I would give Mr. Johnson's book, "A Philosopher's Notes: On Optimal Living, Creating an Authentically Awesome Life and Other Such Goodness", a 2.5 stars.
While I think this books idea is a good one, highlighting large and important philosophical points that fall under the 10 principles to help the reader learn to live optimally. While that was accomplished, Johnson's personal anecdotes and language that he uses REALLY turned me off. Now this is just my issue, others may not find them as annoying as I did, too may "That's hot." comments about philosophical ideas. I also was not a fan of his, at least it came across to me as anti-medication/modern medicine. Various statements made throughout the book, such as "Get off the medication. Quit numbing yourself" and the whole of the part entitled "Bloodletting & Modern Medicine" rails against being on medicines that Doctors put a person on for diabetes, heart disease, cancer. While this is all well-and-good thoughts they are pie-in-the-sky and potentially dangerous to someone who decides to just not listen to their doctor anymore since Johnson's line for them is "...your extremely well-educated, invariably well-intentioned, yet often remarkably misguided Doctor." Ah, if you are going to be making statements like that, you better bring receipts and not just be giving lip service. Alas, there are no receipts.
While the vast majority of this book deals with riding ourselves of the negativity of our lives, I again personally couldn't get past his personal injections (they are in ever entry and on damn near every page).
The largest value I got from this is the bibliography at the end of the book. 50 of his favorite books that he feels will help people live the optimal life. And I'll admit, it is a pretty good list.
I would recommend the list to people, just not the book...it just got to be too much. ( )