Penguin Great Ideas Series

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are.

When Penguin released their Great Ideas Series, I have to admit that I bought the books for their covers. I did always mean to read them too, however, and so in 2008 (and 2009) I'm going to read two 'great ideas' a month for 20 months. I'll be picking them at random and will blog a review of each as I go along. Click on a link below to see which ones I've reviewed so far...

Series 1 (Red)

1. Seneca - On the Shortness of Life
   
2. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
   
3. St Augustine - Confessions of a Sinner
   
4. Thomas a Kempis - The Inner Life
   
5. Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince
   
6. Michel de Montaigne - On Friendship
   
7. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub
   
8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Social Contract
   
9. Edward Gibbon - The Christians and the Fall of Rome
   
10. Thomas Paine - Common Sense
    
11. Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
    
12. William Hazlitt - On the Pleasure of Hating
    
13. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto
    
14. Arthur Schopenhauer - On the Suffering of the World
    
15. John Ruskin - On Art and Life
    
16. Charles Darwin - On Natural Selection
    
17. Friedrich Nietzsche - Why I Am So Wise
    
18. Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own
    
19. Sigmund Freud - Civilization and its Discontents
    
20. George Orwell - Why I Write
    
    
    Series 2 (Blue)
    
21. Confucius - The First Ten Books
    
22. Sun-tzu - The Art of War
    
23. Plato - The Symposium
    
24. Lucretius - Sensation and Sex
    
25. Cicero - An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom
    
26. The Revelation of St. John the Divine and The Book of Job
    
27. Marco Polo - Travels in the land of Kubilai Khan
    
28. Christine de Pizan - The City of Ladies
    
29. Baldesar Castiglione - How to Achieve True Greatness
    
30. Francis Bacon - Of Empire
    
31. Thomas Hobbes - Of Man
    
32. Sir Thomas Browne - Urne-Burial
    
33. Voltaire - Miracles and Idolatry
    
34. David Hume - On Suicide
    
35. Carl Clausewitz - On the Nature of War
    
36. Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling
    
37. Henry David Thoreau - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
    
38. Thorstein Veblen - Conspicuous Consumption
    
39. Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
    
40. Hannah Arendt - Eichmann and the Holocaust
    

Review: Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan by Marco Polo

This is the first book I (randomly) picked to read out of the Penguin Great Ideas Series. It's number 27 in the list and part of series two (the blue series).

My first thought when reading this book was that it's not really an idea as such, it's a description. My second thought was that it would've been nice to have some background to give the book context. My third thought was 'Duh! You have the internet and google skillz. Go find the background for yourself!'

Which I did :-)

Marco Polo, a Venetian, traveled to China in 1271 and returned back to Venice in 1291. I have vague recollections of reading a book about him, which argued that he never actually got as far as China when I was traveling to China myself in 1999 (a long time ago now :-). This is a relatively recent argument, based on omissions in Polo's description and the fact that there are no records of him serving Kublai Khan. However, I can appreciate why even the first readers of the book describes it as being filled with 'a million lies'. Polo's descriptions are extraordinary. Kublai Khan, who is by now relatively old (60-ish) lives a life of hunting and feasts, wives and concubines. Khan has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, four wives, a rotating roster of concubines, ten thousand hounds and a palace that can be taken down and constructed at will. I found it hard to believe he got any work done! Despite claims of falsehood, Polo's book was still remarkably influential, and widely popular hundreds of years before the advent of modern printing.

This book does not tell the whole of Polo's travels in China (Cathay). As far as I can tell, it is in fact book two of four. Despite my skepticism of the veracity of the contents, I do love the way that it's written. It's a very chatty style with lots of 'Oh!! I must tell you about...' and 'I almost forgot to mention...', which perhaps ties in with the fact that Marco Polo didn't actually write the book himself, but instead dictated it to Rustichello da Pisa (while Polo was in prison). While I don't feel that this 'great idea' has particularly changed or influenced me, I can appreciate that much of it's impact is probably lost after 700-odd years. Still, it was a enjoyable read and an easy introduction to the series.

