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