The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Eli Schuster’s View:

Synoposis: The sun rises, the day begins, and old Khayyam brings everyone down with depressing poetry that reminds us we’re all gonna die some day.

What Did I Learn?: It took Omar 75 four-lined verses to basically say: Carpe Diem.

Memorable Line: “For in and out, above, about, below...’Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show. Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun, Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.”

You Might Like This Book If: you need some inspiration to really enjoy your life and go for the gusto, and Tony Robbins just doesn't cut it, anymore.

Somebody’s Justifying Their Alcoholism: “And lately, by the Tavern Door agape, Came stealing through the Dusk and Angel Shape. Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and he bid me taste of it; and ‘twas – the Grape!”

Krishna's Dialogue On the Soul

Eli Schuster’s View:

Synopsis: (chapters 10 to 18 of the Bhagvad Gita, part of the Mahabharata). Hindu god Krishna (self-described as “Lord of all the worlds...prince victorious...the cleverness of the gambler’s dice”, etc...) informs humble servant Arjuna about the secrets of life, the universe and everything...and praises himself a lot while doing so.

What Did I Learn?: Krishna is also Vishnu, Indra, and pretty much all of the other gods, heroes and mythical beings, too.

Memorable Line: “Listen and I shall reveal to thee some manifestations of my divine glory. Only the greatest, Arjuna, for there is no end to my infinite greatness.”

You Might Like This Book If: You need to learn something about Hinduism and you don’t have a lot of time.

Interesting Parallel to James Durrill’s country music classic, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys: “[Evil men] say: ‘this world has no truth, no moral foundation, no God. There is no law of creation – what is the cause of birth but lust?’”

Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (selections from Livy's The War with Hannibal). In 218 BC, Carthaginian commander Hannibal led an army of nearly 90,000 foot soldiers, 12,000 mounted cavalry and a whole bunch of elephants through the Alps because he wanted to conquer Rome in the toughest possible way he could imagine.

What I Learned: Hannibal's crossing of the Alps - elephants and all - took only 15 days.

Memorable Line: "The elephants proved both a blessing and a curse: for though getting them along the narrow and precipitous tracks caused serious delay, they were none the less a protection to the troops, as the natives, never having seen such creatures before, were afraid to come near them."

You Might Like This Book If: You need to take your grumpy great dane to the vet's office and you need some inspiration.

Life Lesson: When the local barbarians keep attacking your army's supply train, and your elephants keep falling off steep mountain cliffs to horrible deaths below, you keep going.

Reflections on the Fall of Rome

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (edits from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, three installments between 1776 and 1788) British historian Edward Gibbon tells a strange tale of an agricultural republic that became an empire ("an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth"), and a once-proud people who lost their freedoms and didn't care so long as they were given bread and entertainment.

What I Learned: Roman soldiers carried short, well-tempered Spanish blades, and were encouraged to stab, rather than slash at an enemy.

Memorable Line: "If a savage conqueror should issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must repeatedly vanquish the robust peasants of Russia, the numerous armies of Germany, the gallant nobles of France, and the intrepid freemen of Britain; who, perhaps, might confederate for their common defence. Should the victorious Barbarians carry slavery and desolation as far as the Atlantic Ocean, ten thousand vessels would transport beyond their pursuit the remains of civilized society; and Europe would revive and flourish in the American world, which is already filled with her colonies, and institutions."

You Might Like This Book If: Russell Crowe's performance in Gladiator inspired you to learn everything you could about those wacky Romans.

Not Sure I Agree With This... "(E)very age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race."

Civil Disobedience

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (Combination of Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay "Resistance to Civil Government", and an excerpt from Walden on the importance of reading and books.) Basically, Thoreau exhorts his fellow citizens to grow some balls and refuse to accept bullshit from their government, even it if was popularly elected.

What I Learned: Thoreau spent a night in the slammer with a barn-burner for refusing to pay the local poll tax.

Memorable Line: "I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pittied it."

You Might Like This Book If: You're seriously pissed off about something the government is doing, and you really want to protest, but... it's your day off and you need a reason or two to get off the couch and leave your game of Grand Theft Auto.

