Recommended Reading: Montaigne’s Essays

In case you thought you were hallucinating — yes, my blogging-related recommended reading for today is, indeed, from the 16th century. It’s the Essays by French writer Michel de Montaigne, who singlehandedly invented the genre (and the term!).

Anonymous portrait of Montaigne, via Wikimedia CommonsMontaigne‘s not your average Dead Classical Author, though. Before you fling your iPad out the window, take a look at the following quote. If you’re a blogger, odds are you’ll recognize yourself in this:

I have no other end in this writing, but only to discover myself […].

(Of the Education of Children)

Montaigne was an extraordinary man for any number of reasons. He’s still loved and admired by writers everywhere, though, for being the first to understand that writing, no matter what the topic might be, is first and foremost an expression of our innermost selves.

With every sentence in his Essays (available for free in a number of formats