2008 Booklist

What I'm reading in 2008:

1. Power without Glory, Frank Hardy (a slog)
   
2. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle (not a slog!)
   
3. War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells (wow)
   
4. The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie (self indulgent, but I still liked it :-) )
   
5. Travels in the Land of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo (opulent)
   
6. To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis (love, Love, LOVE)
   
7. The Bodysurfers, Robert Drew (languid)
   
8. Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years, Sue Townsend (flaccid)
   
9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (*wonderful*)
   
10. The Inner Life, Thomas a Kempis (religious)
    
11. Shade's Children, Garth Nix (slight)
    
12. Mucha, Renate Ulmer (decorative)
    
13. Peeps, Scott Westerfeld (fun!)
    
14. Amy's Children, Olga Masters (bemusing)
    
15. Eichman and the Holocaust, Hanna Arendt (thought provoking)
    
16. Undead and Unemployed, Mary Janice Davidson (light but satisfying)
    
17. White Time, Margo Lanagan (ok, but she's no Peter Carey)
    
18. Black Juice, Margo Lanagan (not fussed about this one)
    
19. Red Spikes, Margo Lanagan (*really* not fussed about this one)
    
20. Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, Sue Townsend (a great end to the bookbag)
    
21. Odd One Out, Monica McInerney (bleh)
    
22. The Encyclopedia of Fonts, Gwyn Headley (somewhat overwhelming, fontwise)
    
23. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (not as good as I'd been lead to believe)
    
24. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling (completion)
    
25. The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (bookmarkable)
    
26. War Crimes, Peter Carey (not as stunning as 'The Fat Man in History')
    
27. The Art of War, Sun-tzu (poetry)
    
28. The Pleasure of Hating, William Hazlitt (instructive)
    
29. Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk (fun, but derivative)
    
30. The Symposium, Plato (adorable!)
    
31. Urn Burial, Kerry Greenwood (also fun, but not Agatha Christie)
    
32. Splashdance Silver, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Pratchettesque)
    
33. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (logical!)
    
34. Cannery Row, John Steinbeck (charming!)
    
35. Extras, Scott Westerfeld (notasgoodasthetrilogy)
    
36. How to Achieve Greatness, Baldesar Castliglione (like the Symposium, but not as good)
    
37. Rynosseros, Terry Dowling (enjoyable linked shorts)
    
38. Tithe, Holly Black (haphazard)
    
39. Blue Tyson, Terry Dowling (more good Dowling)
    
40. The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards (the cover was better than the insides...)
    
41. The Last Days, Scott Westerfeld (fawesome!)
    
42. 2012, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Ben Payne (solid)
    
43. tiny deaths, Robert Shearmen(excellent)
    
44. Prismatic, Edwina Grey (interesting)
    
45. Wicked, Gregory Maguire (tedious)
    
46. Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (very good, but didn't meet (very) high expectations)
    
47. Moon Palace, Paul Auster (short, but lengthy)
    
48. The Other Boleyn Girl, Phillipa Gregory (historically edifying)
    
49. Until I Find You, John Irving (satisfying)
    
50. Cenotaxis, Sean Williams (non-plussing)
    
51. Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch, Simon Haynes (unexpectedly amusing)
    
52. SG1: The Barque of Heaven, Suzanne Wood (slashy!!)
    
53. Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett (fun, but not groundbreaking)
    
54. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque (war. what is it good for?)
    