Good Question: "Why does [the state] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?"

Truckstop and Other Lake Wobegon Stories

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (5 short stories featuring the Krebsbach family in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota - one from Garrision Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days and four from Leaving Home). Florian accidentally leaves his wife at a truckstop, Lyle's roof is in bad shape, Carl ruins the Homecoming parade with a 1937 Chevy filled with feces, and the Krebsbach family carries on.

Memorable Line: "What's hard to live with is not the trash floating in your head but the ordinary facts of life: mortality, knowing that you'll die, and frailty, knowing that when we've got it figured out we don't, and indignity, knowing that if we manage to put up a good front we still have the backstage view."

What I Learned: If you accidentally leave your hypochondriac wife at a truckstop it's a much better idea to pretend you're angry with her than to admit the truth.

You Might Like This Book If: You grew up in a small town like Lake Wobegon and you're in the mood for a stroll down Memory Lane.

Random Observation: Garrison Keillor quite enjoys starting his stories with the words: "it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon."

Souls Belated

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (1899 short story by Edith Wharton) American lovers Gannett and Lydia settle into a swanky Italian hotel. She doesn't want to get married after her divorce, so the two of them deal with society's disapproval by arguing with each other...over and over again.

What I learned: "Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions."

Memorable Line: "It was the kind of society in which, after dinner, the ladies compared the exobitant charges of their children's teachers, and agreed that, even with the new duties on French clothes, it was cheaper in the end to get everything from Worth; while the husbands, over their cigars, lamented municipal corruption, and decided that the men to start a reform were those who had no private interests at stake."

You Might Like This Book If: you're fascinated by the inner turmoil of the Victorian era fashionable set, and you don't own the Upstairs Downstairs DVD box set.

Worth Considering: "I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other."

Meditations of a Solitary Walker

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (Extract from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Reveries of a Solitary Walker") Feeling increasingly isolated from society, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (self-described as "the most sensitive of beings") takes a series of long walks to commune with nature and "escape from the horde of evil doers."

What I learned: Rousseau was an intelligent and deeply introspective guy with a huge persecution complex.

Memorable Line: "when death is already at the door, is it worth learning how we should have lived?"

You Might Like This Book If: the world is getting you down, and you don't want to go where everybody knows your name.

Yikes!: "I reached the age of forty, oscillating between poverty and riches, wisdom and error, full of vices born of habit, but with a heart free of evil inclinations, living at random with no rational principles, and careless but not scornful of my duties, of which I was often not fully aware. Since the days of my youth I had fixed on the age of forty as the end of my efforts to succeed, the final term of my various ambitions."

Oopsie-Daisy

Whoa...it's been nearly three months since the last posting. What can I say...I've been busy, and so has Anita. We're going to try to post some new mini book reviews ASAP.

- Eli Schuster

The Art of War

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (Extract from The Art of War. Presented in dialogue form) Mercenary commander Fabrizio Colonna shares his thoughts on warfare, conscription, untrustworthy mercenaries, and the good old days of citizen warriors in ancient Rome with Florentine gentleman Cosimo Rucellai.

What I learned: One should select infantrymen from the countryside and cavalry from the towns. Why? Because Machiavelli said so!

Memorable Line: "...there exists no more dangerous sort of infantry than one composed of men who make war their profession, since you are forced either to make war constantly and repeatedly pay these men, or run the risk that they will take your kingdom from you. To wage war constantly is not possible; one cannot pay them repeatedly either; therefore, of necessity one runs the risk of losing the state."

You Might Like This Book If: you want to learn more about early 16th Century warfare and don't mind reading a bit of flowery ass-kissing.

Somebody's a Grumpy Bear: "Before they had felt the blows of the Transalpine wars, our Italian princes believed that a prince need only know how to dream up witty replies in his study; write a beautiful letter; display intelligence and readiness in his conversation and his speech; weave a fraud; adorn himself wtih gems and gold; sleep and eat in a more splendid style than others; surround himself wtih a large number of courtesans; conduct himself in a miserly and arrogant manner with his subjects; rot in laziness; give military positions as favors; despise anyone who had shown them any praiseworthy path; and expect that their pronouncements be taken as oracles."

