This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

On Natural Selection
by Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Memorable Line
“The illustration of the swimbladder in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely flotation, may be converted into one for a wholly different purpose, namely respiration.”

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

On Art and Life
by John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Memorable Line
“…while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success.”

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

On the Suffering of the World
by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Memorable Line
“Knowledge is in itself always painless.”

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Visit Omnivoracious every Saturday for a summary of the week’s 60 in 60. This was a tough week in terms of ranking the books, in part because a ranking is ludicrous on the face of it and in part because I enjoyed each of these books, but for vastly different reasons.

There is also the relative weight of each book to consider. The Hazlitt was more enjoyable than The Communist Manifesto, but obviously has been less influential. Despite relying on my own personal context and not seeking out more information than provided in each Penguin edition, certain texts already come with built-in preconceptions for the reader. So Hazlitt entertained me and was clever, but I had little to say about it because of its relative lightness. Not so The Communist Manifesto–something more radical, which by its very nature provokes a longer response.

In the coming week, Schopenhauer (which I’ve started this afternoon and am enjoying), Ruskin, Darwin, Nietzche, Woolf, Freud, and Orwell are on deck. Ruskin is an old friend, as are Woolf and Orwell. Nietzche and Freud I’ve previously encountered in excerpts only. It should be an interesting week.

Thanks for reading, and, more importantly, for posting comments to both the texts and my thoughts about them.

This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

The Communist Manifesto
by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1818-1883, 1820-1895)

Memorable Line
“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground–what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?”

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

On the Pleasure of Hating
by William Hazlett (1778-1830)

Memorable Line
“The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriusness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others.”

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

A Vindication of the Rights of Women
by Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Memorable Lines
“I may be accused of arrogance; still I must declare what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners, from Rousseau to Dr Gregory, have contributed to render women more artificial, weak characters than they would otherwise have been; and consequently, more useless members of society. I might have expressed this conviction in a lower key, but I am afraid it would have been the whine of affectation, and not the faithful expression of my feelings, of the clear result which experience and reflection have led me to draw…My objection extends to the whole purport of those books, which tend, in my opinion, to degrade one-half of the human species, and render women pleasing at the expense of every solid virtue.

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

Common Sense
by Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Memorable Line
“No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April 1775 (massacre at Lexington), but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of — for ever; and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.”

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

The Christians and the Fall of Rome
by Edward Gibbon

Memorable Line
“Disdaining an ignominious flight, the virgins of the warm climate of Africa encountered the enemy in the closest engagement; they permitted priests and deacons to share their bed, and gloried amidst the flames in their unsullied purity.”

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This blog post is part of my ongoing “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, I will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning. For more on this beautifully designed series, visit Penguin’s page about the books.

The Social Contract
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Memorable Line
“Any man can carve tablets of stone, or bribe an oracle, claim a secret intercourse with some divinity, train a bird to whisper in his ear, or discover some other vulgar means of imposing himself on the people. A man who can do such things may conceivably bring together a company of fools, but he will never establish an empire, and his bizarre creation will perish with him.”

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