55. Stardust, Neil Gaiman (*not* as good as the movie)
    
56. The Six Sacred Stones, Matthew Reilly(as expected)
    
57. SG1: Do No Harm, Karen Miller (a bit weird to read when sick myself, but otherwise good)
    
58. His Illegal Self, Peter Carey (dreamy)
    
59. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera (oblique)
    
60. Amberlight, Sylvia Kelso (uninspiring)
    
61. Death by Water, Kerry Greenwood (better than the first I read)
    
62. Siddhartha, Herman Hesse (Om)
    
63. The Catarbie Conspiracy, Sabrina DeSouza(naive)
    
64. Astropolis: Earth Ascendant, Sean Williams (space opera-ry goodness)
    
65. Incandescence, Greg Egan (hard science)
    
66. Daughters of Moab, Neil Gaiman (apocolyptic australiana)
    
67. The Economy of Light, Jack Dann (interesting mishmash)
    
68. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman (nice use of London)
    
69. Time Machines Reparied While-U-Wait, K. A. Bedford (time travelling mystery)
    
70. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Sean Williams (a different kind of space opera)
    
71. Without Warning, John Birmingham (depressing)
    
72. Chao Space, Marianne de Pierres (aimless until the end)
    
73. Jack Maggs, Peter Carey (excellent, plus subtext!! or mebbe I mean metatext)
    
74. Time for the Stars, Robert Heinlein (twin paradox!!)
    
75. The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin (zomg. excellent.)
    
76. The Riddle and the Knight, Giles Milton (illuminating)
    
77. The Music of Chance, Paul Auster (compelling)
    
78. Daughters of Earth, Justin Larbalestier (ed.) (excellent)

Reviews: Death of a Gossip, Death of a Hussy, Death of an Outsider, Death of a Prankster by M.C. Beaton

This is the final chapter in the Hamish Macbeth saga (for me anyway). Three of my four remaining M. C. Beaton books have been mooched so I've read them all to get it all over and done with.

What is there to say that I haven't already said before?

Well, one thing that reading these four books together highlighted was another common character in the Beaton books - a young, generally insecure female character who inevitably:

• is not the killer
  
• is jealous of/dislikes Priscilla because of her cool, blond, capable ways (and sometimes also because of her relationship to Hamish)
  
• develops a crush on Hamish
  
• also gets involved with (and in some cases sleeps with) some unsuitable *other* character (a cad), often expecting that they will get married, despite the fact they have known each of ther for but days (dude!)

I find this character irritating in the extreme.

On a positive note, one book I actually didn't mind was Death of an Outsider, which differs from the other Hamish books in a couple of ways. For a start, Hamish in not in Loch Dubh but has been seconded to another village becuse the bobby there has gone on holiday. Hamish actually has a relationship with someone other than Priscilla! And, although he is wet enough to think having slept with her on three occasions really does mean he has to ask her to marry him, she is not so wet to believe this (therefore differing from the irritating female as described above, although to be fair she is deluded about her art and only leaves hamish cos she's going back to her husband). This is also one of the first books in the series and so the storyline (the murder) was used in the TV show and I have vivid memories of one particular scene when the murder was discovered. Awww... memories.

Anyway, anyone who's interested in a hot pink hussy should get in touch ASAP, as that's all I got left now.

(PS: If you've read 'Death of a Gossip', you've pretty much read 'Death of a Glutton'. And vice versa. The End :-)

Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

I was really surprised when this booked ended, as there's a couple of pages of author's notes at the back and so I was expecting a couple more pages of denouement, but there wasn't.

It just stopped.

By this, I mean things are not neatly tied up at the end - we get to a certain point and that's it. There's nothing wrong with this technique, per se, but I did feel that the whole final section of the story is a bit aimless. The drive of the first sections has gone, and perhaps this reflects that Kavalier and Clay have lost their youthful drive as well.

Still there's lots of great things about this story (even if it does peter out at the end). Prague! A city that I have visited and so those early sections when Joe is still in the city, before getting to New York, held special resonance for me. Joe's battle against his guilt at him having escaped Prague, whilst the rest of his family suffer in Terezin was also very moving. Comics! (which is just as well, given they're a huge part of the story :-). I've never really read comics, but I do draw so the descriptions of Joe's art was particularly interesting. I also loved the descriptions of subtext in the comics as well - firstly as a means for fighting Hitler in WW2 and then, to a lesser extent, dealing with issues of sexuality (I'd say more but it might ruin the story. Even saying this is probably too much!). FINALLY, I really love books that deal in alternate histories. I know technically all stories are alternate histories cos, you know, it never happened. However, by alternate history here I mean those stories that are so wide reaching that real events (WW2, the history of comic books) are absorbed and changed seamlessly so you don't know which bits are real and which bits aren't. 'Kavalier and Clay' does this exceptionally well (complete with footnotes), particularly for the comics (and I'd love to know which bits are true and which are not).

