Review: The Analects

The Analects by Confucius
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So I bought this commentary book on Mencius, and figured before reading that I should read Mencius, and then I figured before reading Mencius I should read Confucius, so here we are. 

This is actually a re-read, but I figured it was needed. And it was an interesting one. I found some odd passages, like:

"Confucius would rather be criticized for partiality than appear to be openly critical of the Duke" (note to Book VII, 31)

I guess this falls under respecting superiors, although it comes across like he's being opportunist and has a double standard

"It is a shameful matter to be poor and humble when the Way prevails in the state" (Book VIII, 13)

eh?

 Also I'm not sure if one should put the State above all, or the family above the state (see Book XIII, 18)

But also some good ones I marked down for reference, like:

"Only when the cold season comes is the point brought home that the pine and the cypress are the last to lose their leaves" (Book IX, 28)

I really like this one!

To be frank it would have also helped to use the Chinese characters for some of the terms. I understand most readers probably wouldn't understand (myself included), but I'm guessing those same readers won't know what the Chün shih chapter of the Shu Ching is, and having the characters, rather than this Wade-Giles mishmash would make it easier to follow-up

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Review: 36 Books That Changed the World

36 Books That Changed the World by Andrew R. Wilson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Great ideas may be executed poorly in many ways. For example, someone may wish to compile a list of what Tyler Cowen called "Quake books" (books that shake your foundation), but then decide only to search for lectures that already exist and simply aggregate them, so the result feels disjointed and often references other lectures that aren't part of the course.

This may also result in incomplete lectures. For example, Aristotle's section might cover just a very small portion of his Nicomachean Ethics, and the St. Augustine section may talk mainly about how St. Augustine influenced later thinkers, rather than his material per se.

Or the books might be compiled by someone who quite obviously is from the US, so the collection is very US-centric (or possibly just western-centric), and there might be just 5 non-western books (Gilgamesh, Art of War, Analects by Confucius, Baghavad Ghita and the Koran).

But many things can be done right as well, and it can introduce you to works you knew nothing about (and usually felt like you should). This happened for me with Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Or even to works you hadn't heard of before (Denis Diderot's & Jean le Rond d'Alembert's The Encyclopedie, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)

This collection does all of the above. Overall it has more good points than bad, but I would have appreciated maybe one of the 4 Chinese classics, the Tale of Genji, or maybe Arabian Nights.

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