The Galapagos Islands

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (Extract from Voyage of the Beagle) Charles Darwin hangs out with lizards and giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, and later visits Tahiti as part of a five-year scientific journey in the 1830s.

What I learned: The snakes on the Galapagos Islands are harmless, and there aren't any frogs or toads. Young tortoises make excellent soup.

Memorable Line: "The inhabitants, when walking in the lower district, and overcome with thirst, often take advantage of this circumstance, by killing a tortoise, and if the bladder is full, drinking its contents. In one I saw killed, the fluid was quite limpid, and had only a very slightly bitter taste. The inhabitants, however, always drink first the water in the pericardium, which is described as being best." (Darwin on the subject of big tortoise bladders)

You Might Like This Book If: you remind people of this guy.

Line I Wasn't Expecting: "They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood - a system of profligacy unparalleled in the world, and infanticide a consequence of that system - bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children - that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty, intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction of Christianity." (Darwin, the father of Evolution, defending the introduction of Christianity into Tahiti).

Oopsy Daisy: "it never occurred to me, that the production of islands only a few miles apart, and placed under the same physical conditions, would be dissimilar. I therefore did not attempt to make a series of specimens from the separate islands."

A Season in Hell

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: Writing at the ripe old age of nineteen (after a stay in London, during which his lover shot him in a drunken rage, and he apparently transitioned from run-of-the-mill absynthe to opium, with a whole lot of booze and hashish thrown in) French poet Arthur Rimbaud documents his "season in Hell", between April and August 1873. None of it makes the slightest bit of fucking sense.

What I learned: Moody teenagers have been around for a long time.

Memorable Line: "I inherit from my Gaulish ancestors my whitish-blue eye, my narrow skull, and my lack of skill in fighting. My attire seems to me as barbarous as theirs. But I don't butter my hair."

You Might Like This Book If: you want to enjoy some good, old-fashioned teenaged angst, but Degrassi is a little too straight-forward and linear for your taste.

Bottom Line: maybe Rimbaud could have used more hugs and fewer drugs. 

The Pleasures and Pains of Opium

Eli's View:

Synopsis: (Extract from Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1821) A young Thomas De Quincey started taking opium in 1804 and - big surprise - he kinda liked it. By 1813, De Quincey was using the "panacea for all human woes" every day, but he was otherwise happy and functional up until 1817, when he found himself wracked by depression, lethargy and some truly fucked-up nightmares.

What I learned: Opium can be a part of this nutritious breakfast for a surprisingly long time (provided you don't overuse it.) Oh - and apparently John Dryden and Henry Fuseli sometimes ate raw meat in order to obtain "splendid dreams".

Memorable Line: "I ran into pagodas: and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid in wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried, for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud." (De Quincey describing some of his later dreams)

You might like this book if: you want to know more about drug addiction, but somehow found The Wire to be intellectually lowbrow.

Life Lesson: If your subconscious mind is fucking wth you that badly, it might be trying to tell you something.

Mini Reviews of Mini Books

In 1995, Penguin Books celebrated its 60th anniversary by issuing three box sets of important works: 60 with orange spines (20th century), 60 with black spines (classics), and 30 with yellow spines (children's literature).

About a decade later, I was lucky enough to acquire a complete set of black-spined classics. None of these books are any longer than 100 pages, and each is about the size of a beer coaster. They're mostly either short stories and short essays, or exerpts from much longer tomes. The list of authors runs the gamut from Charles Darwin to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's a little-rary bookstravaganza. (Ok, that was awful).

Alas, I never got around to reading more than a few of them - until now.

With a little help from my fellow word nerd friend Anita, we're not only going to read, but review (albeit somewhat irreverently) each of these suckers for your entertainment.

The concept is simple: mini reviews of mini books.

                                   - Eli Schuster