In saying all this I haven't even mentioned the strands of the story involved with magic, Houdini, and the rather unexpected - but perfectly natural at the time - section set in Antarctica. I'm also still wondering about the significance of what happens to the Golem in the end (i have theories). In summary, a fat book but an easy read. I'd definitely seek out other works by Michael Chabon based on this one.

Reviews: Death of a Glutton, Death of a Cad, Death of a Snob by M.C. Beaton

Mooching has been very slow (non-existant) recently and I had though that perhaps nobody was interested in acquiring my unwanted Hamish books. However, with three mooches this week, I'm now wondering if the recent restructure of the site has helped. Like before, I've given the mooched a final read. They only take an hour each so it's an easy task and I thought I'd review them altogether because, frankly, they're all the same book anyway - just with slightly different settings and characters. Reading three in quick succession has reinforced a couple of things:

1. Most of characters in the books are caricatures. Hamish and Priscilla aren't, as well as most of the locals and the lesser police. However, the party of suspects in each book are usually pretty one-dimensional and this is exacerbated for any character that the reader is supposed to dislike, which routinely includes the murder victim, Blair the inspector from Strathbane (and Hamish's nemesis), and Priscilla's father Colonel Halliburton-Smythe. Those characters are *boring*.
   
   
2. The main interest in each book is Hamish/Priscilla love affair. It's the one part of the story that develops with each book, although there's still a lot of repetition. In one book (Death of a Cad) they've actually altered the 'teaser' text inside the front cover from the passage it's lifted from to imply that something more is going on between them than really is.
   
   
3. Part of the charm of the series was the fact that the locals were characters in their own right - TV John, Rory and Esme, Lachlan McCrae and Lachie Junior. None of these people exist in the books and the books are poorer for it.

I read these three out of order, which doesn't really matter, but since then I've found a list on the internet and discovered they're still being written!!!!! I had thought that the eight I owned was it, but instead it looks like these were just the ones put out before the TV series and that M. C. Beaton will be putting out her twenty fourth in the series next year. I am both deeply fascinated and repelled.

I kinda want to get the other 16 to see whether the TV series had any impact on the later books, and also to see what happens to Hamish and Priscilla. On the other hand, I do think it would be more sensible to just mooch the books I have and close the chapter. They are excellent books for mooching, small and light and in very good condition.

Review: Death of a Perfect Wife by M.C. Beaton

I loved Hamish Macbeth. What with the show's general quirkiness and Robert Carlyle's smouldering smoulderingness, what was there not to love??

So perhaps it was not much a surprise that, when entering the ABC shop with a $25 in gift vouchers and finding the whole series reduced to $2 each, I bought the set of books upon which the TV series was based (well at least 8 of them). Unfortunately, the books did not grab me. At all. Apart from Hamish, many of the other characters are not there, or are greatly altered. Alex exists as the rather proper Priscilla Halburton-Smythe and there's no Isobel to speak of. Priscilla's father is a very one dimensional foe who disapproves of Priscilla's friendship with Hamish. Hamish's superior Blair is much the same - blustering and stupid and boring. Hamish is a ginger!!!

(Actually I don't care about that, I'm upset because he's so wet when it comes to Priscilla! And he's not Robert Carlyle...)

Worst of all, the books are so very very twee.

I read them all, but then they languished on my shelf for the better part of 10 years. I was unwilling to read them, but also unwilling to break up the set by bookcrossing them. However, I realised on the weekend that they're all in excellent condition and therefore very moochable. I put em all up and 'Death of a Perfect Wife' was mooched yesterday. I reread it that evening just to check.

Unfortunately it hadn't improved with age, but at least it was a quick read.