Penguin Great Ideas series

[kev67]

Has anyone seen those Penguin Great Ideas books (http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/greatideas/index_1.html)? I think they look great. I am always tempted to buy a few, maybe collect the whole lot. However, I always balk, because £5 for such small books, when there are no royalties to pay, is too expensive. If they did deals like three for £10 or seven for £20, I would be tempted. The other thing is that now there is 100 of them, so I doubt I could collect them all :(

Edit: spotted they don't have Robert Malthus's essay on the principle of population. That is a serious omission. Doesn't have Orwell's Politics and the English Language either. In fact, the great ideas seem a bit random.

[mal4mac]

Amazon have them at £3.99, with three postage if you spend ten pounds. Some of them are a reasonable length, but with Seneca and Montaigne you'd definitely be better going for the complete letters/essays. There are a couple of excellent compilations of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer that would give you much more for the money.

[kev67]

Even £3.99 seems a little expensive to me. I bought a booklet of George Orwell's Politics and the English Language for a pound last year. I kicked myself when I saw it was included in a book of his essays. I would not pay £4.99 or even £3.99 for Gerorge Orwell's essay, Books vs Cigarettes. They do look great though. I might be tempted to buy Charles Dickens' Night Walks or George Elliot's Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. I have several times been tempted to buy several of these series when I saw them in London branches of Waterstones, but they are just too expensive. Another thing: I would be tempted to read something like The Invisible Hand by Adam Smith, but I suspect this is only an extract from his book, The Wealth of Nations. In that case, I would want to read the whole book. I would only be happy to read one of these if the piece of writing was first published in pamphlet or essay form.

Also, I noticed the range does not include Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal or anything by Oscar Wilde. More serious omissions.

[Dreamwoven]

I think it will always be the case that "great ideas" will be an unlimited number that grows as new ones are written. Just choose which ones you think are great ideas and get those. I would not even try to get a complete run, as that doesn't exist.

Thanks for the link to to this, Kev67. I will check it out more closely.

[YesNo]

Some of these must be available for free if one is looking for the original texts as an ebook.

[Dreamwoven]

Some of these must be available for free if one is looking for the original texts as an ebook.

Good advice, but for me who is very old fashioned, I don't have an I-phone or e-reader.

[YesNo]

You can get a Kindle installed on your computer. Then your computer functions like an e-reader. It also works on android phones.

There are problems with ebooks. The books are not as easy to share with others, but if the books are free that doesn't matter. Also, many books aren't in ebook format.

[Dreamwoven]

Thanks for this. I could have added that I did download kindle but could never get it going. Very frustrating not to be able to use the internet to its full advantage.

[YesNo]

I had trouble once with a book I purchased from Amazon. Basically, it wouldn't download. I re-installed the app after calling customer support.