers if ever there was one. But what is all the fuss about? Well Montaigne was the first write to put down on record exactly what he thought about everyday aspects of his life, and what he thought about them. A veritable latter day Bridget Jones without the angst. He invented the `stream of consciousness' long before the term itself was coined. As Sarah Bakewell observes, `most of his thought consists of a series of realisations that life is not as simple as he has just made it out to be.'
His personal epiphany seems to have come with a near death experience when still a young man, when to outward observers he was in so much pain he was trying to rip his chest open with his bare hands; but to Montaigne himself he was transported to ecstasies of delight internally. He seems never to have taken life at face value again, but been keen to live each day as it comes, and to take each one by the scruff of the neck.
And I must confess he got my vote totally when I read about his relationship with his cat, where he tries to imagine how it must be for her to regard him, instead of just viewing the world through his own human eyes. `When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?' he wonders. He ponders in his famous `Essays' on what the world is like for all creatures through their own eyes, an almost revolutionary concept in sixteenth century Europe.
Bakewell brings Montaigne to life in this absorbing and delightful book. She affectionately writes about him as if he were also a modern day man with modern day failings. `He was the sort of man who would today keep himself busy with DIY work, and probably leave half of it unfinished.' But he did have depths of emotion that coloured his whole view of the world, such as the deep friendship with his friend poet Étienne de La Boétie, and his utter desperation at his early death. He explains their love for one another by simply saying: `"Because it was him. Because it was me."
Montaigne is not afraid to write how he feels about the minutiae of life, rather than about what he has achieved - a radical concept for his day. And his skill at engaging his readers is captured by a quote from Bernard Levin, who remarked: `I defy any reader of Montaigne not to put down the book at some point and say with incredulity: "How did he know all that about me?"'
And I defy any reader of Sarah Bakewell's brilliant new biography not to want to read Montaigne's `Essays' as a result - I will certainly be doing so very soon.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Compelling life, well told
A thoroughly enjoyable and well written biography-cum-anaylsis of his writing.
The author's style was exquisite and thoroughly researched,without being portentuously... Read more
The author's style was exquisite and thoroughly researched,without being portentuously... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Bibliophile
Montaigne - by Sarah Bakewell
This is an inspirational book - it introduces us to the work of Montaigne at the same time as telling us so much about Montaigne himself and his life and times. Read more
Published 2 months ago by P. Meehan
Hmm..
Unfortunately there was far too little of Montaigne in this book. Each time an extract appeared it seemed to cast the rest of the page into a shadow, by half way I was skipping... Read more
Published 4 months ago by D. J. PITT
Philosophy for dummies?
I was recommended this by a friend who had studied French literature, and felt it would encourage me to read Montaigne as it was an easy introduction. Read more
Published 6 months ago by balashare
A refreshing biography of a fascinating man
Many of us are familiar with the name Montaigne, probably a good deal less of us have read (even partially) his The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics), and how few of us could... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Didier
Workmanlike but somewhat frustrating
I enjoyed Ms. Bakewell's book, which enhanced my previously minimal knowledge of Montaigne, though I thought the book workmanlike, rather than worthy of the praise offered by some... Read more
Published 7 months ago by TR
How to Live
Hi. I bought this book to accompany a course I am taking in Sept 2011. It is easy to read and Bakewell paints a pen picture of Montaigne without too much detail. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Nells
More than Montaigne ...
The title of Sarah Bakewell's book entitled "How to Live?" does the book a half-justice. Beyond elucidating Montaigne's work, she gives us so much more. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. M. Brady
Sweetly addictive
This read distracted me completely from my academic research in a very nice way and I found myself not only wishing the book not to end but making the most peculiar connections... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Bstar
Getting to know Montaigne
I had heard about Montaigne but never read anything by him before coming to Sarah Bakewell's book. As a newcomer to Montaigne I think the book provides an excellent introduction... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Adrenalin Streams
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